A decade and a half into the end of "welfare as we know it," it turns out that Clinton-era welfare reforms have barely dented the foundations of poverty in America.
A new report from the Pew Economic Mobility Project takes aim at the Clinton-era myth that so-called welfare-to-work reforms would fundamentally change the lives of America's poor. Though not as critical of the reforms as some grassroots anti-poverty activists have been, the study shows that while social services have been effective in some respects, they have not pushed needy households toward long-term self-sufficiency.
From the beginning, the goal of transforming welfare recipients into economically independent, working parents was a politically loaded agenda, fueled by conservative stereotypes of black "welfare queens." In the real world, single-parent families often stayed in poverty despite being pressed into the workforce, because their earnings were undercut by decreases in benefits.
Pew researchers note that household incomes tend to rise when mothers can retain their benefits while working. But states often concentrate instead on shoving people into low-wage jobs prematurely to reach states' goals for reducing welfare caseloads.
According to recent research, children, the most blameless of the chronically poor, are still being punished by the mantra of "personal responsibility." Young children obviously benefit if their parents are working and earning more, but government work mandates may erode family cohesion later on:
When parents are exposed to welfare policies that both increase employment and household income, young children appear to see small benefits in terms of test scores, health, and behavior. However, adolescents may not fare as well; in particular, increased employment may reduce parental monitoring of teens, leading to poorer academic outcomes and increased problem behavior.
Think about that: policies that purport to support struggling families threaten to undermine them by distancing parents from youth. Such policies could also aggravate the problems pervading high-poverty communities, where youth have few if any positive outlets for recreation or peer support, where schools are broken, and just playing outside could be a safety risk.
As for their parents, some research suggests that more mothers have resorted to arduous "nonstandard" work with irregular hours, like waitressing or home health care services. Black and Latino mothers are especially likely to wind up working these precarious jobs.
On the positive side, research suggests welfare reform policies have increased children's access to professional, center-based child care services, thanks largely to child care subsidies that enable parents to work outside home. Yet paltry subsidies alone have failed to connect eligible parents into professional quality care, due to "mothers' preferences and lack of availability of such care." The long-term influence of subsidized childcare on child development is one of many areas that demand more research as lawmakers plod on with efforts to "fix" poverty.
Overall, Pew found "little evidence that welfare reform policies have affected parents' mental health, parental stress, or the ways in which they interact with their children." This may show that the reforms have done no harm, but perhaps more significantly, it attests to the resilience of mothers striving to hold their families together despite the bureaucracy that controls so much of their lives.
The most disturbing revelation in the data is that many needy families are receiving no help at all. Pew points out that an alarming portion of low-income single mothers may be considered "disconnected," with no access to welfare benefits and no job. According to an Urban Institute policy brief:
Over time, the TANF program has served a decreasing share of eligible families. In 1995, AFDC served 84 percent of all eligible families; in 2005, TANF served only 40 percent of all eligible families.... As a result, TANF has become less effective over time at reducing deep poverty, defined as having family income below 50 percent of the poverty level.
Now TANF is up for reauthorization in a new era of insecurity. The economic crisis has brought poverty out of the domain of a politically marginalized minority and into the everyday hardships of families besieged by unemployment, debt and budget cuts.
If, more than a decade on, welfare reform's main impact has been to make the system less effective at alleviating poverty, Washington politicians have a lot of lost ground to make up for.