Welfare Reform: Research Findings Contradict The Aura of Success
By Diana Zuckerman, Ph.D.
The welfare changes that were signed into law in 1996 have directly affected more children than any laws in recent memory. The law changed welfare benefits from an entitlement program aimed at assisting the families of unemployed single mothers into a temporary assistance program that was geared toward getting those single mothers into the work force as quickly as possible. Because having dependent children under the age of 18 was a criterion for receiving welfare, this change has impacted the lives of millions of children and youth.
There is widespread agreement that children can benefit from having a working parent as a role model, and that employment and a paycheck can inspire feelings of accomplishment and self-reliance. Nevertheless, progressive advocacy groups considered the passage of welfare reform an enormous social policy defeat; many of them had lobbied against the bill and made dire predictions about what would happen to the families of single mothers who would lose their welfare benefits.
Did those predictions come true? Many youth and family advocates have mixed feelings about the dramatic decreases in the number of families on public assistance, and resent the political announcements claiming that welfare reform is an unqualified success. There is great relief that so many former welfare families now have employed mothers and that there has been no apparent increase in children begging on the streets to support their families. However, there is continued concern about what is really happening to families who are no longer on welfare.
Three years after the passage of welfare reform, three nonprofit organizations that had predicted that welfare reform would result in increased poverty released research reports supporting those predictions. Their reports explained why the reality of welfare reform is not as rosy as the headlines would have us believe.Extreme Child Poverty Rises Sharply in 1997
Arloc Sherman
The Children's Defense Fund
25 E Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001
Available FREE at www.childrensdefense.org or call (202) 628-8787.All the reports ask the same key question: were single mothers who left welfare to go to work able to earn as much as they had received in welfare benefits? The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) report is the only one to focus on the impact on children. The CDF compared the number of children in extreme poverty in 1996 and 1997, focusing on families headed by mothers. It did its own analysis of a very large national Census Bureau survey, known as the Current Population Survey.
According to the CDF, the number of children in these families who were living in extreme poverty increased from 1996 to 1997 as a result of welfare reform. Extreme poverty was defined as less than half the poverty level (for example, less than $6,401/year or $123/week for a family of three). All kinds of income were included: wages and salaries, child support, government assistance checks, and non-cash benefits such as food stamps.
The author, Arloc Sherman, is a senior program associate who has worked on poverty issues at CDF for nine years, and was previously at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He points out that child poverty had been decreasing slowly in recent years, from 1.7 million children in 1993 to 1.4 million in 1996. In 1997, the number of children increased 26 percent, to 1.8 million. One of the reasons is that 28 percent of former welfare families earned less than $125 per week. This would keep them below half the poverty level even if they worked all year, which many didn't.
Sherman speculates that the loss of food stamps was a major reason for the rise in poverty. Increased employment would have made up for the loss of welfare benefits, but not for the loss of food stamps too. Although families leaving welfare are often still eligible for food stamps, the statistics show that many stop getting them. Similarly, most legal immigrants lost food stamp eligibility under the 1996 revamping of eligibility for welfare-linked benefits.
The report also describes how larger families that leave welfare struggle more, because welfare benefits were more generous for families with more children. Although these "larger" families average only 3.5 children, many single mothers can't earn the larger salaries needed to make up for the loss of slightly larger welfare benefits.
Compared to many other advocacy reports, this CDF report provides solid research data and makes an important contribution by focusing on the poorest families. By including food stamps and other non-cash benefits in its analysis, the CDF avoids some of the usual criticisms made by conservative groups, who claim that progressive groups overestimate poverty rates by excluding the value of food stamps and other benefits.
Although the CDF's statistics do not prove that food stamps could help bring more than a half million families out of poverty, the apparent drop in food stamps deserves attention. Individuals that work with low income children and families can help some of the poorest families by making sure parents know that food stamps are still available to working poor families.
How Families That Left Welfare are Doing: A National Picture
Pamela Loprest
Urban Institute
Series B, No. B-1, August 1999
2100 M Street
Washington, DC 20037
FREE: call (202) 261-5687 or www.urban.org (click "Assessing the New Federalism")The Urban Institute has probably received more funding for welfare reform research than all the other progressive organizations put together (more than $65 million in foundation grants for their New Federalism Project, which includes welfare reform). Although often described as a progressive think tank, it has bent over backwards to include Reagan Administration appointees for its welfare research, so that it could not be accused of liberal bias.
In its fourth year of a six-year project, the Urban Institute has produced a regular flow of brief, easy-to-read reports that are available for free. Reports on child care, food stamps, and other important issues are expected in the next few months. The August report is based on the government's 1997 National Survey of America's Families.
