Family Welfare Rolls Show Slight Drop

The government reported Wednesday a continued but modest decline in the number of new welfare cases, five years after Congress enacted a program to move recipients from welfare to work.

From September 2000 to March 2001, the number of families receiving temporary assistance declined 3% to about 2.1 million, according to figures released by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Overall there has been a dramatic 57% drop in the number of welfare cases since welfare reform was enacted in August 1996, officials said. This represents nearly 7 million fewer recipients.

However, the 3% national decline for the latest six-month period was a slower drop-off, a trend some experts attributed to the faltering national economy. Former welfare recipients who have gone to work often have been among the first employees to be laid off.

In California, the six-month figures showed a decline of only 1%, to 482,041 families as of late March.

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson put a positive spin on the national statistics.

“While the caseload numbers are encouraging, the real news is that welfare reform is moving more people into work so that they can support themselves and their families,” Thompson said. “Welfare reform has helped an unprecedented number of people on welfare to become self-supporting.”

Figures for individual welfare recipients, as compared to families, showed a decline of 4.4%, down to about 5.4 million people. The corresponding figure for California was a drop of 2.1%, to about 1.2 million individuals on the welfare rolls.

Rikki Baum, director of the Welfare Policy Research Project in Berkeley, funded by the University of California, said California’s more modest decline in welfare cases shows that “parts of the state never benefited from the economic boom.” In addition, she said, the state’s relatively high immigrant population may have made it more difficult for some welfare recipients “to migrate off the rolls due to language deficiencies.”

Baum speculated that if the economy stays soft, “we may see large numbers of people getting bumped from their jobs and coming back on the welfare rolls.”

The national caseload peaked in 1994 at nearly 14.3 million people, including 2.7 million in California--mostly single women and their children. Pushed by tough new rules and aided by the strongest economy in a generation, the number of people on welfare began a dramatic decline, falling further and faster than anyone predicted.

Shawn Fremstad, a Washington-based welfare analyst, said the slowdown in the shrinking of welfare rolls should come as no surprise. On top of a softening economy, “many of those left on the rolls probably have greater barriers to employment, such as mental health problems or learning disabilities that were not apparent at first,” said Fremstad, an official at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“The tremendous caseload declines of the late 1990s simply could not be expected to continue,” he said. “What’s left is a tougher, harder-to-serve [welfare] population.”

The landmark reform program set up by Congress, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, was designed to promote self-sufficiency, officials said. It holds welfare recipients to strict deadlines to find jobs or lose eligibility for cash aid.

The $16.5-billion TANF program will come up for reauthorization by Congress next year. In preparation for congressional action, Thompson said his department will hold national forums with state leaders and welfare recipients, starting Sept. 24 in Atlanta. Other sessions will be scheduled this fall in San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Dallas, he said.