Re: Welfare: Method of Actio

To: Ms. Candidate

In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs of the past all have another common failing they are indirect.  Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else.
                                                                - Martin Luther King Jr., 1967

I. Recommendation

On careful consideration of all issues surrounding Welfare, we have concluded that the government should continue to play an active role in remedying the condition of poverty.  To do this, we support additional programs that would add on to existing government policies.  We have concluded that there should be more focus on aid for families with children, encouragement for saving, and creating laws that will endure and remain unchanged for an allotted period of time.

II. Key Issue

The key issue and center of controversy surrounding welfare is how to mobilize the poorest of social classes, as well as how to integrate these people into the American economy.

III. Definitions

    A. Who is poor

In 1997, an estimated 20% of all children lived in poverty (US Census). An unwed or divorced mother, who is typically 25 years old or older, raised these children (Century Foundation). In most cases, the father of the children did not live with the mother and he did not receive welfare benefits. According to the United States Bureau of Statistics, single females in the job market made an average annual income of $21,023 in 1997 versus an average $32,960 earned by their single male counterparts. Married couples, however, made an estimated $51,591 in combined annual income. Single women received the lowest income, and yet women are the primary caretakers of children. This pattern perpetuates the culture of poverty; if a child born in poverty is likely to remain in poverty. Once the children reach the legal working age, it is also probable that they will be inclined to drop out of school and prematurely enter the labor force.

This distinction is significant because education is a very important piece in social mobility. In 1997, the income for male high school dropouts averaged around $16,818 per year.  A Bachelors degree brought up this average to $47,126 per year (US Census).  It is evident that the more education a person receives, the less likely that they will fall into poverty. Thus poverty leads to limited education, which leads back to poverty, creating a perpetual cycle.

    B. Defining Poverty and Welfare

Since the early 1900s welfare has been a recognized debate in American politics.  It has gone on so long, words associated with this issue such as poverty and welfare have been stigmatized and have lost their meaning.  In modern debates, the affect and purpose of these programs have been over-shadowed by a changing public opinion.  Too often people associate their feelings or prejudgments with these terms, rather than consider the actual meaning.  According to the dictionary, poverty is the state of being poor.  It is to have a lack of means of providing material needs or comforts, and can also be interpreted as unproductiveness or infertility (Dictionary.com).  The latter portion of the definition is a denouncement by more affluent classes.  These groups see poverty as a drain on society and/or a threat to an affluent lifestyle.  Often forgotten is the intent of welfare as a social tool.  Welfare is indicative of health, happiness, good fortune, well-being and prosperity; it is something that aids or promotes well-being: for the common good(Dictionary.com).  Welfare is a social program designed to promote the advancement of the less fortunate, while encouraging economic growth and reducing the level of governmental dependency of the poor.

IV. Controversy

    A. Why is welfare an issue/History?

The recognition of a social gap can be traced back to industrialization in the 1870s.  Up until this period, more than half of the nations adult workers were farmers. In the years that followed, the economy progressed towards industrialization, specialization and urbanization.  In this environment, special skills become more important than manual labor.  There was also a movement away from self-sufficiency, as the economy began to shift towards consumerism (Social Work History).

The idea of welfare, however, didnt emerge until the onset of the Great Depression.  The Depression created a new way of thinking about poverty; high unemployment rates shattered the dominant view that poverty was the result of personality flaws. Welfare became a widely recognized responsibility of the federal government (Social Work History).  Poverty was then understood as a situation caused by forces beyond individual control.
The FDR administration reacted to the social cry for help: The Social Security Act was passed on August 14, 1935.  This law established two social insurance programs on a national scale to help meet the needs of the old and unemployed: a Federal system of old-age benefits for retired workers who had been employed in industry and commerce, and a Federal-State system of unemployment insurance.  This law established other Federal grants to enable States to extend and strengthen maternal and child health and welfare services, and these grants became the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, which has been replaced in 1996 with a new block grant program for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (SS History Page).

