History
1930s to 1970s
Reasons for policy reversal
Concern about dependency
The idea that the welfare-receiving poor had become too dependent upon public assistance also encouraged the act. The idea was that those who were on welfare for many years lost any initiative to find jobs. Those on welfare realized that taking up a job would mean not only losing benefits but also incur child care, transportation and clothing costs. Their new jobs probably would not pay well or include health insurance, whereas on welfare they would have been covered by Medicaid. Therefore, there are many reasons welfare recipients would be discouraged from working.1980s and 1990s
In the 1980s,2012
In July 2012, thePassage in 104th Congress
A central pledge of Clinton's campaign was to reform the welfare system, adding changes such as work requirements for recipients. However, by 1994, the Clinton Administration appeared to be more concerned withProvisions
PRWORA established TANF as AFDC's replacement. The Congressional findings in PRWORA highlighted dependency, out-of-wedlock birth, and intergenerational poverty as the main contributors to a faulty system. In instituting a block grant program, PRWORA granted states the ability to design their own systems, as long as states met a set of basic federal requirements. The bill's primary requirements and effects included the following: * Ending welfare as an entitlement program; * Requiring recipients to begin working after two years of receiving benefits; * Placing a lifetime limit of five years on benefits paid by federal funds; * Aiming to encourage two-parent families and discouraging out-of-wedlock births; * Enhancing enforcement of child support, through the creation of aBan on food stamps for drug felons
One component of the PRWORA was a lifetime ban on the use of food stamps through TANF for people convicted of drug felonies. It disallowed those with federal or state felony drug convictions from receiving benefits from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and TANF for life. Although it applied to all 50 states by default, states were also given the option to opt out of the ban. As of May 2019, only two states (South Carolina and West Virginia) have a lifetime ban for drug felons. The change is part of criminal justice reforms lawmakers have passed in aiming to prevent recidivism or the tendency for convicted criminals to reoffend.Immigrant welfare
Another provision of PRWORA made some immigrants entering the United States ineligible for federal public benefits during the first five years after securing "qualified" immigrant status. Qualified immigrants include: * Lawful permanent residents (people with green cards) * Refugees (1 year for refugee status) * Immigrants granted asylum or those with conditional entrants * Immigrants granted parole by theBenefit programs
Two of the key policies under PRWORA are the inclusion of immigrants in TANF and Medicaid. In 2009, 22 states had extended TANF benefits and Medicaid to immigrants. Five states (California, Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, and Washington) provide assistance to some nonqualified immigrants. Oftentimes, these policies have had discriminatory effects towards minorities. For instance, race has a strong negative correlation for TANF assistance granted to immigrants, as states with large African American populations were more likely to correspond with excluding lawful permanent residents from the program. In addition, states with large immigrant populations were more likely to correspond with people participating in Medicaid, as the program was designed to incentivize high-poverty states to include more people. In fact, high-poverty states acquire higher federal funding rates for each individual they cover through Medicaid.Costs to inclusion
A large body of research examines the way that racial composition, welfare structure, and immigrant population determine how states include immigrants in welfare. Research shows that a larger percentage of African-American recipients leads to stricter rules governing initial eligibility, less flexibility in welfare work requirements, and lower cash benefits to welfare recipients. There is also a negative relationship between cash benefit levels and percentage of welfare recipients. In analyzing the effects of PRWORA, Hero and Preuhs find that the most inclusive states offer more assistance and welfare generosity to immigrants. These states, however, face challenges in allocating funds due to a larger minority population and cut individual benefit levels per recipient. Moreover, these states assess the costs for inclusion based on racial compositions in the state. In terms of TANF benefits, the most inclusive states have had the largest decline in benefit levels. For example, California has seen a 22.6% decrease in TANF benefit levels for a family of three.Addressing concerns
