Ex-Welfare Recipients Get Jobs Quickly, Study Finds

One of the first on-the-ground assessments of what happens to welfare reform participants has concluded that of those who left the rolls first, most managed to find jobs quickly, largely in low-paying wholesale and retail positions.

The study, undertaken for the state of Maryland, found that more than four in five stayed off the benefit rolls for at least six months--a rate that cheered welfare officials nationally.

In another bright spot, the study indicated that a relatively small proportion of children--certainly not the flood many had predicted--wound up in foster care as a result of a parent moving off welfare. Of 1,810 children whose families left public assistance during the first six months of Maryland’s reform program, only three--all from one family in Baltimore--appear to have been placed in foster care as a result of abuse or neglect.

The study by the University of Maryland’s School of Social Work released Tuesday sketched a detailed portrait of the welfare recipient able to leave the rolls with only the gentlest nudge: typically, a 30-year-old African American woman with a single child, less than two years on the rolls and a recent history of work experience.

Maryland’s study is the first to answer central questions in welfare reform: What happens to those who leave welfare? And who will make the transition most easily? The study offers only a hint at the answers. And because it focuses on recipients who were most motivated and ready to go out and work, it may paint a somewhat brighter picture of outcomes than will be seen in the long term.

While the study focuses on overall trends rather than the experiences of individual women, it reflects cases such as 40-year-old Pamela Latimer, who left welfare last July after four years on the rolls. Latimer, the mother of an 18-month-old baby, found herself responsible as well for two preschool grandchildren when a daughter died. When she asked the Maryland Department of Social Services to help her with her job search last July, a caseworker sent her out to apply for a position in an electrical assembly plant. She got the job on the spot, starting at minimum wage and within a month moving up to $5.80 an hour.

Now she rises at 4 a.m. daily and takes five buses to coordinate her day care needs and reach work by 8 a.m.

“It’s not about money. It’s about purpose,” said Latimer. “I have purpose now. I feel so great about myself since I’m working again. Welfare . . . disables you.”

In Maryland, where welfare rolls have dropped 35% in two years, the departure of thousands of women like Latimer from the rolls has left the state with a substantial pool of money.

That money, said the state’s deputy welfare director, Lynda Fox, has enabled the state to give welfare recipients with far greater obstacles to work the kind of intensive counseling and placement services they are likely to need to get a job.

But while Fox and other state officials were cheered by the relative success of those who have left the rolls, they acknowledged that these could be the best outcomes to be seen in the coming years. And even the success is qualified. For instance, 17.3% of those who left the roll returned within six months, a rate that tracks with past research showing many welfare recipients cycling on and off of welfare. But in a new era of time limits for public assistance, states will need to drive down--not stay even with--the numbers of recipients who come back for more.

Maryland state Sen. Martin G. Madden, chairman of the state Legislature’s subcommittee on welfare reform, expressed concern that many of those departing the rolls are not yet at the point where they can command a “living wage”--earnings that could lift them out of poverty. With 39.2% employed in eating and drinking places, department stores and supermarkets, and 22.1% employed in temporary and clerical jobs, few are likely to have started work with a living wage.

But Madden, Fox and Latimer said that getting that first job is the crucial initial step in achieving a living wage.