Welfare

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Welfare
This page is made up of excerpts from:

Dont' Believe The Hype,
by Farai Chideya

Fairness & Accuracy
In Reporting
Web Site

W E L F A R E

and the

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Cutting or Eliminating Benefits Will Force Welfare Recipients To Look For Jobs Poor Women Have More Children Because of the "Financial Incentives" of Welfare We Don't Subsidize Middle-Class Families
The Public Is Fed Up With Spending Money On The Poor We've Spent Over 5 Trillion on Welfare since the 60's and It Hasn't Worked Anyone Who Wants To Get Off Welfare Can Just Get A Job

The Kids who Grow Up in Welfare Families Just End Up on Welfare Themselves Welfare is a High-Cost Program that is Bleeding the Country Dry Black Inner-City Residents have Accounted for the Rise in the Welfare Rolls
Reforming Welfare is as Easy as Cutting Off Benefits Quiz About Welfare

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Myth: Cutting or Eliminating Benefits Will Force Welfare Recipients To Look For jobs

A study in the Journal of Population Economics indicates that the supposed generosity of welfare benefits is not to blame for the "underclass" -and the stinginess of the benefits may even contribute to the perpetuation of poverty.

In Europe, where benefits are more generous than in the US, women and there children are less likely to live in poverty and more likely to escape it. Researchers theorized that the European women were already closer to the mainstream of society and didn't find it such a leap to make it into the world of work. If, as many critics of welfare say, the amount of benefits are what is keeping women on welfare, then European women, with their generous benefits, should be more likely to stay on assistance than Americans. In the US, only 15 percent of poor African-Americans and 22 percent of poor Americans overall rose out of poverty in a year; in France, where benefits are more generous, the number was 32 percent. Another study comparing public assistance in Europe and America found that the vast majority of single-mother families in most Western European countries do not live in poverty. In addition to more generous assistance, European governments are more likely to fund child care and higher quality public housing which does not isolate single mothers in "underclass" areas.

As Mary Frances Berry, chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights, has stated:"It's cheaper to blame mothers for the problem... If you bash single mothers and blame them, you don't have to spend any money."

Myth: Poor Women Have More Children Because of the "Financial Incentives" of Welfare Benefits.

Repeated studies show no correlation between benefit levels and women's choice to have children. (See, for example, Urban Institute Policy and Research Report, Fall/93.) States providing relatively higher benefits do not show higher birth rates among recipients.

In any case, welfare allowances are far too low to serve as any kind of "incentive": A mother on welfare can expect about $90 in additional AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) benefits if she has another child.

Furthermore, the real value of AFDC benefits, which do not rise with inflation, has fallen 37 percent during the last two decades (The Nation, 12/12/94). Birth rates among poor women have not dropped correspondingly.

The average family receiving AFDC has 1.9 children -- about the same as the national average.

Myth: We don't subsidize middle-class families.

Much of the welfare debate has centered around the idea of "family caps"--denying additional benefits to women who have children while receiving aid. This is often presented as simple justice: "A family that works does not get a raise for having a child. Why then should a family that doesn't work?" columnist Ellen Goodman wrote in the Boston Globe (4/16/92).

In fact, of course, families do receive a premium for additional children, in the form of a $2,450 tax deduction. There are also tax credits to partially cover child care expenses, up to a maximum of $2,400 per child. No pundit has suggested that middle-class families base their decision to have children on these "perks."

Myth: The Public is Fed Up with Spending Money on the Poor.

"The suspicion that poorer people are getting something for nothing is much harder to bear than the visible good fortune of the richer," wrote columnist Mary McGrory (Washington Post, 1/15/95). But contrary to such claims from media pundits, the general public is not so hard-hearted. In a December 1994 poll by the Center for the Study of Policy Attitudes (CSPA), 80 percent of respondents agreed that the government has "a responsibility to try to do away with poverty." (Fighting Poverty in America: A Study of American Attitudes, CSPA)

Support for "welfare" is lower than support for "assistance to the poor," but when CSPA asked people about their support for AFDC, described as "the federal welfare program which provides financial support for unemployed poor single mothers with children," only 21 percent said funding should be cut, while 29 percent said it should be increased.

Myth: We've spent Over $5 Trillion on Welfare since the '60s and It Hasn't Worked.

Conservatives and liberals alike use this claim as proof that federal poverty programs don't work, since after all that "lavish" spending, people are still poor. But spending on AFDC, the program normally referred to as welfare, totaled less than $500 billion from 1964 to 1994--less than 1.5 percent of federal outlays for that period, and about what the Pentagon spends in two years.

To get the $5 trillion figure, "welfare spending" must be defined to include all means-tested programs, including Medicaid, food stamps, student lunches, scholarship aid and many other programs. Medicaid, which is by far the largest component of the $5 trillion, goes mostly to the elderly and disabled; only about 16 percent of Medicaid spending goes to health care for AFDC recipients. ("What Do We Spend on 'Welfare'?," Center for Budgetand Policy Priorities)

Furthermore, the poverty rate did fall between 1964 and 1973, from 19 percent to 11 percent, with the advent of "Great Society" programs. Since the 1970s, economic forces like declining real wages as well as reduced benefit levels have contributed to rising poverty rates.

Myth: Anyone Who Wants to Get Off Welfare Can Just Get a Job.

Many welfare recipients do work to supplement meager benefits (Harper's, 4/94). But work force discrimination and the lack of affordable child care make working outside the home difficult for single mothers. And the low-wage, no-benefit jobs available to most AFDC recipients simply do not pay enough to lift a family out of poverty.

Although it is almost never mentioned in conjunction with the welfare debate, the U.S. Federal Reserve has an official policy of raising interest rates whenever unemployment falls below a certain point--now about 6.2percent (Extra!, 9-10/94). In other words, if all the unemployed women on welfare were to find jobs, currently employed people would have to be thrown out of work to keep the economy from "overheating."

Myth: The Kids Who Grow Up in Welfare Families just End Up on Welfare Themselves

Although some families are dependent on welfare from one generation to the next, there are many more adults and children on welfare who move from dependence to independence.

Myth: Welfare is a High-Cost Program that is Bleeding the Country Dry.

Welfare is a miniscule part of the national budget. In 1991, welfare accounted for less than one percent of the United States' federal outlays. Welfare and food stamps combined are less than two and a half percent of the federal budget. By comparison, Social Security, a benefits program whose recipients are doubtless deserving but, for the most part, not poor, made up fully 20 percent of the cost of running the federal government in 1991; national defense was 24 percent of costs. Benefits programs that might be considered "welfare" for non-poor Americans - programs such as subsidies for beekeepers and other busines tax breaks - are at least five times a greater proportion of the federal government than "welfare" programs for the poor.

Myth: Black Inner-City Residents have Accounted for the Rise in the Welfare Rolls In fact, the percentage of black families on welfare as a percentage of the whole has dropped in the past two decades. In 1973, 46 percent of welfare recipients were black, 38 percent white, and 13 percent Hispanic. By 1992, blacks constituted 39 percent of welfare rolls.

Myth: Reforming Welfare is as Easy as Simply Cutting Off Benefits Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions. The proposal to put a two year cap on welfare won't necessarily reduce the rolls dramatically. Most women receive welfare for less than two years, but low wages and sporadic employment means they will go on and off assistance for years. Including repeated stays on welfare, one-third of women receive assistance for eight years or more.

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