Regardless of incorporation, welfare effort and TANF benefits decline as the Latino population grows from a nominal size to 10 percent of the population. After that point, incorporation influences policy in a distinct manner. While incorporation is a function of population, it is not perfectly responsive considering the populations that would perceive benefits (i.e. population greater than 10%) only grew from five states in 1984 to ten in 2001. The remaining states exhibited negative relationships between Latino population and welfare generosity with legislative incorporation not overcoming this phenomenon. The last major reform effort of PRWORA was in 2002 when the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to reauthorize legislation to restore some of the benefits stripped by the act. The bill reauthorized federal funds for TANF and healthcare services. The House, however, failed to authorize the bill.Work Requirements
Opponents of entitlement welfare services introduced the idea of work requirements for previous entitlement programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Instead of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) which was an entitlement program, the shift from AFDC to TANF introduced the idea of having to qualify for welfare through employment. Research from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found, however, that work requirements do not cut poverty as advocates for work requirements would hope. The CBPP found that increased employment weakened over time after the work requirements were put in place. They also found that "stable employment among recipients subject to work requirements proved the exception, not the norm." As well as citing many barriers to employment, even after work programs were introduced. Finally, they found that most individuals who were subject to work requirements "remained poor, and some became poorer."Impact of Work Requirements on Women
It is reported by the National Women's Law Center that "more than 10 million women are the sole support for their children and families." In addition in the labor economy, most women are relegated to service sector jobs and jobs dubbed as low-wage earning jobs. Because of these factors, women are in a unique position when it comes to welfare, poverty, and work. Without proper education and training programs, women are often not able to obtain jobs that provide an income large enough to lift themselves and their families out of welfare. Another major impact of work requirements on women in welfare programs is the absence of adequate and affordable child care. This issue disproportionately affects single mothers on welfare who are required to get a job but are also the primary caregiver to their children. According to census data from 1995, one year before PWORWA was enacted, found that "11 million children under age 6 have mothers who work outside the hoe and thus make use of some form of child care. It has been estimated that this number will increase by almost 2 million when mothers who previously received AFDC assistance are required to find employment." Child care provides a critical barrier to low-income mothers who now are required to find work.Consequences
Welfare and poverty rates both declined during the late 1990s, leading many commentators to declare that the legislation was a success. One editorial in ''Impact on federal budget
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in March 1999 that the TANF basic block grant (authorization to spend) would total $16.5 billion annually through 2002, with the amount allocated to each state based on the state's spending history. These block grant amounts proved to be more than the states could initially spend, as AFDC and TANF caseloads dropped by 40% from 1994 to 1998 due to the booming economy. As a result, states had accumulated surpluses which could be spent in future years. States also had the flexibility to use these funds for child care and other programs. CBO also estimated that TANF outlays (actual spending) would total $12.6 billion in fiscal years 1999 and 2000, grow to $14.2 billion by 2002, and reach $19.4 billion by 2009. For scale, total spending in FY 2000 was approximately $2 trillion, so this represents around 0.6%. Further, CBO estimated that unspent balances would grow from $7.1 billion in 1998 to $25.4 billion by 2005.Impact on caseloads and employment
The law's effect goes far beyond the minor budget impact, however. TheImpact on crime
A 2017 study in the '' American Economic Review'' by Crystal S. Yang examined the effects of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act's ban on welfare benefits and food stamps to individuals convicted of felony drug offenses. Yang determined that access to welfare and food stamps at the time of release "substantially decreases recidivism among newly released drug offenders".Earned Income Tax Credit Effect
Besides the economic trends occurring during the passing and implementation of PRWORA; researchers cannot pinpoint the exact factors that led to the decrease in enrollment in AFDC/TANF, even in times of economic downturn. Some labor economists argue that the continuing decline in AFDC/TANF enrollment was not due to improved standard of living but offset by an exponential growth in the Earned Income Tax Credit, which by 2012 was the largest cash-benefit entitlement program in the United States.Dot Com Bubble and Crash of 2008
