Welfare Rolls Hit Record; Numbers Called Incredible

In a little-noticed sign of hard times, the number of children and families on welfare has soared to record levels nationally, revealing widespread pain at the bottom of the economic ladder and adding to budget woes from Sacramento to Albany.

More than 12.5 million Americans--mainly children and their mothers--are now getting cash benefits from the federal-state welfare program known as Aid to Families With Dependent Children. That is the largest number ever, surpassing a previous peak in 1981.

The surging demand for relief has startled officials in California and other states. In Los Angeles County, for example, welfare rolls are now expanding at the fastest rate in nearly 20 years.

“The numbers are incredible,” said Cesar A. Perales, chairman of the American Public Welfare Assn.’s council of state administrators and New York’s social services commissioner. Often, he added, “We’re talking about people who never expected to be on welfare.”

Since last October, more than 253,000 families, including 611,000 children, have entered the nation’s welfare rolls. The number of beneficiaries has expanded for 20 straight months, according to the latest data, which extends through March.

By all accounts, the economic slump is a major culprit: As workers lose their jobs, the line for public assistance gets longer. A 1990 study in Upstate New York found that rising unemployment was followed five months later by increased welfare requests.

Still, the extent of the welfare explosion puzzles many policy analysts, even in a recession. Changes in social behavior, population makeup and government policy also seem to have fueled the rise, albeit indirectly.

These forces include rising birthrates and burgeoning immigrant populations in California and some other states, and new “outreach” efforts that are drawing more recipients into the welfare system. Some also wonder if far-reaching shifts in the U.S. economy that have eroded job security for many workers will prop up the welfare load years after the current downturn has ended.

“It’s caught us by surprise,” said David L. Boomer, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington. “The increase has been quicker than expected and lasted over a longer period. We’re concerned about it and trying to determine its causes.”

The new recipients include people like Linda Wise, a 28-year-old single mother who last week walked into a Los Angeles County office in Pomona to apply for assistance as “a last resort.” Wise had been working as a bookkeeper in a mannequin factory, she said, but was laid off along with dozens of co-workers earlier this year.

Since then, she has sent resumes to other manufacturers in Southern California, but has yet to land a job in the tough market. She recently took in a roommate to split the $637 rent, but her savings will soon evaporate.

The link between layoffs and rising welfare applications may be stronger today than in past slumps because the safety net of unemployment insurance has more holes in it than it used to, experts say.

In the 1980s, states cut back on special long-term aid that could extend insurance beyond the routine 26 weeks. Also, a growing percentage of the work force now lives in the South and West, where eligibility for benefits often is more limited than in other regions.

On top of that, today’s jobless differ from their 1950s counterparts in ways that reduce their chances of qualifying for benefits. The unemployed of 1991 are more likely to be young or new entrants to the labor market, for example.

All told, the number of unemployed collecting benefits today--roughly four in 10--is 20% lower than would have been the case in the 1970s, according to a recent analysis by the Brookings Institution.

“We’ve never seen so many people applying for AFDC who had recent work histories,” observed New York’s Perales.

The state of the economy is not the sole reason behind the boom in welfare claims, however. Less obvious factors also appear to play a role, although experts are uncertain how important they are.

Since the late 1980s, many states have approved broader eligibility requirements for Medicaid, which provides health care benefits for the poor (Medi-Cal in California). Added to that, some states have made stronger efforts to identify which patients are eligible.

The result seems to be that people have been pulled into the welfare system who did not know they qualified.

“To some extent, we penetrated the market more thoroughly,” said William G. Hudgens, a bureau chief with the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services in Tallahassee. AFDC rolls have lately grown at a “phenomenal” 23% annual rate in Florida, he said.

In California, demand for welfare has followed a somewhat different pattern from much of the country. The increase started earlier than elsewhere and partly owes to some unusual characteristics of the state.

Welfare cases in the Golden State grew three times faster than the national average in the 1980s, despite strong economic growth, according to a report by the state Legislative Analyst’s Office. The contrast is striking: In half of the nation’s 10 largest states, the number of welfare cases actually declined in the 1980s; only Texas--whose economy was crippled by plunging oil prices--experienced a bigger welfare expansion than California, the study found.

