Ten Years Later

Ten years ago, when President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act - otherwise known as welfare reform - liberals predicted disaster.

Katha Pollitt wrote in The New Republic, "wages will go down, families will fracture, millions of children will be made more miserable than ever." One frequently cited study predicted that more than a million children would be thrown into poverty. Welfare advocates painted vivid pictures of families sleeping on sidewalks, widespread starvation, and worse. The New York Times opined, "the effect on our cities will be devastating." Senator Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat of New Jersey, predicted "hungry and homeless children" would be walking our streets "begging for money, begging for food, even...engaging in prostitution." The Nation prophesied that "people will die, businesses will close, infant mortality will soar." You would have expected to step over bodies in the streets.

Not quite.

In fact, while the bill did not create poverty nirvana in our nation, surely it contributed to much improvement.

Welfare rolls are down. As Health and Human Services statistics show, roughly 2.5 million families have left the program, a 57 percent decline. Some of this undoubtedly resulted from the growing economy, especially in the late 1990s, but today, welfare rolls remain down despite the post-9/11 economic slowdown.

At the same time, poverty rates remain well below those before welfare reform was enacted. According to the Census Bureau, child poverty rates declined from more than 20 percent in 1996 to 17.8 percent today Roughly 1.6 million children were lifted out of poverty. Perhaps even more impressively, since 1996, the poverty rate among black children has fallen at the fastest rate since figures have been recorded. Dependent single mothers, the group most heavily impacted by welfare reform, account heavily for this decline. Since the enactment of welfare reform, the poverty rate for female-headed families with children has fallen from 46 to 28.4 percent -- a decline greater than that of any other demographic group.

Perhaps the finest statement of success about reform is that those who were mired in the welfare state see their lives improved and have a more positive view of the future.

Surveys of former welfare recipients indicate that they themselves believe their quality of life has improved since leaving welfare, and they are optimistic about their futures. The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation reveals that a majority of former welfare recipients believe that their lives will be better in one to five years. Many of these recipients actually praise welfare reform for encouraging them to look for work, for giving them a fresh start, and for giving them a chance to make things better for themselves and their children. Both single mothers and their children appear to benefit psychologically from the dignity of working.

As Michael Tanner, author of this article states, perhaps application of reform to programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (not to mention corporate welfare, agricultural welfare, etc.) would be a plus and not disaster.  We can only hope, however, that the American people will appreciate the successes of this reform.  Those who dwell on the fact that nothing we can ever do will achieve perfection prevent the majority from achieving improvement.

Comments

[chip navarro]

wake up.........welfare rolls are down because time limits have been imposed.. times up,, you arre off for good.. duh!

[Greg]

I will have to admit that Chip is partially correct. Yes time limits have removed many people from the welfare rolls, but at the same time I must admit the Welfare Reform Law also had a hand in lower the number of people on welfare. Below are some good links into a deeper look into the whole issue of the effect and aftermath of this Law.

Ten Years of Welfare Reform: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5664509

Has Welfare Reform Been a Success?:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5689098

Legislator Offers First-Person View of Welfare: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5689095

Plus an interesting article can be found here Where the Welfare Law Failed Fathers
:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5671231