This report compares families of women who left welfare with "low income families" with income under 200 percent of the poverty level, and the "near-poor," with incomes below 150 percent of the poverty level. It finds that, not surprisingly, women who have left welfare are working at low-paying jobs. Unfortunately, more than one in four of all these mothers, whether or not they were formerly on welfare, work mostly at night, which raises important and troubling questions about the quality of care and supervision available for their children.
Report author Pamela Loprest (a senior research associate who specializes in disability programs, welfare reform, and health insurance for the elderly) found that 20 percent of former welfare recipients are not working, do not have a working spouse, and are not relying on government disability payments. This raises questions about how they are surviving and what is happening to their children. Presumably these families were receiving help from families, friends, or charitable groups, or were supporting themselves with "off the books" work that they did not report or with illegal activities.
Loprest found that very few (6 percent) of the women who left welfare work less than 20 hours a week, and most (69 percent) work more than 35 hours a week. Their work hours are slightly longer than those of other near-poor or low income workers who are not former welfare recipients.
More than half the adults who left welfare were earning more than $6.61 an hour, which is considerably more than the minimum wage ($4.75 an hour at the time of the survey). Again, this is somewhat higher than the earnings of near-poor and low-income workers who were not formerly on welfare. The income differences apparently reflect other differences, such as educational attainment, race/ethnicity, marital status, and region where they live. The economic status of these families is similar to the other families in the study: on average, former welfare recipients earn approximately $100 less per month than low-income workers, and only $100 more than near-poor workers.
Many of these families are barely surviving economically: one in every three mothers who left welfare reported that they had to cut the size of or skip meals because there was not enough food, compared with one in four of the other near-poor or low-income mothers. More than 38 percent reported that there was at least one time when they could not pay their rent, mortgage, or utility bills, which was almost twice as many as the other near poor and low income families.
The report concludes that policy makers should focus on helping families who are poor, not just on former welfare recipients, since all these families face similar economic problems. Like the CDF, the Urban Institute concludes that there are probably families in all three groups that are not receiving food stamps or other government benefits to which they are entitled.
The Initial Impacts of Welfare Reform on the Incomes of Single-Mother Families
Wendell Primus, Lynette Rawlings, Kathy Larin & Kathryn Porter
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
820 First Street, NW, Suite 510
Washington, DC 20002
Available FREE at www.cbpp.org or for $12 at (202) 408-1080 .Compared to the other two reports, this report is much longer and more technical: even the executive summary is 10 single-spaced, densely written pages. Its strength is that it compares two different time periods, from 1993 to 1995 (when states are just beginning to reform welfare) and then from 1995 to 1997, which represents before and just after the beginning of federal welfare reforms. It is also benefits from the credibility of its primary author, Wendell Primus, who was the Clinton Administration's expert on welfare reform and previously was the chief economist working on these issues in the House of Representatives.
It concludes that the economic resources of the poor improved from 1993 to 1995, because their increased earnings and the earned income tax credit more than made up for the loss of welfare benefits that resulted from some state reforms. However, this progress was reversed between 1995 and 1997 as a result of the 1996 federal welfare reform.
The Center analyzed the same national survey as did the CDF, although it separately evaluated five groups of single-mother families that each represented one-fifth of the total (approximately 2 million families with 4 million children under 18 years of age). The poorest families (defined as the lowest 20 percent) became even poorer between 1995 and 1997, because their earnings and government benefits decreased. In fact, the lowest 10 percent -- approximately 1 million families -- declined even more dramatically between 1995 and 1997. Most of the other single parent families stayed at about the same economic level from 1995 to 1997; leaving welfare for work did not increase or decrease their family income.
The Bottom Line
The underlying message of all three reports is that welfare reform is not really a success to date, because so many families are still struggling and children are facing more poverty than before. The reports received a fair amount of media attention, but will this research make a difference? For many policy makers, the major goal of welfare reform was simply to get families off welfare, not necessarily to increase their economic well-being. Statistics alone are unlikely to have much impact on welfare policies, because they don't convey what is happening in human terms. Individuals who work with low-income families can help fill in those gaps if they make sure their observations and experiences are part of the public debate.
This article is based on Diana Zuckerman's monthly Research Watch column that appeared in Youth Today in the October 1999 issue, and was reprinted with permission. Youth Today is a publication of the American Youth Work Center, 1200 17th St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20036. (800) 599-2455. E-mail: youthtoday@aol.com.
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