Welfare Decline Is Good News

Welfare rolls are finally dropping dramatically in California after years of growth. The decline is most pronounced--and most welcome--in Los Angeles County, which has the state’s largest and perhaps most entrenched welfare population. Experts don’t know precisely why recipients, primarily single mothers, are breaking free of welfare, but many credit a resurgent economy and the jobs it is creating. Credit also goes to the message from Washington, Sacramento and every local welfare office that public assistance is no longer a lifelong entitlement.

Nearly 140,000 recipients went off the old Aid to Families With Dependent Children program in the last three months in California. They left voluntarily, before a tough, new state welfare law takes effect next year. On Jan. 1, strict time limits and work requirements will apply to most welfare recipients.

Eloise Anderson, the state’s director of social services, believes that more welfare mothers are going to work part-time and full-time. National statistics indicate that jobs increasingly are going to single mothers, and some may have been on welfare. Statewide welfare outlays have dropped 23%. Clearly many recipients are earning enough on jobs to force a reduction in their checks, though not enough to end their dependence altogether. If they are finding jobs in large numbers, that’s good for them, their families and the country. Government needs to track this progress closely to confirm what would be grand news socially and fiscally--a clear and growing departure from welfare.

Whatever the cause, California is finally catching up with the rest of the country, which has reported a 1.7 million decline in recipients since President Clinton signed welfare reform in August 1996. About 10.5 million poor people, primarily children and single parents, still depend on welfare in America, and one out of five live in California.

The state’s welfare population is swollen by long-term recipients, immigrants and casualties of a decade of corporate downsizing. The first wave to break dependence represents the most employable. As counties gear up for the January implementation of the new state law, they need to keep this ball rolling. That means having in place programs for job training and child care, for many more poor parents need to make the break to financial independence.