Myths Blur the Realities of Welfare

Ask the average American who is not on welfare to describe the average American who is, and the response is likely to be more wrong than it is right: a black unmarried teen-ager in the inner city who has lots of children and no desire to get a job.

There certainly are many on public assistance who fit this profile. But there are just as many--in fact, more--who do not.

The typical welfare recipient is white, has fewer than two children, often lives in a rural area or “mixed” income neighborhood--not a ghetto--and wants to work, welfare experts say. Moreover, there are many mothers who could qualify for help and, for various reasons--including the difficulty of dealing with the welfare system and the social stigma attached to it--are not even on the rolls.

“I think people have the capacity to hold surprisingly inconsistent views about women on welfare,” said Julie Wilson, a social policy expert at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “Many will tell you that a welfare mother probably is not too smart and not too skilled. At the same time, they will also tell you they believe she really could get a job and is clever enough to cheat the system. I think that’s the image in a lot of people’s minds.”

It is this disparity between the myths--which are fueled by political rhetoric--and the reality that has helped cripple efforts to reform a system that virtually all sides agree is broken. And whether the tough proposals currently being drafted actually succeed rests to a large degree on how well these new approaches accommodate the complex realities.

When most people talk about “welfare,” they usually mean Aid to Families With Dependent Children, a cash assistance program for single, poor mothers. But AFDC is only one piece in a hodgepodge of public assistance programs for the needy--among them food stamps, Medicaid, housing subsidies, education grants, long-term care for the elderly and aid to those with physical disabilities. Most women on AFDC also get food stamps and Medicaid.

Broadly defined, the welfare system includes any government assistance program where eligibility is determined by financial need. These programs total about $245 billion in annual federal spending, with additional money from state and local governments. The federal government spends about $16 billion for AFDC, roughly 1% of the federal budget.

AFDC, which has become the main focus of attention, was created during the Depression to enable women not to work. The idea was to make it easier for World War I widows and others who had lost their husbands to stay at home and raise their children.

Since then, the role of women in the work force has undergone a significant transformation--as have other factors in American society--gradually pushing the system out of sync.

The percentage of women in the labor market has jumped; from 1950 to 1992, women in the work force with children younger than 6 rose from 14% to 58%.

Many middle- and working-class mothers can no longer afford to stay home, even those from two-parent households. Moreover, if a woman today can hold a job, she is expected to. This is one of several attitudes that form the underpinnings of current popular thinking about welfare recipients, experts say.

“Today, many women work because they need the money. And in many two-parent families, you need both parents to work--and the idea that they are paying money for other people to stay home with their kids is irritating to them,” Wilson said.

Other changes in American society also have effected the welfare program. While the number of children in the United States was about the same in 1991 as in 1960, the percentage of children living with a single parent increased from 9% to 26%. Indeed, most children born today will spend some time in a single-parent family, according to government figures.

And the number of unmarried women having babies has risen dramatically.

“The birth rate hasn’t gone up as much as the marriage rate has gone down,” Wilson said. “In the old days, unwed teen-age mothers gave away their children for adoption or got married--remember shotgun weddings when you made the girl ‘honest?’ . . . This is no longer true, and the debate is about illegitimacy.”

Thus, the welfare system finds itself under intense pressure to deal with this trend rather than to financially support it. Leading alternatives range from the punitive--withholding benefits from these young mothers--to the more positive--offering alternatives.

Young girls who don’t get pregnant tend to “have some belief they are going somewhere,” said one expert who requested anonymity. “They have some hope for the future, and there are some realistic expectations for them not to do this or put it off for a few years. Find a way to give them this expectation and I think it would be the most powerful way to reduce adolescent pregnancy.”

In recent years, the public and leading policy-makers on all sides of the issue have come to believe that the welfare system should function as a bridge into the labor force. And virtually everyone agrees that the system, for the most part, does not meet that need. Many argue that it in fact provides disincentives for leaving welfare and going to work.

“Our basic goal for the system has changed, and the system hasn’t changed with it,” said Mark Greenberg, senior attorney at the Center for Law and Social Policy. “The goal ought to include ensuring that those who can work can re-enter the work force. This involves a whole set of changes in how the system ought to operate--and most of those changes haven’t happened.”

House Republicans have proposed radically reforming the welfare system by cutting people off the rolls after two years.

The Clinton Administration’s plan, which was released last year, offered welfare recipients born after 1971 job training or education to those who are not “job ready.” But after two years, participants had to find work in the private sector or spend 15 to 30 hours a week in a government-subsidized job. Child care was offered as an incentive. But those who refused to participate lost their benefits.

The proposal also enforced laws requiring unwed mothers to identify the fathers of their children and tightened procedures for collecting child support so that less financial assistance would be needed from the government. The Clinton proposal also called for a national campaign against teen-age pregnancy and required teen-age mothers to live with a parent or guardian to receive aid.

However, during Saturday’s debate at the so-called welfare summit in Washington, Clinton avoided advocating his own plans for reform, officials at the meeting said. The President told the bipartisan gathering to work through Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.), chairman of a House panel drafting reform legislation, they said.

From 1975 to 1993, the number of women and children on AFDC has increased from 11.1 million to 14.1 million, but their percentage of the total population has held at a little more than 5%.

Contrary to popular thinking, the number of black women on AFDC actually has decreased in the last two decades, while the number of whites has stayed constant. Latinos and other groups have shown increases.

In 1992, 34% of recipients were white and 39% were black, compared to 1973, when 38% were white and 45.8% were black, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

But black women, on average, do spend more time in the system than whites, which may account for the stereotype. And once they leave the system, they often return, experts say. Only about 15% of white women spend 10 or more years on the welfare rolls, compared to more than one-third of black women, experts say.

LaDonna Pavetti of the Urban Institute says black women are “significantly less likely” than whites to leave welfare because of marriage and that blacks generally enter the welfare system with far less preparation than whites for moving into the labor market.

Many people believe that welfare recipients stay in the system generation after generation. But participation actually is more cyclical than long-term, according to the American Public Welfare Assn.

Almost 70% of families leave the system within two years, but many will return at some point.

“Why do they come back to welfare? The reasons often are very complicated,” said the expert who requested anonymity.

“What if your support system disappears? You lose your child care. Or you can’t get health coverage on the job where you were on Medicaid before. Or the man in your life doesn’t like your independence. Or you get sick, or your child gets sick and you stay home--and you have a disagreement with your boss over it. There are lots of reasons why people come back to welfare.”

Some experts believe the solution may be found in a conglomeration of approaches that takes into account the diversity in the way recipients use the system.

“We have to look at those who really do use the system in a transitional manner--what can we do to help speed up that process?” Wilson said. “Some say: Have training ready for them when they come back. Others say: Better child care. Others say: Don’t let them back on--and we do know a kick in the pants works for some.”

But if any new system is to work, policy-makers say, it will have to focus on who is actually on public support and why, rather than on the flawed stereotype. “There’s just something in the American psyche that always remembers the worst case--the failures as opposed to the successes,” Wilson said.