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reprint or license thisWelfare reform still a work in progress
By WAYNE WASHINGTON
wwashington@thestate.com
A decade of welfare reform has reduced dramatically the number of people getting cash assistance in South Carolina — but changes to the welfare system have failed to produce the ambitious, broader societal goals that reformers laid out.
Work requirements and streamlined programs did not bring about the harrowing scenarios laid out by some advocates for the poor. They warned of skyrocketing crime rates and spikes in homelessness and hunger as the new law took effect in 1996 — limiting the time that recipients could get welfare and requiring that they work.
None of those things happened in South Carolina. Crime rates, for example, have dropped over the past decade.
But organizations that work with the homeless and the hungry report their services are more frequently used.
“Welfare reform didn’t change children’s lives very much,” said Olivia Golden, assistant secretary for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration. “To me, there is a huge unfinished agenda.”
Progress on several legislatively set goals that were part of welfare reform has fallen short:
• The percentage of married couples raising their own children in South Carolina has dropped.
• More young people are in foster care.
• A higher percentage of babies are born out of wedlock.
• Child poverty rates have remained steady.
However, over the past decade, South Carolina has succeeded in putting more welfare recipients to work.
The state’s welfare rolls are down by more than half since January 1997, to 16,782.
State spending on welfare has remained about $35 million a year since 1997. South Carolina also has received about $100 million a year from the federal government for welfare.
As caseloads have fallen, the state has been able to do more for welfare recipients, particularly those who are the hardest to move off assistance — the disabled, those with drug or alcohol problems and those with limited job skills.
Sue Berkowitz, director of the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center and an expert on welfare rules, said focusing on how reform has affected taxpayer spending is the wrong approach.
“I’m not sure if we should look at whether welfare reform has been a success for the state,” she said. “I think we should look at recipients. People are not out of poverty. Children are not out of poverty. People are struggling.”
Welfare payments alone won’t allow a S.C. family to make ends meet.
A family of four can get no more than $289 a month in welfare assistance, though that family can qualify for other benefits such as food stamps. Child care and transportation assistance also are available, but advocates for the poor said making ends meet still is difficult for those in need.
“Nobody can support themselves on the meager stipend that welfare gives,” Berkowitz said. “Just because you don’t see people sleeping on grates doesn’t mean things are going well.”
Backers of welfare reform say things are going well.
“Welfare reform has proved a tremendous success over the past decade,” President George W. Bush said in February, signing a five-year extension of welfare reform laws. “Now, we're building on that progress by renewing welfare reform with a billion dollar increase in child-care funding, and new grants to support healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood programs.”
NEXT STEPS
Officials in South Carolina and elsewhere worry about some aspects of the bill Bush signed.
The law, which goes into effect next month, limits what states can consider work for the purposes of collecting federal money. The tighter rules also reduce a credit that states use to lower the percentage of welfare recipients who must work.
That means states must put a higher proportion of welfare recipients into jobs or face the loss of federal money. That, in turn, could mean fewer opportunities for job training and assistance for welfare recipients.
The new standards will be hard to meet, said Linda Martin, director of the S.C. Department of Social Services’ division of family assistance.
Former Clinton administration official Golden said she, too, is troubled by aspects of the new law.
“I worry that it takes us in the wrong direction. It creates more rules without more resources.”
Golden helped the federal government enact the 1996 welfare reform laws, which brought about a fundamental shift in how the poor received aid.
Under the previous Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, welfare recipients were only required to register with a jobs program. The new system, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, requires that welfare recipients verify to the Department of Social Services they actively are seeking work by regularly completing forms on their job leads.
Aid recipients also must provide information on absentee fathers, from whom child support is then sought.
MORE WORK AHEAD
Social Services caseworkers connect aid recipients with an array of training programs designed to get them into the work force.
However, jobs alone won’t eliminate South Carolina’s welfare caseload.
Roughly half of welfare cases in South Carolina are so-called “child-only” cases — those where welfare goes to an adult for the care of a child they are not legally bound to raise.
Those cases establish a sort of floor for the number of welfare recipients. That’s because children, unlike adults, cannot be forced to work.
However, success in the reform effort’s other broader societal goals — fewer children born out of wedlock, fewer children in foster care, fewer family problems that lead to state responsibility for children — will allow states to dig into that floor.
Berkowitz said other changes would reduce the number of poor on welfare.
Those changes include: investment in and expansion of public transportation so low-wage workers could get to their jobs; the recruitment of better-paying jobs; more low-cost housing; and the establishment of a state earned-income tax credit.
“Don’t pat yourself on the back if people don’t have a place to live or if families don’t have enough to get by on,” Berkowitz said.
Ultimately, however, there are limits to what any welfare system can do to ease poverty, advocates say.
Many of those who move from welfare to work get low-wage jobs with few, if any, benefits.
In South Carolina and across the country, that reality means welfare needs continuing reform, Golden said.
“The job doesn’t end when we have people with low-wage, intermittent jobs,” she said.
Reach Senior Writer Wayne Washington at (803) 771-8385.
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