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 abolished Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), as well as JOBS (the work and training program for welfare recipients), and Emergency Assistance to Families with Children (a program that provided emergency help to families with children for a maximum of one month per year).  In place, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a block grant of federal funds given to states (Childrens Defense Fund), was implemented.  These grants are time-limited assistance, in order to end dependency on government.  This law limits families to no more than sixty months, consecutive or non-consecutive, of TANF, with exceptions made for hardship situations, minor children, or family members that have been battered or subject to extreme cruelty.

The new Balanced Budget Act of 1997 helped achieve a workfare-oriented policy.  It allowed the U.S. Department of Labor to provide grants to states and local communities for the creation of additional job opportunities for the hardest to employ recipients of TANF (Childrens Defense Fund).
States are expected to perform an assessment of a recipient in order to measure the level of support that the recipient needs to reach self-sufficiency.  States then make an individual responsibility plan (IRP) that describes the services the State will provide to enable the individual to get a job and keep it.  States that do not adhere to federal regulations can have their grants reduced, and welfare recipients who do not participate in state programs can have their assistance payments reduced or terminated.  Also, individuals must participate in work activities within two years of receiving aid (Childrens Defense Fund).
Adults can lose Medicaid as well as cash aid.  Adults cannot be penalized for failure to meet work requirements if their failure is because of inability to find or afford childcare for a child under six.  Otherwise, if an adult recipient refuses to participate, states will reduce the familys assistance by a certain amount.
Overall, there is a general trend towards cutbacks and more workfare

    B. Why do the poor stay poor?

According to the consumption function in economics (Hall 225), disposable income has a linear relationship to consumption spending and that amount of disposable income that is not consumed is saved.  It means that when income goes up, disposable income, consumption spending, and savings all go up. To the more affluent, they can save more and spend more because of their wealth and high income. In poor families, debt may be required just to meet the needs of food and shelter. Investing in the future (in their children) is nearly impossible.

The poor who are excluded from the mainstream of life are forced to develop their own ways of life, one that is distinctly different in terms of culture and pattern. What led to this culture of poverty?  It is this reaction and adaptation to conditions of poverty that led to this culture. The pressures of dealing with day-to-day needs lead to present-time thinking.  The poor cannot concern themselves over the future; their children (perhaps the most important future) are neglected.  They despair over lack of opportunity and their hopes and aspirations for the future are bleak at best.  They realize that the situation they are in cannot be overcome and resign to the fact that they will always be poor.

Culture is a social inheritance; it consists of ideas that may have been developed long before we were born.  A culture, then, is a shared perspective, a sets of ideas that people develop and learn in social interaction (Charon 95). Once this culture of poverty is formed, it is passed on from parents to children though socialization.

There are many other obstacles that prevent the poor from moving up socially. Many times, they have to fight themselves. They have this self-defeating attitude that they cannot succeed and often times are discourage from even attempting to find a job. When they do, they have to fight the stigma and perceptions the more affluent have of the poor. Politics is another obstacle to social mobility. Major changes come from politics. And only through money and support will the poor be able to be heard. However, without money and having the more the affluent dominate the political arena with their own agendas, change for the poor is hard.

Money is power (Charon 56) in our modern American power structure, so little change is possible without some form of funding.
The lack of money also means that many poor families are unable to invest financially in securities (as other more affluent people do to make more money), or in their children (for the future). The families are more concerned with working for the next meal and they are driven into debt just so they can provide this.
Each of these structure flaws creates obstacles for underclass children to break from the cycle of poverty and ascend to a higher socioeconomic level.  Because these children have inferior educations, are poorly dressed, and many times speak in an unrefined way that indicates their class status, getting a higher paying job or a job in which they can grow to earn more status and money, is virtually impossible.  The population in general is becoming more and more educated with the numbers of college graduates continuing to soar making job requirements and expectations greater than ever.  Many people who live in impoverished areas give up hope before they even try to get out from poverty; they just accept the hand that has been dealt to them.  Because their families and neighbors never had any expectations of them, these people never take risks and finish their education or try to go out of their surroundings and find a better job.  And even if they did, the likelihood that they would be discriminated against by outside employers is high.

