Where We Stand: Our Principles On Building on Welfare Reform

For most Americans, the word “poverty” suggests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. However, only a small number of the 35 million persons classified as “poor” by the Census Bureau fit that description. Today, the typical American defined as poor by the government not only has a refrigerator, a stove, and a clothes washer, but also has a car, home air conditioning, a microwave, and a color television. Far more important than residual material hardship is behavioral poverty: a breakdown in the values and conduct that lead to the formation of healthy families, stable personalities, and self-sufficiency. This includes eroded work ethic and dependency, lack of educational aspiration and achievement, inability or unwillingness to control one’s children, increased single parenthood and illegitimacy, criminal activity, and drug and alcohol abuse. The core dilemma of the traditional welfare state is that prolific spending intended to alleviate material poverty has led to an increase in behavioral poverty.

The erosion of marriage is both the predominant cause of child poverty and welfare dependence and a major factor in most of America’s social problems generally. The absence of marriage and fathers in the home has a strong negative impact on almost all aspects of child development. More than 80 percent of long-term child poverty occurs in broken or never-married homes.

In 1996, Congress successfully reformed part of the welfare system to build self-sufficiency. The conventional welfare system rewarded non-work and non-marriage. By promoting dependence and illegitimacy, it increased poverty, crime, and a host of social ills. In 1996, Congress partially changed the direction of welfare assistance by replacing the failed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with a new program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Under TANF, many recipients are required to work or engage in constructive activities that lead to self-sufficiency as a condition of getting aid. Consequently, the rates of child poverty and welfare dependence have plummeted, and employment among single mothers has skyrocketed.

The decline in marriage continues to trap families and children in poverty. Nearly two-thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes. Each year, an additional 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock. Increasing marriage would substantially reduce child poverty and other social problems. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost three-quarters of them would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

Recognizing these facts, Congress included in the 1996 welfare reform two basic national goals: reducing unwed births and restoring marriage. Federal legislators intended for state governments to use Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds to achieve these goals; but while state governments have received nearly $100 billion in federal TANF dollars, state welfare bureaucracies have failed to implement any significant pro-marriage agendas.As a consequence, the nation continues to run a welfare system that actively penalizes rather than promotes marriage, with devastating social consequences and continuing welfare dependence.

New legislation should be created that requires a portion of TANF funds to be directed specifically at programs that strengthen marriage and reduce illegitimacy. As part of TANF reauthorization, Congress should implement the Bush Administration’s request to have $300 million in TANF funds allocated to promote healthy marriages, particularly among low-income couples. Such programs should include education on the value of marriage for high-school students in at-risk communities, public advertising campaigns, promarriage counseling and relationship skills training for unmarried parents at the time of a child’s birth, and premarital counseling for engaged couples.

Despite the success of the 1996 reform, many of the work-related aspects of welfare reform are quite limited. Currently, over half of the 2 million adults enrolled in TANF remain idle on the rolls, merely collecting welfare and not engaging in work or other constructive activities. Congress must continue the principles of the original reform by conditioning benefits on activity that leads to self-sufficiency rather than on inactivity that leads to dependency.

Low levels of parental work are a major cause of child poverty. In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of adult work during a year, according to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year—the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week through the year—nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.Work requirements must be strengthened in the reauthorization of the welfare reform legislation. To do this, it is not enough simply to increase required activity hours. Participation rates must be increased. States should be required to have a minimum of 55 percent of adult-headed TANF households engaged in constructive activity by 2009.

Public housing and food stamp programs were largely untouched by the 1996 welfare reform and continue to reward idleness and dependency. The successful principles of TANF should be applied to them as well. Congress should enact legislation requiring able-bodied non-elderly adult recipients receiving food stamps and public housing to perform community service work, supervised job search, or training as a condition of receiving aid.