From handout to a hand up

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to job-focused benefits is giving

poor best chance at independence.

Welfare recipients, according to a New York Times report, are increasingly receiving their benefits in services rather than cash. Our nation's poor are being provided life and job skills that foster independence instead of cash benefits that have a history of encouraging perpetual dependence. Consequently, welfare rolls are down.

States reduced the proportion of cash benefits from 77 percent of state and federal welfare spending in 1997 to just 44 percent in 2002. South Carolina has made a similar shift and has reduced its welfare rolls by 58 percent since 1995.

This means welfare reform, as intended, has reduced the numbers of people receiving public assistance and given the poorest Americans a chance at independence. Two things are evident seven years removed from the landmark welfare reform legislation, which sought to limit benefits and require adults to work.

First, the days of permanent, lifelong welfare dependency are over. Secondly, the shift to social and work-focused benefits has made welfare less stigmatizing. The $23 billion welfare program is now a hodgepodge of services that typically include job training, child-care programs and educational enrichment initiatives. It is succeeding in preparing the poorest and least employable of Americans for a life of work and achievement.

These are typically single mothers. But the limitations and talents of poor people vary so greatly that state governments have had to adapt to a variety of challenges that threaten the independence of those who live on the economic margins. This means giving former welfare dependents what they need to stay independent. For example, in some states, welfare money is used to make one-time payments for things such as car repairs. In most states, welfare money is used to treat drug abuse and mental health problems and provide domestic violence shelters. So long as the objective is to ensure that those who have left the welfare rolls do not return, this flexibility should continue. States must remain open-minded and innovative.

Skeptics of welfare reform predicted more homelessness, more hunger and more crime. Instead, reform is working as proponents envisioned. Welfare is now a program that improves lives instead of subsidizing dysfunction.