The first tests for persistent effects on income and household financial health under PRWORA were the recession caused by the 2001 tech bubble crash and the 2008 economic meltdown caused by the housing bubble and the instability of the financial markets. During these two periods of economic problems, the enrollment in TANF followed a downwards trend. As enrollment in TANF decreased, macroeconomic indicators such as unemployment rate, number of children in poverty and extreme poverty, and number of single-parent households below the poverty line followed an upwards trend with sharp increases during the late 2007-2009 recession. Alleging that enrollment in the program did not track poverty, critics of welfare reform point to this as a failure of the PRWORA.Criticism
Logically, but not in the heated and vitriolic politics created by the attack on welfare, a concern with the relationship of welfare to dependency should have directed attention to the deteriorating conditions of the low-wage labor market. After all, if there were jobs that paid living wages, and if health care and child care were available, a great many women on AFDC would leap at the chance of a better income and a little social respect.PRWORA has been accused of attempting to fight poverty by "controlling the reproductive capacity of women, compelling unmarried mothers to work outside the home, and coercing women into relations with men."Thomas, Susan L. "'Ending Welfare as We Know It,'" or Farewell to the Rights of Women on Welfare? A Constitutional and Human Rights Analysis of the Personal Responsibility Act." University of Detroit Mercy Law Review 78.2 2001: p. 179-202. Hollins Digital Commons. Web. Barbara Ehrenreich, a feminist political activist, has said that the bill was motivated by racism and misogyny, using stereotypes of lazy, overweight, slovenly, sexually indulgent and "endlessly fecund" African-American welfare recipients, and assumed that out-of-wedlock births were "illegitimate" and that only a male could confer respectability on a child. PRWORA dismissed the value of the unpaid work of raising a family, and insisted that mothers get paid work, "no matter how dangerous, abusive, or poorly paid". Three assistant secretaries at the Department of Health and Human Services, Mary Jo Bane, Peter B. Edelman, and Wendell E. Primus, resigned to protest the law. According to Edelman, the 1996 welfare reform law destroyed the safety net. It increased poverty, lowered income for single mothers, put people from welfare into homeless shelters, and left states free to eliminate welfare entirely. It moved mothers and children from welfare to work, but many of them are not making enough to survive. Many of them were pushed off welfare rolls because they didn't show up for an appointment, because they could not get to an appointment for lack of child care, said Edelman, or because they were not notified of the appointment.
Causes of poverty
Welfare reform efforts such as PRWORA have been criticized for focusing almost exclusively on individual failure and irresponsibility, especially among people of color, as factors leading to poverty.Mink, Gwendolyn. "From Welfare to Wedlock: Marriage Promotion and Poor Mothers' Inequality." ''The Good Society'', vol. 11 no. 3, 2002, pp. 68-73. ''Project MUSE'', doi:10.1353/gso.2003.0011 However, there is no scholarly consensus on the etiology of poverty, and many theories focus instead on structural inequalities such as disparities in pay and hiring discrimination. The concept of "personal responsibility" is further critiqued for its lack of consideration of familial responsibilities, such as caring for children and elderly parents, which are placed more heavily upon women.Gendered and racial poverty
The bill has also been criticized for ignoring and not accommodating for the complexities of gender, color, and sexual preference discrimination within society that contribute to the poverty of people of color, women, and LGBT people. Diana Pearce, the director of the Center for Women's Welfare, writes that poverty for women is fundamentally different from that for men, but welfare itself is created for poor men. She asserts that women's poverty is caused by two problems that are unique for women: the responsibility to provide all or most financial support for their children and the disadvantages they face in the labor market. In 1988, the average woman received 66 percent of the income of what an average man earned; the average female college graduate working a full-time job still earned less than the average male high school graduate.U.S. Bureau of the Census, Money Income: 1988 But the earnings disparity is not the only form of disadvantage that women face in the labor market. Many women are unable to obtain a full-time job not just due to gender discrimination, but also because of unavailable, expensive, or inadequate day care. This problem is only amplified when considering the issue of the segregation of women into underpaid work, limiting possibilities of economic growth. Susan L. Thomas made similar arguments, stating that these disadvantages were created from masculinism. She argued that masculinism gives men more roles in the labor market, while