Welfare reform

This entry consists of the following articles:

• Welfare Reform: Effects on Families and Children
• Welfare Reform: Moving Mothers from Welfare to Work

by Kurt L. Schmoke, 1997

Since the passage of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society legislation in the 1960s, one of the most controversial issues in American politics has been welfare. Supporters of welfare argue that the government has a moral obligation to provide a social safety net for its poorest citizens. Critics of welfare, however, assert that it creates a web of dependency that traps its recipients in poverty. By the early 1990s, calls for welfare reform reached a crescendo. In his 1992 campaign for President, Bill Clinton took a middle position between the critics and supporters of welfare, as he pledged to "mend welfare, not end it." In the spring of 1996, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the most sweeping welfare reform law in history, cutting off welfare payments to adults after they had spent two years on welfare rolls. The bill received wide popularity among moderate and conservative voters, and, with his reelection campaign only months away, Clinton signed the bill into law. Clinton's support for welfare reform deeply divided the Democratic Party. Although many moderate Democrats applauded the bill, many liberal Democrats accused Clinton of betraying the Democratic Party's principles in his drive to get reelected. Welfare reform, however, was one of the most popular measures of Clinton's first term as President. In November 1996 Clinton won reelection, and by the end of his second term, welfare rolls reached their lowest level in thirty years. Kurt Schmoke, the mayor of Baltimore, Maryland, delivered the following address to the United Way of America's National Conference on Welfare Reform in September 1997.

Good afternoon. I want to begin these remarks with a simple thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. I also want to thank the United Way of America for sponsoring this important conference. More fundamentally, I thank you for all that you do nationally and locally in so many ways to help people in need and to raise public consciousness about issues that affect them. This conference is but one reflection of that commitment.

And it comes at a pivotal time: a little more than a year after President Clinton made good his promise to "end welfare as we know it" by signing into law "The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996."

As most of you are all too aware, under the law almost all adult welfare recipients must find work or be in some kind of "work activity" within two years, or they lose their benefits.

Moreover, they face a lifetime public assistance limit of five years.

At the signing ceremony, President Clinton heralded the new law as "the beginning of a new era in which welfare will become what it was meant to be: a second chance, not a way of life." This conference gives us an opportunity to take a hard look at whether welfare reform will become what it was meant to be. Will it truly help people move from dependence to independence and enable them to achieve a better life for themselves and their children? Or will it drive them deeper into poverty and hopelessness?

With these questions hovering in the background, I've been asked to share reflections about how cities are faring under welfare reform one year into the law. My remarks will focus on Baltimore, but I believe they can apply to many other big cities as well.

Frankly, when I was thinking about what I was going to say to you this afternoon, I wasn't quite sure what my main message should be. Should I tell you about things people like to count? I could tell you that between January 1996 and August 1997, Baltimore City's welfare caseload dropped 21 percent-from almost 99,000 to a little over 78,000. If numbers were your indicator of success, the obvious conclusion would be, "Yes, welfare reform is working."

But as a former football player, I know that declaring success at this point is like declaring victory in the first quarter of the game. With welfare reform only in its "first quarter," the final outcome is nearly impossible to predict.

The mixed messages I am getting from my agency heads underscore the difficulty of trying to measure the success of welfare reform at this stage. Let me tell you about some of these conversations.

When I talk to my social services people they point to the drop in the caseload. They cite the number of welfare recipients participating in job readiness, job search, work experience and grant diversion programs-almost 8,000 as of August of this year. They tell me about agreements and contracts signed with 27 new partners in the public and private sectors to provide job placement services for welfare recipients. Tallying up such facts and figures, their assessment is that the City is making significant "progress" in implementing welfare reform.

When I talk to my employment development people I'm hearing a story with a slightly different slant. Sure, they tell me of the hundreds of welfare recipients who have gone through job training in the past year, and of the 2,500 who have found employment. And they're even proud to provide individual portraits of some of these individuals.

People like Dana, a single mother of three, who already had obtained her GED, knew WordPerfect, and typed 50 words a minute. She was assigned to train as an office clerk at a City agency, and within six weeks, was offered a full-time position. Or Lisa who used the services of one of the two full-scale career centers the City has set up for welfare recipients and attended the local community college. Lisa now has a job at Bell Atlantic, earning $19 an hour.

But my employment development people also say that such individual success stories shouldn't seduce us into thinking that moving people to self-sufficiency is an easy task. Another set of figures provides a more telling story.

To meet federal and state requirements, about 14,000 City welfare recipients must be in a job or work-related activity by January 1, 1999. Yet, an increase of only 2,800 jobs is projected for Baltimore in the types of industries and businesses that can absorb low-skill entry-level workers. And that's between 1997 and the year 2000.

