‘Does Welfare Create Poverty?’

Kilpatrick’s review of the Ohio University statistics on poverty is specious and self-serving.

The poverty rate climbs in direct proportion to the costs of goods and services, not in comparison to the poverty rates of other years. The 10 biggest welfare spenders among states are those where it costs most to live, and those whose rates declined are states where one could still buy a three-bedroom home for under $40,000.

Any welfare mother (as most people supported by welfare are single mothers) would be the first to admit that welfare imprisons the recipient as much as it aids. Yet can you imagine the young mother of, say, two children under school age, finding a job that would support child-care costs of upwards of $200 a month?

Can she find a job that is conveniently located on Los Angeles’ inadequate bus lines, or one that will pay for and maintain even the most basic automobile? Can she find education or training at her local junior college where there is no longer any recourse for the poorest students (aid grants take months to arrive, while fees must be paid and books purchased)?

We are quick to condemn those distant people in the murky underclass, with implications of laziness and indifference. Kilpatrick implies that they would decline a job if offered. I say that surviving on government aid is a full-time job in itself, with the lines, waits and paper work, and one that offers little in the way of real help to the impoverished.

Until we offer minimal cost, quality day--and night--care for the children of working mothers, transportation subsidies for low-income workers, free medical attention for the needy, and decent living accommodations for those without resources, we will never know what the poor can and will do for themselves.

ANDREA BRANNING

San Pedro