‘Does Welfare Create Poverty?’

Kilpatrick should be pleased to learn that real welfare payments (in constant dollars) have been falling since the late ‘70s. Thus, there should have been a decline in the poverty rate, but the opposite has been observed.

This less-than-pleasing result should serve as a caution to all those interested in reducing poverty. If the wrong figures are used, one can “prove” that business cycles cause sunspots, or that welfare causes poverty.

Kilpatrick is right to be suspicious of statistics, given how poor his analysis of them seems to be. His credulous reporting of the differences in poverty between the 10 highest- and 10 lowest-benefit states is hard to take at face value. Doesn’t he know that the low-benefit states have “solved” poverty by encouraging migration to the high-benefit states? The “. . . magic road to eliminating poverty” leads to the state line, not to a national solution of the problem.

Why the sudden interest among conservatives in reducing poverty? It is obvious that, at least in the short term, welfare eases the burden of the poor by providing them with needed cash. It is much less obvious, and it remains statistically unsupported, that welfare hurts the poor in the long run.

The New Right is asking us to trade off the certain humanitarian benefits of welfare for the uncertain promises of a trickle-down world. Is their increased concern correlated with an improvement in their moral condition, or a continuing love affair with their own pocketbooks?

JOHN B. GILBERT

Northridge