    C. Demographics and opinions on welfare

Why is it that the current welfare policies are leaning toward the radical conservative side?  All the major welfare reforms in the last four years have cut funding and raised the requirements for the poor to receive welfare benefits.  None of these funds is redirected to improve the conditions feeding the culture of poverty.  Those policy proposals seeking more of a middle ground are inevitably shot down, even when they have the support of conservatives and liberals.  The reason behind the hostility toward any policy that favors some cash payment or in-kind assistance is the nature of the public opinion.  In a recent poll, 51% of the people see the cutbacks and limits as ending a system that as kept poor people in poverty, and only 29% see them as giving up a proper role (Public Agenda)  48% of Americans disagree with how the government handles the poor, but 51% agree with welfare measures (Gallup).  This shows an evident concern for those less fortunate, as well as a misunderstanding of the issue at hand, and how to deal with the impoverished.

Americans believe in equality of opportunities, not social and economic equality.  Thats why even in the face of a growing disparity between the rich and middle class, there have been no major policies toward balancing the system.  When given a choice of what flaw of welfare is the greatest: the wrong lifestyle it encourages or the excess use of tax money, 65% chose the encouragement of lifestyle, 18% chose neither, and only 14% chose the actual monetary costs (Public Agenda).  The fact is welfare and other anti-poverty programs make up a small percentage of total federal expenditures.  The programs, ranging from Medicaid, subsidized housing, food stamps, TANF, and earned income tax credit, comes to about $197.9 billion dollars.  This is but a minor portion of the $1,601,400,000,000 budget for the 1999 fiscal year (Census).  The reason people oppose using tax money for welfare really ties in more with their objection with the moral implications of welfare than with any economic factors.  In a recent poll (Feb. 24-27, 2000) it was found that 66% of adult Americans favor strengthening Social Security programs, while 32% favor tax cuts (Polling Report). Social Security is a form of welfare, but with it lies no stigmatism about laziness or lack of work ethic.  This poll shows that Americans are willing to help those in need, but they are not willing to help those whom they believe are not willing to help themselves.

In another poll, the majority (63%) of the public believes that the poor should work in any job, even those with insurance or provide adequate income.  Only 12% of the public believes the government should provide unconditional help to the disadvantaged.  The rest either think the government should help people who are motivated to help themselves (34%), or feel the government should give more responsibilities to the poor (50%) (Public Agenda).
Of course, the U.S. welfare system is not the only model implemented.  Other nations have drastically different systems, varying in size and aggressiveness.  However, each individual nation have their own unique social economic histories, which influence their definitions of welfare and poverty.  It is beyond the scope of this report to do a proper comparison of international welfare models.  The focus is a resolution to the welfare debate in the context of the economy of America.

V. Varying Perspectives

The mass majority of Americans in the middle class hold the same views as the affluent upper echelon of society; although the income and wealth gaps should they have more in common with the poor than the rich do.  They tend to view poverty as a cultural deficiency, or as an economic condition.  The majority (44%) of the people polled in a Public Agenda poll mostly agree poor are too dependent on government assistance programs, 34% agree completely, 14% mostly disagree, and only 4% disagree completely (Public Agenda).  In a separate poll, when people were asked whether the old welfare system trapping recipients in dependency was a serious problem, 54% believed it was very serious, and only 10% saying it was not too serious and 7% believing it was not serious at all.  68% actually believe welfare creates a permanent underclass (Public Agenda).  The majority of people polled seem more worried about the social impact rather than the economic impact of the pre-1996 system, which is consistent with the overemphasis of the culture of poverty by the affluent upper class and the middle class.

