Welfare Families Moving Inland to Stretch Benefits : Public assistance: Aid dollars buy more in non-urban areas. But the presence of new poor recipients, some of them immigrants, poses problems for financially strapped counties.

Although the unemployment rate is at a relatively low 5% and Gov. George Deukmejian is fond of declaring that California “is now an economic powerhouse,” the state’s primary welfare program is growing twice as fast as its overall population.

The governor predicts that the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program will grow by 5.4% next year, in what has become a trend in recent years.

Moreover, the biggest increases in welfare caseloads are occurring not in urban Los Angeles or even in most other major population centers, but in some of the state’s inland rural areas, which can least afford the costs.

As a cost-cutting device, Deukmejian is again proposing a one-year suspension of annual automatic cost-of-living increases for AFDC recipients. He notes that among the most populous states, California already provides the highest grants.

But the Democratic-controlled Legislature has refused to withhold the increases and is expected to do so again.

A typical AFDC family of four in the state receives a basic monthly cash grant of $824, excluding food stamps, medical or other benefits. The federal government provides 47.5% of the grant, the state 47.5% and counties 5%.

No one claims to know for certain all the reasons for the expected increase in AFDC recipients, including Elizabeth G. Hill, the Legislature’s nonpartisan budget expert whose task it is to make recommendations on major fiscal issues.

“Neither the Department of Social Services, the Department of Finance nor us has been able to figure out at this point why the rate of increase in AFDC is so extensive,” Hill said last month.

But up and down California, welfare experts surveyed by The Times agreed that their burdens are growing. Despite rosy economic times, as one local official in a financially strapped county put it, the benefits have not “trickled down to us.”

Some of the current causes of public aid dependency include the increasing breakup of families that leave single mothers and children to fend alone, more teen-age pregnancy, more drug addictions and--most frustrating of all--more young people who quit school, can’t get a job and turn to welfare for support.

Poor immigrants to California, not only those from Mexico and Central America but, steadily since 1975, refugees from Southeast Asia, also draw welfare benefits. Although it is known to be substantial, the amount of assistance money received by immigrants compared to other recipients cannot be measured precisely.

Poverty analysts, however, see a developing pattern of poor families increasingly fleeing from high-cost urban centers to less expensive housing in the country. This is true both of non-immigrant and immigrant families.

One especially noticeable bulge is a second wave of Southeast Asian refugees moving to California from other states and what some analysts see as an emerging trend of refugees who are already here also resettling in the rural interior. Although the secondary migration of these refugees from other states was felt heaviest in 1979-83, state Department of Finance demographers say the flow has continued but at a slightly reduced pace.

Many are drawn to the heavily agricultural Central Valley counties of Merced, Fresno and San Joaquin where frequently they join the AFDC rolls to help support their families.

In Fresno County, for example, during the last eight years the average growth rate of recipients in the AFDC program has been nearly four times the rate of increase in the state’s population.

“In Fresno County, AFDC has gone completely out of sight,” said Ernest Velasquez, the county’s social welfare director, who said that his area long has been a beacon for immigrants fleeing Southeast Asia.

He said the caseload of Southeast Asian refugee families alone has soared from 2,024 eight years ago to more than 5,000, many of them Hmongs. Refugee families have increased 148% and account for almost 16% of the AFDC caseload, county figures show.

“Fresno is one of the last places in the state of California where housing is affordable,” Velasquez said. “They feel they can make their grant stretch farther than they can in Los Angeles or San Francisco.”

In nearby financially strapped Merced County, Southeast Asians total about 12,000, about 8,000 of them AFDC recipients, welfare officials said. This is about 30% of the county caseload.

“They do not have the survival skills that are needed to compete in a society where it took us 12 years through the schools system to learn these things,” said welfare director John Cullen. “We are bringing a society into our society and you can’t expect that to happen in a matter of months.”

The Hmong, industrious farmers from the Laotian highlands who were recruited as fighters by the CIA during the Vietnam War, are tightly knit by family and village elder ties.

Although thousands of these villagers--with limited experience in the modern world--were scattered far and wide when they first reached the United States, by moving twice and sometimes three times, they have been regrouping in California.

A new study by Department of Finance demographers shows that as of October, 1988, 443,000 Southeast Asian refugees lived in California, a 9% increase over the previous year. Southeast Asians moving here from other states accounted for more than half of the increase.

The study found that 25% of these refugees lived in Los Angeles County. Another 62% lived in Fresno, San Joaquin, Sacramento, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Orange and San Diego counties.

In the northern Sacramento Valley, officials report exploding increases in welfare families on the move. For instance, in almost-bankrupt Butte County, the AFDC rate shot up 12.3% last year. The increase is expected to slow to 7.9% this year.

