The Myth of Welfare Dependency : Job Opportunities, Not Benefit Cuts, Affect Single Mothers
The growing tragedy of single-parent black families is finally beginning to receive the national attention that it deserves. A majority of black infants today are born to unmarried women, dramatically more than was the case in the 1950s and ‘60s. Mother and child often are poor and heavily dependent on welfare. When we see the faces and hear the words of the mothers and fathers and children, as in Bill Moyers’ powerful special report last month, we feel an urgent need for answers.
The answers seem so obvious to many: The social-welfare system, particularly the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, encourages unmarried women to give birth, because with AFDC they know that they can support their children without depending on men. Welfare also provides women with a route to independence through motherhood; some of the women themselves acknowledge that they had a child in part because AFDC allowed them to escape their parents’ homes.
Considering the wide acceptance of this logic, it is hard to believe that there is no careful, systematic research that has demonstrated any link between welfare and child-bearing by unmarried women. AFDC benefits vary enormously across the states. A family of two in some Southern states collects only about $250 in AFDC and food stamps; the same family would get more than $500 in some Northern states. Yet birthrates for unmarried women are often higher in the South. And, contrary to popular belief, benefit levels (adjusted for inflation) have been falling for more than a decade. The combined value of AFDC and food stamps has fallen more than 25% since the early 1970s. During the ‘70s and ‘80s, when the number of black children in single-parent families was rising so dramatically, the number of black children on AFDC actually fell as fewer qualified.
None of this evidence proves conclusively that welfare is not to blame for unmarried motherhood, but it certainly suggests that we ought to consider other explanations. There is little recent research to draw on--much more is needed--and no one has offered anything more than theories about what is happening. But let me offer one hypothesis that owes a great debt to the work of sociologist William Julius Wilson, among others.
In the 1960s the civil-rights movement offered hope--hope that blacks would be able to escape poverty and improve their economic position. For many the dream was realized. Particularly among the professionals, new opportunities appeared and these people were able to escape their lives at the margins of the ghetto and move to better occupations and better neighborhoods. But the situation of the group left behind in the cities actually became worse. The stable working families that had served as role models and provided the glue for some of the traditional institutions were gone.
And the job situation worsened. In part the problem reflected increased entry-level competition from women and in-school white youths. In part it reflected the weak economic conditions brought on by the early-’70s oil crisis and other problems. In part it reflected inadequate skills among young blacks. In any case, jobs that were never plentiful became harder and harder to find. At the same time, drug use was spreading among all young people. The sexual revolution legitimized a freer sexual life style. And TV brought home the message with increasing clarity: Those in the ghetto were outside the mainstream.
Now consider the situation for a black woman living in the ghetto in the 1970s and ‘80s. Only about one-third of all black men under 21 who are out of school have any job at all. These men are not very attractive marriage partners. The woman’s own opportunities for work also seem quite limited. So, with little control over her future and little sense of any alternative, the woman is drawn to the one thing that can give her a role, an identity: motherhood. She is not consciously rejecting a middle-class existence in favor a life of dependence. It’s not that she doesn’t desire to be part of the mainstream. She just doesn’t see any way to join it.
Welfare does offer some financial support for these women, yet the research seems to show that single women have babies just as often whether benefits are low or relatively comfortable. The danger is that this cycle feeds on itself, and skills, ambitions and opportunities for the next generation are even more limited.
None of this discussion ought to be taken as condoning or legitimizing the current situation. It is rather a plea to avoid simplistic stereotypes of the poor. And it is a warning that there is no serious basis for a call to cut welfare on the ground that this will help the poor in the long run. We have already experimented with cutting benefits--we have let their value erode with inflation rather dramatically. There is no evidence that these cuts had any serious effect on black family structures. Meanwhile, poverty rates among single parents in the nation’s cities rose sharply.
Welfare probably has not been as large a part of the problem as many conservatives suggest. But neither has it been any part of an answer. We must recognize the problem for the tragedy that it is. We need to understand more about how to help people into the mainstream. We need to offer better opportunities for work and advancement, and then we need to encourage--and if necessary, require--work. We need to find ways to hold fathers more responsible for the children they beget. And the black community ought to take the lead in declaring the current situation unacceptable. What we need is answers and alternatives. What we don’t need is welfare bashing.