What's more, with Baltimore's unemployment rate the highest of any jurisdiction in the Baltimore metropolitan area (8.5% as of July), people trying to get off welfare will face some stiff competition.

From such figures, it's obvious that on its own, Baltimore City cannot find jobs or work experiences for the large numbers of people who will be leaving the welfare rolls. A regional approach to employment will be required. That's not all. To bridge the gap between all these new job seekers and the private sector jobs that are available, we also are going to have to find a way to create more subsidized jobs.

My employment development people also remind me that the Lisas and Danas represent welfare reform's first wave-in relative terms, the easy cases. Both women had skills, motivation, a strong work ethic, and a support network. Each could easily be a "poster child" for welfare reform.

As the welfare rolls continue to drop, such "poster children" will be harder to find. Those left represent the toughest cases. Of those 14,000 welfare recipients who must get jobs or be engaged in work related activities by January 1, 1999: 52% have no high school diploma; 26% have been on the rolls for more than five years and have little or no prior work experience; an estimated 16% have drug or alcohol related problems; and 50% will require subsidized child care.

Even in a booming economy, finding jobs for such a population is highly problematic. I think we all know what will happen during an economic downturn.

When I speak to my homeless relief advisers, I get another set of perceptions, and another set of numbers. They point to an upsurge in requests for emergency shelter-from 3,000 in the first half of 1996 to 5,000 in the first half of 1997, a 40 percent increase. And they tell me that families and individuals are overwhelming the city shelters. Over the past two months, shelter operators have had to turn away people because there were no more beds available. The last time this happened was in the 1980s.

According to my homeless relief advisers, the anecdotal evidence points to some connection between what they are seeing at the shelters and the new welfare law-either because people have lost their benefits as a result of sanctions, or they didn't apply for benefits because they thought they couldn't get them, or they have had their benefits cut off from some other jurisdiction and have moved to Baltimore.

Further anecdotal evidence from another source: I recently met with a group of ministers who told me that more people are using their churches' food pantries and feeding programs than a year ago.

I fear that what we're seeing in these feeding programs and in our shelters may be part of the face of this new welfare reform.

It's a complicated face.

Like many big city mayors, I supported the need for welfare reform. We must move people from welfare to work. This nation was built on the work ethic, and work is one of the things that gives life meaning and purpose.

I agree with the President that the welfare system ought to be one that is transitional and moves people to independence, not to prolonged dependence. And I have been working diligently with my agency heads to try to make welfare reform work, as I promised the President that I would.

Our efforts to help move people from welfare to work are not confined to the City's Department of Social Services and the Office of Employment Development, our lead agencies in welfare reform. Nearly every City agency is involved. . . .

So yes, we in Baltimore welcome welfare reform and yes, we are responding vigorously to the challenge it poses. At the same time, I think we have to be realistic about what it takes to make welfare reform work in a city like Baltimore.

What does it take?

We must be able to offer people without skills the ability to get training. A job search without skills doesn't lead to very much. We must increase our support services, such as child care, job counseling, and drug treatment. And we must develop more innovative ways to address the transportation issue.

We need the sustained participation of private businesses in hiring and helping to train people who have been in a state of dependency for so long. Private businesses don't have to do it all, of course. But they have to do more.

We need the United Way and other organizations in the nonprofit sector to continue to keep the issue of welfare reform on the national radar screen. The United Way's statement on welfare reform and its implications for charities is a fine example of your efforts in this regard.

As we go forward with implementing the welfare reform law, we must be willing to reexamine certain of its provisions to ensure that there is an adequate safety net for vulnerable children. Neglect of little children must not be the legacy of welfare reform in America or in the City of Baltimore.

And if it turns out that five years is far too short a time frame in which to achieve self-sufficiency, if the economy falters, if the unpredictable occurs, we must not allow the ideology of welfare reform to override the need to make pragmatic adjustments in the law.

As we undertake this bold national experiment to "end welfare as we know it," we are learning as we go along. And we must be courageous enough to change what we find doesn't work, even as we applaud what works.

When President Clinton signed the welfare reform bill, I said that my worries about the daunting challenge of moving so many people from prolonged dependence to self-sufficiency were giving me a lot of sleepless nights. Well, let me tell you, my rest isn't easy yet.

Despite the statistics, despite our real success stories, despite our earnest efforts, we still have a long way to go before we can declare welfare reform an unequivocal success. As this old football player said earlier, you don't declare victory in the first quarter of the game.

I leave you with one other thought about this bold national experiment: We must never forget that the raw materials of this experiment are real people's lives.