“It was like telling (people eligible for welfare) it is the land of milk and honey and they all showed up,” said welfare director Margaret Mitzel of Butte County. “They tend to be able to survive on a welfare grant here a lot easier than in other places.”

In tiny Glenn County, another agriculture-based county with a population of about 25,000, about 800 families receive AFDC, an increase of about 130 cases over the last few years, said welfare director Susan Harris.

Two years ago in Glenn County, she said, there were no Southeast Asians receiving AFDC. So, when a group of 72 Hmongs showed up recently and applied for welfare, “They had a very big impact.”

“I asked one man why he came here,” Harris said, recalling that the man had indicated he was moving from the San Joaquin Valley. “He said he was driving up the road and liked it here. We have affordable housing.”

In contrast, in such urban population centers as Los Angeles and booming Santa Clara counties, AFDC caseloads have remained almost stable for the last couple of years, sometimes falling behind the pace of the statewide growth in population.

In Los Angeles County, the AFDC rate fell in 1987 and again in 1988 but then rose to only 2.9% last year. There are many explanations, but some welfare analysts believe that Los Angeles may be the beneficiary of the movement out of high-cost areas.

However, Eddie Tanaka, Los Angeles County director of public social services, notes that needy Southeast Asian and Mexican immigrants turned to public aid in Los Angeles County years ago, long before other counties were affected.

“I think it’s really just that everyone else got started later than Los Angeles did,” Tanaka said. “The big influxes hit us some time ago.”

In Santa Clara County, the migratory pattern is clearer, said Roger Cackler, county director of income maintenance. “Many of the (AFDC) families that otherwise might be here have left for the rural areas where the cost of housing may be less,” he said.

The AFDC rate for Santa Clara County, home of the Silicon Valley high-tech industry where housing is among the most costly in California, has remained about 1.4%, Cackler said.

He noted that even middle-class electronics employees seeking affordable housing have joined the rush inland to such San Joaquin Valley communities as Tracy, Modesto and Turlock. Some commute about 200 miles a day to and from Silicon Valley.

But welfare officials in thriving Orange County said that despite high-cost housing they had not detected a pattern of AFDC families leaving to find less expensive shelter.

In fact, Orange County’s overall welfare caseload has grown from 5% to 7% over the last four years. County welfare administrators attribute the increase chiefly to an aggressive “outreach” effort to find eligible recipients, application by larger families, the addition of more single women with children and the steady increase of Latino and Southeast Asian applicants.

At a welfare office in Orange County, To Hocquyen Tang, 44, originally from Vietnam but now newly arrived from Ohio, recently stood with other refugees and applied for local general relief that would provide him with about $300 a month. He said he hopes to find work in a restaurant or grocery store.

Tang said he found the Ohio climate too cold, other Asians too few and expressed hope that members of his family soon will move to California and “make a success.”

Although individual counties are able to report fluctuations in the welfare rolls, the state lacks detailed records on welfare families who are on the move.

“We don’t have systems that are designed to fully understand what is happening in welfare,” said Michael Genest, who analyzes welfare issues for the Legislature. “It is remarkable that in this computer age we don’t know more.”

However, a report prepared for the state Senate Appropriations Committee and a committee that monitors implementation of Greater Avenues for Independence--or GAIN, the state workfare program--tends to support the theories of local welfare officials on why AFDC families pick up and move.

Welfare recipients move for the same reasons as others--”for jobs, more affordable housing and a better life in a new area,” the report speculated, emphasizing that its investigation found “no direct clues.”

Many AFDC recipients appear to have seasonal jobs and go on welfare when the work ends, the report said.

Also, the report suggested, some people who do not support themselves naturally remain on the move. “Migration behavior of (some) welfare recipients reflects a general lack of stability throughout their lives,” the report said.

Times staff writer Carla Rivera contributed to this article.

GROWTH OF WELFARE ROLLS

PERSONS AIDED STATE POP. (MONTHLY (NEAREST YEAR AVERAGE) % CHANGE THOUSAND) % CHANGE 82-83 1,589,828 -- 24,786,000 -- 83-84 1,634,924 2.8 25,309,000 2.1 84-85 1,619,268 -0.9 25,780,000 1.8 85-86 1,683,675 3.9 26,358,000 2.1 86-87 1,729,599 2.7 26,999.000 2.4 87-88 1,755,993 1.5 27,655,000 2.4 88-89 1,797,803 2.3 28,323,000 2.4 89-90* 1,872,700 4.1 29,063,000 2.6 90-91* 1,974,400 5.4 29,600,000 2.6

* 1989-90, 1990-91 figures are projections

SOURCE: State Department of Finance