reserving the responsibility of "family" and reproduction to (white) women, resulting in a loss of opportunities for promotions and pressure on women to prioritize their domestic duties and to work jobs that can accommodate for these duties. She asserts that welfare systems, including PRWORA, were not made for women, because they have been created based on the male Breadwinner model, which believes that people are poor because they are jobless and the solution is to give them jobs. But because of the discrimination women faced, simply finding full-time jobs that paid enough money for independence from welfare is not easy for poor women, Thomas proclaimed and added, "for women it is not the lack of employment that leads to their disproportionately high rates of poverty, rather their poverty stems from the ideological consequences of a gender-biased structuring of the distribution of power and privilege." Thomas then criticized the bill for not taking all these factors into consideration when deciding who is "worthy" and "unworthy" of welfare.Propagating stereotypes
Many critics have argued that the PRWORA bases its reasoning on the stereotype of single black mothers who receive welfare, commonly known as the "welfare queen." The welfare queen is one who often deliberately and intentionally becomes pregnant in order to increase their welfare. The woman is envisioned as being lazy, uncaring of her children (who are also stereotyped as having been born out-of-wedlock), and unwilling to work. This version of the woman is labelled as "undeserving" of their welfareViolation of universal human rights
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act has continuously been criticized for its violations of universal human rights. Susan L. Thomas, a professor atViolation of women's constitutional rights
PRWORA requires unmarried mothers to identify the father and receive child support from said father. If mothers refuse to comply with these requirements, then their assistance grant is either reduced by at least 25 percent or withheld completely from them by their state. The bill also confers the legal status of parent to the biological fathers, and require unmarried mothers to permit biological fathers to develop "substantial relationships" with their children and to have a claim on the rearing of their children; this is the opposite of paternity law, which holds the "substantial relationship" a prerequisite to parental rights. These requirements have been criticized for violating women's constitutional right to family privacy and their decisions about child-rearing and family life, and ignoring the danger that establishing a connection with an abusive father may cause for both the mother and her children. According to a study by the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, it was found that "over half of the women receiving welfare said they had experienced physical abuse by an intimate male partner at some point during their adult lives." According to a mixed methods study about welfare recipients in Allegheny County, PA, in many cases, domestic violence follows a woman to work. This study finds that having a job in a specific location gives their abusive partners a place to follow these women to. As Brush explains, Work becomes a surveillance tactic of abusive men, often putting these women's jobs in jeopardy. Many abusive men also look down on women for their jobs and are unsupportive of their employment. They often prefer their partners to be home, possibly taking care of children they may have, Brush states. Employment is seen as something a woman does for herself, so this is often looked down upon by their abusive partners as they struggle to maintain control over their partners. Work can produce new fuel for conflict as women will be spending less time at home, and will be exposed to new social connections, some financial freedom, etc. Abuse can also interfere with a woman's employment, often causing women to go to the hospital when they should be working or making it so their injuries prevent them from going to work. Finally, conflict can sometimes follow these women to work, putting their employment in jeopardy and thus putting their welfare benefits in jeopardy. PRWORA requires states to submit a written documentation of their goals and strategies to reduce non-marital pregnancies and births, even offering a financial incentive of $20 million each to five states with the largest declines in their "illegitimacy ratios" and abortion rates. It is argued that this has resulted in states making abortions more inaccessible and legally punishing childbearing by not granting more assistance to families even after the number of children increases. This policy has been criticized for being a punitive system that violates the rights of both the women and their children by intruding on the mothers' constitutional rights to procreation,''Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson'', 316 U.S. 535 (1942) privacy, and reproductive choice,''Roe v. Wade,'' 410 U.S. 113 (1973) which includes their decisions to be a parent or not; and penalizing mothers for exercising their right to have children. Susan L. Thomas has pointed out the bill fails to prove enough governmental interest warrants its child exclusionary policy and attempts to conserve money through the penalization of women who exercise their constitutional reproductive rights.Single-mother households and "disconnected" families
