Low-Paying Jobs Factor in Welfare Fraud : For aid recipients with children, accepting minimum wage is a step backward.

Last month a welfare fraud study was released that found fraud by 62% of the parents investigated in the child-only welfare caseload in Orange County (cases in which children receive aid, but their parent or parents do not). The major cause of the high fraud rate was income being concealed.

What a trap our nation’s welfare system is, and yet for many, mostly mothers and their kids, it is the best homeless prevention program we have because when you are unskilled and lack self-confidence, the work you can find, when you can find it, does not pay enough to support yourself and your kids. We can say, “Well then, you shouldn’t have kids,” but we have to get real--more and more people are having kids, purposely, without any idea of how they will support them. Add to this the families that are never formed (25% of all births in our country are to single women) and the fact many women with kids never dreamed they would be divorced or abandoned by their husbands, and we have reality--a growing population of mothers who lack the skills and marketability to support themselves and their kids.

So, what can be done about it? First, values are not really something government can do much about. The best thing we can do is make the magnitude and consequences of what is happening known--a continuous wake-up call, with the hope it will stimulate many to do more than just shake their heads in amazement or disgust. Yet, I wonder what can be done.

Welfare reform has been a very popular social and political issue for 20 years or more, and many efforts to implement change have been made. Many of my colleagues and I refer to most of these efforts as tinkering, rather than major reform. Hopefully, the President’s welfare reform will somehow make work pay for everyone, even the mom looking at the minimum-wage job.

Although some client advocates try to excuse welfare cheating as “What else can they do?” fraud is fraud and must be dealt with. We can decry the decisions they made that got them into their situations, but the multitude of our nation’s welfare programs, in seeking to provide basic subsistence to kids and parents, has produced a situation in which low-paying work is a step backward.

The welfare “system” is a non-system and a mess. But, when work at legal wages does not pay enough to enable a working parent to pay rent and put food on the table, welfare in some form will continue to exist. Hopefully, we can continue to fight against cheating, but with the downward spiral of our societal code of ethics that we all see in our daily lives (and on T.V. every evening), we know that fight will be never-ending.

In the meantime, we should try to remember that some clients are indeed honest and in dire need of welfare, and that assistance is the lifesaver for them it is supposed to be. It’s probably the best homeless-prevention program that exists. It’s hard to remember that, when we find 60% or more fraud in part of our welfare caseload, but we should try.