Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries tagged as welfare reform

Changing Culture, Not Politics, Changes Human Behavior

Monday, August 28, 2006

In 1936 Congress passed the Aid to Dependent Children Act to help widows stay home and raise their children. From 147,000 families on welfare in 1936 the number rose to five million by the 1994, the peak year. Ten years ago today, August 26, President Clinton signed into law the Welfare Reform Act. Last year the number of families receiving welfare had declined to 1.9 million. Contrary to the cries against the bill in 1996, which were numerous, the reform in welfare promoted in a bipartisan manner by President Clinton and the Congress, has generally proven successful.

Various measures of success can be applied to the question of welfare reform. Here are a few. 69% of single mothers are employed today, up from 62% in 1995. In 2000 the number employed actually reached 73%. Another measure of the success of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act is the poverty rate among children. In 1994 the poverty rate among children was 22%, today it is 18%, still much too high I am sure. At the same time there are some numbers that show that we still have a major problem. An average of 1.2 million single mothers a month, who live in homes where there was no wage earner and no Social Security, received no welfare in 2003, up from 700,000 in 1996. Many of these have disabilities, or mental-health and/or substance-abuse problems, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Continue reading "Changing Culture, Not Politics, Changes Human Behavior"

Posted by John H. Armstrong in Effective Compassion at 09:15 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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charity, culture, daniel patrick moynihan, effective compassion, government, politics, welfare reform

Welfare Reform is Working

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Anthony Bradley, a research fellow for the Acton Institute, looks back on the effects of the welfare reform of 1996. Many people criticized this legislation as it was being passed and predicted that the result would be increased poverty. However, the results of the legislation have been overwhelmingly positive.

Poverty, especially amongst single mothers, has declined significantly. Employment among people formerly claiming welfare has increased dramatically. The number of welfare cases has dropped from 4.3 to 1.89 million — that’s more than 50% fewer cases — and poverty has decreased as well! These results cannot be only attributed to economic factors (although a good economy obviously helps poverty). As Mr. Bradley puts it: “When our society provides incentives encouraging work, marriage, family, and accountability—which are central to human dignity—we see people thought to be helpless rise to the occasion.”

Read Anthony’s commentary here.

Posted by Jonathan Spalink in Effective Compassion at 13:59 | Comments (4) | Trackback

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effective compassion, robert rector, welfare, welfare reform

Second Phase of Welfare Reform

Monday, August 7, 2006

“I’ve got a bunch of government checks at my door / Each morning I try to send them back / But they only send me more.”

--Nelly Furtado, “Hey Man,” Whoa, Nelly! (Dreamworks, 2000).

Here’s a question maybe our own Karen Woods can address: Does the second phase of welfare reform make it harder for people to get off welfare for good?

That seems to be the implication of this article in today’s WaPo, “Welfare Changes A Burden To States,” by Amy Goldstein.

Having grown up on welfare, Rochelle Riordan had vowed never to ask for a government handout. That was before her hard-drinking husband kicked her and their young daughter out of their house near Lewiston, Maine, leaving her with a $300 bank account, a bad job market and a 15-year-old car held together in spots with duct tape.

Maine’s welfare agency, she heard, was offering help for poor parents to go to college full time. With the state paying for day care and $513 a month in living expenses, Riordan, 37, has been on the dean’s list every semester at the University of Southern Maine, expecting to graduate and start a social work career next spring. But this summer, her plans -- and Maine’s Parents as Scholars program -- suddenly are on shaky ground; under new federal rules, studying for a bachelor’s degree no longer counts by itself as an acceptable way for people on welfare to spend their time.

A decade after the government set out to transform the nation’s welfare system, the limits on college are part of a controversial second phase of welfare reform that is beginning to ripple across the country. The new rules, written by Congress and the Bush administration, require states to focus intensely on making more poor people work, while discouraging other activities that might help untangle their lives.