VI. Arguments/evidence against opposing views & policy

There is a greater moral conflict than policy conflict.  While many people advocate the same basic reforms, their intentions are vastly different.  Moral conflict comes into being primarily over the source of poverty, which naturally leads to different solutions.  To sample the polar ends of the spectrum, one view of poverty is that it is strictly a cultural problem.  It is the behavior of the poor that perpetuate the cycle of poverty.  Behaviors include favoring present gratification rather than saving, dependency on outside help, lack of a sense of community, susceptibility to crime, drugs, and alcohol.  On the other end, poverty is considered a condition.  Economic forces beyond their ability to control force people into poverty.  They have the same work ethic and ambitions as the upper classes, but lack the opportunities to fulfill those ambitions.  The first view tends to place faith in the American capitalist system.  They believe it provides more than enough venues to naturally control poverty.  The second view calls for a more aggressive welfare plan.  To alter so many of the conditions of poverty calls for major expenditures in education, housing, and healthcare.

VII. Reasons for Recommendation

After careful analysis, we have decided that it would be most prudent to keep the current welfare programs in place, and create new programs built around the existing structure.  Our proposed programs include providing more aid to families with children as education leads to the upward social mobility and a better working economy, which are crucial in eliminating poverty.  We must also create a stable structure that will not fluctuate or change over time.  Many measures, in an attempt to curb poverty in the past, have fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies (King).  By providing a stable base for change, impoverished populations will receive a sense of security and optimism for change.  By providing this base, we can attempt to change the culture that leads to poverty.  Too often symptoms are treated without reaching the root of the problem.  We are confident that the American public will back our decision since the general public recognizes poverty as an important issue, which must be carefully examined, and this issue to them is more important then tax breaks.
 
 

Work Cited

Aaron, Henry J.  Why Is Welfare So Hard to Reform?  Washington D.C.  The Brooking Institution, 1973.

Anderson, Martin.  Welfare: The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States.  Palo Alto: Hoover Institution Press, 1978.

Charon, Joel M. The Meaning of Sociology.  New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1999.

Child Care Fact Sheet. Scn.org/activism/wroc/childcare.htm [Online] Available March 5, 2000.

Childrens Defense Fund. Childrensdefense.org/fairstart_welfare2what.htm  [Online] Available March 6, 2000.

Gallup Gallup.com/poll/  [Online] Available February 29, 2000

Hall, Robert E., Marc Liberman. Macroeconomics Principles And Applications.  Ohio: South-Western College Publishing, 1998.

Hansan, John, Robert Morris.  Welfare Reform, 1996-2000.  Westport: Auburn House, 1999.

King, Martin L. Jr.  Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?  New York:  Harper & Row, 1967.

Polling Report  Polling Report.com/budget.htm  [Online]  Available March 8, 2000

Portrait of a Welfare Recipient, By the Numbers. Tcf.org/Publications/Basics/welfare/welfare_portrait.html [Online] Available February 16, 2000.

Public Agenda.  Publicagenda.org/issues/debate_detail2.cfm?issue_type=welfare  [Online] Available February 25, 2000.

Social Security History Page. Ssa.gov/history/history.html  [Online] Available February 27, 2000.

Social Work History. Idbsu.edu/socwork/dhuff/history/chapts/5-1.htm  [Online] Available February 27, 2000.

Summary of Current Welfare Legislation. Childrendefense.org/fairstart_welsum.html [Online] Available February 28, 2000.

The Reality of Welfare Reform. Entropy.me.usouthal.edu/harbinger/xvi/980526/youngman.html [Online] Available February 28, 2000.

The Century Foundation.  Tcf.org/publications/basics/welfare/Introduction.html [Online] Available March 6, 2000.

U.S. Census Bureau. Census.gov [Online] Available March 2, 2000.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/98poverty.htm  [Online] Available March 2, 2000