The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United Kingdom and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (May 2009)

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (November 2007)

Contents 1 Welfare reform in the United States 2 The Welfare System and reform in Great Britain 2.1 The three branches of welfare 2.2 The Movement for Reform 3 The Welfare System and reform in France 4 References 5 See also 6 External links 6.1 Reform in Great Britain 6.2 Reform in the US 6.3 Lessons from around the globe

Welfare reform in the United States

see Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act

The Welfare System and reform in Great Britain

Social welfare is administered in three ways in Great Britain, the National Health Service, the Social Services program, and the Pensions Service program[1] all play a part in the providing social welfare.

The three branches of welfare

Main article: National Health Service

The National Health Service provides a system of government supplied health care. The agency employs over two million doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and other health care workers to achieve this end. It has at its disposal a budget of over £ 60 billion. The National Health Service is the primary implementation mechanism of Department of Health policy. Welfare administration dealing with Social Services, a major branch of welfare, also fall under NHS jurisdiction.

Welfare in Great Britain also consists of a Social Security program that is administered by the Pension Service, and also it provides financial aid to individuals and families that qualify. It also promotes what it calls an "equality scheme."[2]

The Movement for Reform

Main article: New Deal (UK)

The recent actions taken towards reforming the welfare system in Britain begin with 1997's New Deal Program[3]. The Labour Party focused on increasing employment through requiring that recipients of aid actively consider seeking employment. This movement is similar in ideal to a workfare system. The Labour Party also introduced a system of tax credits for low-income workers.

The most recent act on welfare reform in Great Britain is the Welfare Act of 2007 [4]. The act provides for "an employment and support allowance, a contributory allowance, [and] an income-based allowance."

The Welfare System and reform in France

The welfare system in France is based upon a system of social insurance, family allowances, and pensions. A social security program is maintained where workers and employers pay into a fund that the worker can draw from when they become unable to continue working. Contributions are earnings based and both groups, employers and workers, are involved in maintaining the situation. The program's budget is not actually part of the official state budget of France. However, the French government is still crucial in that it regulates the program. Its specific authority in the area is still unclear.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, a deficit in the program began to appear. The deficit saw peaks at 27.75% of the social insurance budget in 1992. This led to a major push by the government to cut back spending in the welfare program. By the end of the 1990s the deficit had been almost completely eradicated. The often large deficits that the program has endured has led to a tremendous amount of opposition to the program as it stands.

References

• Blank, Rebecca M. “Evaluating Welfare Reform in the United States.” (2002) Journal of Economic Literature 40 (4): 1105-1166. online at JSTOR
• Howard Chernwick, “Fiscal Effects of Block Grants for the Needy: An Interpretation of the Evidence,” Tax and Public Finance 5, no. 2 (1998): 205–33.
• R. Kent Weaver, Ending Welfare As We Know It Brookings Institution, 2000.
• Rebecca M. Blank and Ron Haskins, eds., The New World of Welfare. Brookings Institution Press, 2001.
• Mark H. Greenberg et al., "The 1996 Welfare Law: Key Elements and Reauthorization Issues Affecting Children" The Future of Children, Vol. 12, 2002.
• Ron Haskins, Work over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law. Brookings Institution Press, 2006.
• Michael B. Katz. In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (1986)
• Arun Muralidhar and Serge Allegreza (Eds.) (2007), ‘Reforming European Pension Systems’ Amsterdam, NL and West Lafayette, Indiana, USA: Dutch University Press, Rozenberg Publishers and Purdue University Press (essays in memory of Franco Modigliani)
• Longman, Phillip, The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birth Rates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It Basic Books, 2004.
• Polly, John. "Triumph of a Stubborn Lady," Look (February 9, 1965): 64-69. Details on this article re early experiment in Washington State with NDVR (Non-disabled Vocational Rehabilitation).
• Michael D. Tanner, The Poverty of Welfare: Helping Others in Civil Society. Cato Institute 2003, libertarian approach.
• Gary MacDougal, Make A Difference: A Spectacular Breakthrough in the Fight Against Poverty, St. Martin's Press.

See also

• Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study

External links

Reform in Great Britain

• Labour's Welfare Reform: Progress to Date
• Welfare Reform Act of 2007

Reform in the US

• Welfare and Welfare Reform from UCB Libraries GovPubs
• Welfare Reform: Interim Final Regulations from the U.S. HHS
• The Contract with America from the United States House of Representatives
• Welfare Reform: Bringing Dignity to Millions (But Not to Bill Clinton) from the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, 1999
• Welfare Reform, Phase Two City Journal, Winter 2009

Lessons from around the globe

• Arno Tausch (2005) ‚World Bank Pension reforms and development patterns in the world system and in the “Wider Europe”. A 109-country investigation based on 33 indicators of economic growth, and human, social and ecological well-being, and a European regional case study’. A slightly re-worked version of a paper, originally presented to the Conference on “Reforming European pension systems. In memory of Professor Franco Modigliani. 24 and 25 September 2004”, Castle of Schengen, Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies

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