Today, about 729,000 California households--representing more than 2.1 million residents, mostly children--receive monthly checks from AFDC. In Los Angeles County, the case total is expected to grow by 12% in the year ending June 30; statewide growth is pegged in the 9% range.

“If people lose jobs, then they need assistance,” explained Paul Fast, research director for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services.

But to understand why California’s welfare rolls swelled so much in the 1980s it is necessary to look earlier than the 1990-91 economic slump. During the past decade, welfare cases in California increased at twice the rate of population growth.

The state’s ethnic makeup may hold a clue, at least to part of the recent welfare demand. In Los Angeles, officials have noted a huge increase in applications since amnesty was granted to undocumented immigrants after the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.

Moreover, certain newcomers, such as many of the political refugees from Southeast Asia, continue to struggle economically, according to state officials. “Half of all refugees that are living in the United States are living in California,” said Richard Mekata, chief of the estimates branch at the California Department of Social Services in Sacramento.

California also departs from the average in the prolific birthrate of its residents, a trend that extends to teen-age mothers and births out-of-wedlock.

Nationally, the rate of teen-age births dropped during much of the 1980s, before rising a bit in 1988, Census Bureau statistics show. But in California--along with Texas, Florida and some other large states--the rate of births by teen-agers shot up after the mid-1980s, according to the state social services department.

Out-of-wedlock births provide a similar tale: Nationally, the number of births to unmarried women rose 50% between 1980 and 1988, the Census Bureau has found; in California, the number jumped by 83%, the Legislative Analyst’s Office reported.

Such statistics give pause to those concerned with the escalating cost of welfare, because children born out of wedlock and to teen-age mothers have higher-than-average chances of ending up in poverty: “For whatever reason, we have this high teen birthrate,” Mekata said. “It’s not good news for the AFDC program.”

Often, it is a combination of social ills that pressures new recipients onto welfare. For Sylvia Hitt, an apartment manager in Canoga Park, the birth of a grandson into troubled circumstances proved the catalyst.

As she tells the story, the boy’s mother chose not to rear him, and the boy’s father--Hitt’s son--suffered from personal problems, including drug abuse, that made him unfit for the task. “He didn’t have his own stuff together,” she said of her son whose whereabouts are somewhere in “Northern California.”

So the boy ended up on his grandmother’s doorstep. Hitt, 53, survives on her $560 monthly AFDC check, with a boost from the low rent she pays in return for managing the small apartment complex.

“Believe me, there are a lot of people collecting welfare who don’t deserve to,” said Hitt, who has worked as a nurse and in aerospace production jobs but is slowed these days by a chronic back injury. At the same time, she believes such public aid can be invaluable: “I also know how hard it is when everything let’s go.”

For all the problems caused by the current recession, some policy-makers worry that fundamental shifts in the economy will keep welfare rates high even after the recovery begins. These changes include the rise of part-time and temporary work--making it hard for many Americans to find secure, full-time employment--and the paltry opportunities for those who lack skill.

Meanwhile, officials in various states have been squeezed by rising costs for welfare and other social programs at a time when tax revenues have been disappointingly low. California, Michigan, Maine and Washington, D.C., for instance, all have considered welfare cuts this year.

Maryland and many other states have refrained from offering cost-of-living increases. In New York, where a new state budget is pending, welfare would not be cut back, according to the Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law.

“It’s been a worse-than-usual year” for welfare, “and California is probably the leader,” said Henry A. Freedman, director of the New York-based center.

In his deficit-reduction plan, Gov. Pete Wilson has proposed an 8.8% cut in grant payments to those AFDC recipients who have no outside income. For a typical family of beneficiaries--a single-parent with two children--the monthly check might be reduced from $694 to $633 under the plan.

Although offset in part by an increase in food stamp benefits, Wilson’s proposal represents the largest reduction in aid to needy Americans in almost 10 years, according to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research group in Washington.

For all the controversy, the governor’s welfare proposal has been defended on the grounds that solving the state’s $14.3-billion deficit requires sacrifice all around.