Jason DeParle of the ''New York Times'', after interviews with single mothers, said that they have been left without means to survive, and have turned to desperate and sometimes illegal ways to survive, including shoplifting, selling blood, scavenging trash bins, moving in with friends, and returning to violent partners. A study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities stated that cutting access to welfare through the PRWORA was "a major factor in the lack of progress in reducing poverty among people in working single-mother families after 1995". While there was improvement in poverty rates for families not headed by single mothers, poor single mother households overall sunk further into poverty. Economists focusing on antipoverty policy have identified higher percentages of "disconnected" single mother households following the welfare legislation of the 1990s— households in extreme poverty that do not receive government assistance or wages from employment. A study conducted by economists at Rutgers University found that states with stricter limits on receiving benefits before one is required to find work cause more single mothers to become disconnected. These state rules, having been created after the loosening of federal authority by PRWORA, are identified as key considerations in the disconnecting of single mothers. The "Final Rule" provision enforced by the passing of PRWORA is a provision that attempts to establish paternity for children living in poverty. This provision created a more comprehensive system for establishing paternity of children by increasing access to voluntary paternity tests for men and their possible children. For single mothers attempting to receive child support, these mothers must first establish paternity for their children. This provision creates men's identities as "fathers". In addition, this provision disproportionately affects unwed mothers and attempts to police pre-marital relations by centering single mothers in the discussion of child support and welfare assistance. However, this act in its description claims that it is trying to increase the case-load of child support clients. In its description of the "Final Rule" provision, the Department of Health and Human Services writes that, "In 1992, only 54 percent of single-parent families with children had a child support order established and, of that number, only about one-half received the full amount due." When PRWORA was passed, one of the main concerns of politicians and lawmakers was that there was a high number of single mothers or unwed mothers receiving federal assistance stating that from 1970 to the 1990s, the rate of unwed mothers giving birth had increased three times its original rate, as well as unmarried teen mothers. When PRWORA was being discussed by lawmakers, there was an emphasis on decreasing the amount of single mothers or unwed mothers by promoting marriage and two parent households. PROWRA is legislation that promotes a heteronormative nuclear family structure by encouraging mothers to parent with the fathers of their children.Discrimination against unmarried women and LGBT women
When the bill was passed, critics denounced the bill for promoting and enforcing heterosexual marriage, which they argued was made implicit in the bill itself as it states: (1) Marriage is the foundation of a successful society. (2) Marriage is an essential constitution of a successful society, which promotes the interests of children. (3) Promotion of responsible fatherhood and motherhood is integral to successful child rearing and well being of children. The bill was also stated to discriminate against mothers "who parent dwithout legal partners." Mothers who "encourage the formation and maintenance of eterosexualtwo-parent families" did not have to work outside the home, even if them not working forced the family to continue to require state assistance. However, mothers who could not or did not want to find men to marry them were required to work outside the home, and unmarried mothers who had received state assistance for two months were required to perform community service. It also required single mothers who had received up to twenty four months of financial assistance, consecutively or not, to work outside the home thirty hours a week, and penalized mothers who did not work thirty hours a week by reducing or terminating her benefits. Critics have accused PRWORA for discriminating against unmarried women who have never been married, as they are required to "reveal the details of their children's conception to state officials", while divorced, unmarried women are exempt from submitting information, as PRWORA assumes the biological father of the children is the man to whom they were married to when the child was conceived. This has been criticized for violating the women's 14th Amendment right to make marital decisions without governmental interference (based on '' Loving v. Virginia'') and coercing women into creating or maintaining relationships with the biological fathers; this interference also does not satisfy the heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause.Strict regulations
