Why welfare was created

Part of the increase has been the result of the robust economy and the longest and strongest peacetime expansion in the last 50 years. Until the recent economic slowdown, employers, desperate for workers, dipped deep into the pool of single mothers and other disadvantaged individuals. Nevertheless, despite these other factors, there is no question that welfare reform has played a significant role in increasing employment among single mothers.

Even research studies that have attempted to parcel out the relative contributions of different forces on employment rates support this conclusion. Robert A. Moffitt Johns Hopkins University. These overall trends beg for more details on how individual families have fared in the wake of welfare reform. The largest body of evidence comes from data on women who were on welfare but have left, primarily those who left the Aid to Families with Dependent Children AFDC program before or those who left its successor, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families TANF program, after Most states have conducted such studies.

A recent review of these studies conducted by the U. Department of Health and Human Services indicates that the employment rate among welfare leavers is approximately 60 percent just after exiting welfare.

Moreover, about three-quarters of welfare leavers worked at some point in the first year after leaving the rolls. When welfare leavers work, they generally work full-time. However, the annual wage is an overestimate because most leavers do not work for four quarters in a row, only a little over one-third do, signaling a potential problem with employment retention and stability.

These employment rates are considerably higher than critics of the reforms feared; some predicted that families would be made destitute and homeless following the reforms, or that there would not be enough jobs for women leaving welfare.

At least on average, this has not occurred. The fact that 60 to 75 percent of welfare leavers found employment is especially remarkable given that, over the decade prior to reform, the employment rate of mothers while they were on AFDC was never more than 9 percent. Equally notable in this light is the fact that almost 30 percent of women currently on the rolls are now employed. The 60 percent employment rate of welfare leavers is not much different than that of women who left the AFDC program prior to welfare reform.

Employment rates over the period to ranged from 48 percent to 65 percent, varying by the state of the economy and the area of the country. These rates are similar to the rates following reform. This is surprising because many more women have left the welfare rolls in this era of reform than in any prior period, and many of those who left recently are more disadvantaged than women who left the rolls in prior periods.

The fact that employment rates of leavers have not been lower than those experienced by past leavers further supports the strong effect of welfare reform. In addition, random assignment evaluations of pre reform programs which had time limits and work requirements and were reasonably close in character to the post programs put in place by the states also show positive effects on employment and earnings.

The employment and earnings gains in these demonstration programs are the average gains for both women who have left welfare as well as women who stayed on the rolls, and they therefore represent a more comprehensive measure than studies of leavers alone. Two of the most important reforms in the legislation were the imposition of federal time limits on the length of welfare receipt, and the use of more stringent sanctions for not complying with work requirements and other rules.

A natural question is how women who hit a time limit or were sanctioned have fared relative to women who left welfare voluntarily or because of different inducements. Time limits have had relatively little effect so far because most states have retained the five-year federal maximum and, as a result large numbers of recipients did not begin to hit time limits until the late fall of Some states do have shorter time limits than five years, but they have exempted large numbers of families from those limits and have granted large numbers of extensions.

These exemptions and extensions have typically been granted to the most disadvantaged families, so that it is primarily those with significant employment and earnings while on TANF who hit the time limit in these few states. As a consequence, in the one or two states where significant numbers of families have left welfare because they hit a time limit, post-welfare employment rates of those leavers are quite high e.

But in other states where fewer families have hit the limit, employment rates of time-limited leavers are no different than those of other leavers. More is known about sanctions because they have been in force for most of the time since and in some cases even before then.

Many more women have been sanctioned than have been hit by time limits. The ability of one group to help another hinged on the variable fortunes of the social groups e. If everyone was equally hard hit. Which households would have been best off? Charity Churches and major religions have been in the charity business for centuries.

One of the five pillars of the Islamic faith is to give alms to the poor and thus begging is generally a socially acceptable behavior in many countries with large Muslim populations. Catholic and Protestant churches have engaged in charitable activities over the centuries. There were distinctions important to who received what kind of aid. Idleness had both economic and biblical implications at the time.

The poor laws were supported by taxes levied. Speenhamland law mid 19th century England expanded the poor law. As England industrialized, there was demand for factory labor in the cities. Most people were peasants, working the land, but owning little of their own production.

Enclosure involved basically privatizing parts of the countryside that had been farmed by communities. People could apply for title to land, survey it, fence it, and produce whatever the market demanded wool was a hot commodity as British were pirating textile technology from their colony, India, and learning how to automate the process of producing fabrics. Enter the Poor laws , which were designed to force people to work at whatever wages they could get—only those with no work were granted relief e.

The Speenhamland Law said a man could get assistance only where his wages were less than the income he would get from a sliding scale of relief. If employers kept wages low, in other words, there was little incentive for workers to produce.

They could gain the difference between their low wage and the going relief rate, no matter how hard they worked. Sociologist Karl Polanyi says in fact that productivity declined during this era. Employers had no incentive to increase wages, either, because Speenhamland would take care of people who were underpaid it became burdensome to finance, though.

This was the age of the pauper. State systems of public relief were simply unprepared to cope with the volume of requests for help from individuals and families without work or income. On top of that, the economic depression reduced state and local revenues. Conditions were so grave it became necessary for the federal government to step in and help with the costs of public relief.

On signing this legislation, President Herbert Hoover said:. Immediately after assuming office in , President Franklin D. The language of the enabling legislation included these sections:. FERA was only a temporary measure. President Roosevelt sent a message to Congress on June 8, in which he outlined what he believed was necessary. She selected as key staff Arthur J. Witte, a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin.

A final page committee report was filed on January 15, and sent to the Congress for hearings two days later, accompanied by draft legislative language.

Following seven months of Congressional hearings and negotiations, on August 14, President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. The framers of the Act also recognized that certain groups of people had needs for particular services which cash assistance alone could not or should not provide. To meet these needs small formula grants for the states were authorized in relation to: Maternal and Child Health, Crippled Children, Child Welfare, and medical assistance for the aged.

A fourth program of public assistance — Aid to the Disabled — was added in As spending grew, so did the welfare rolls. During the s advocates of welfare reform promoted the theory of "workfare. By the s workfare had emerged as the future of welfare reform.

During his first term, he helped secure deep cuts in AFDC spending, including the reduction of benefits to working recipients of public assistance. In addition, the states were given the option of requiring the majority of recipients to participate in workfare programs.

During the s the welfare system was subjected to many critical attacks, most notably in sociologist Charles Murray's book Losing Ground: American Social Policy, — Murray argued that welfare hurt the poor by making them less well off and discouraging them from working. The system effectively trapped single-parent families in a cycle of welfare dependency, creating more, rather than less, poverty. Murray proposed abolishing federal welfare and replacing it with short-term local programs.

Though many criticized Murray's data and conclusions, most agreed that welfare produced disincentives to work. During the s 40 states set up socalled welfare-to-work programs that provided education and training.