PRWORA has been criticized for its terms, which permit all states to not assist people in poverty, even if they meet all the necessary criteria. It also does not offer additional federal funds to states that have depleted their block grant and contingency funds, thus leaving mothers and children (who meet the eligibility criteria) with no financial assistance. States are granted more freedom to create regulations that are stricter than federal laws. This manifests in regulations that: * Make women work outside the home sooner than is required * Create shorter working time limits than is required * Allow states to withhold cash benefits in cases where single mothers do not identify the biological father of her children * Discriminate households in which children are born while the mother is enrolled in welfare by not giving said households benefits * Withhold welfare from mothers whose children do not attend school without an explanation * Sanction households with adults younger than fifty-one who do not have and are not actively working to receive a high school diploma * Require drug tests of recipients * Enforce welfare regulations of former states for new state residents * Do not require states to provide cash benefits at allImpeding access to higher education and employment
Diana Spatz, executive director of ''Lifetime'', a statewide organization of low-income parents in California, advocates for the repeal of PRWORA because it prevents a woman from doing what she did prior to its passage: earn her bachelor's degree while supported by welfare. Vanessa D. Johnson, a professor at Northeastern University, asserts that the implementation of PRWORA cut access for single mothers, namely African American single mothers, to attaining a higher education for themselves. By creating time limits that force them into working without finishing a degree, Johnson says African American single mothers are left unable to better themselves through education. With education having such a strong correlation to higher wages, she considers it crucial that welfare policies allow for mothers to attend college in order to lift themselves out of poverty. Another criticism placed on PRWORA by some scholars is that its transition to work provisions negatively affect the ability of low-income mothers enrolled in the program to find a job. Single mothers enrolled in TANF tend to have lower rates of literacy, and therefore finding employment that within the time frame of the "workfare" component becomes more difficult, or leads to underemployment. Welfare-to-work programs have also been criticized for only offering training for low-wage work. An education-first approach has been proposed as an alternative that could provide welfare recipients with more options for employment. Although the incentivization of financial independence is a goal for both recipients and providers, many TANF enrollees feel disincentivized from finding paid work due to low pay and the instability of this transition.Varying rates of success
Critics of the law argue that poverty in America increased from 1979 onward after Reagan's presidential campaign criticized deficit spendingAthens County Department of Job and Family Services, January 2012, p. 5, ''Did Welfare Reform Work?'' Athens, Ohio: Athens County Department of Job and Family Services and that the temporary large reduction in the number of people collecting welfare was largely a result of steady and strong economic growth in the years following enactment of the law. Political scientist Joe Soss questions the definition of success, asking whether "success", as measured by caseload reduction, was merely a political construction for policy makers to easily claim credit in front of their constituencies. In analyzing the effects of welfare reform, he notes that caseload reduction is not very demanding, especially compared to improving material conditions in poor communities:The TANF program does not offer benefits sufficient to lift recipients out of poverty, and despite a strong economy, the majority of families who have moved off the TANF rolls have remained in poverty. Considerations of another traditional economic goal, reduction of inequality, only makes matters worse. Welfare reform has coincided with massive growth in income and wealth disparities; it has done little to slow the expansion of inequality and may have actually accelerated the trend. Has welfare reform created job opportunities for the poor? Has it promoted wages that allow low-wage workers to escape poverty? In both of these areas, the economic story remains the same: we have little evidence that reform has produced achievements that warrant the label of success.
See also
* The 2007–2009References
Further reading
* Albelda, Randy and Ann Withorn (eds). ''Lost Ground: Welfare Reform, Poverty, and Beyond.'' Brooklyn, New York: South End Press, 2002. * . * Riccucci, Norma M.External links