When President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, he said that it was intended to strike “at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty.” He added, “Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” Five decades and $25 trillion later, the welfare system has failed the poor. Poverty rates remain stagnant, and self-sufficiency languishes.
Total federal, state, and local government spending on over 80 different means-tested welfare programs now reaches over $1 trillion annually. The cost of welfare is unsustainable, and pouring dollars into an ever-increasing number of welfare programs has failed to improve rates of self-sufficiency. It is time to get welfare spending under control and to reform welfare programs to encourage self-reliance and truly improve the well-being of the poor.
FACT: In 1992, candidate Bill Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it”; since then, means-tested welfare spending has nearly tripled after adjusting for inflation.
- Adjusting for inflation, the nation spends 12 times more on means-tested welfare spending than it did when the War on Poverty began.
- In fact, means-tested welfare is the fastest-growing area of government spending.
FACT: The idea of reforming welfare to become a work activation program for able-bodied adults enjoys broad public support.
- Eighty-seven percent of Democrats and 94 percent of Republicans agree that “able-bodied adults that receive cash, food, housing, and medical assistance should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving those government benefits.”
- The mid 1990s welfare reform law, which established work requirements in welfare, decreased welfare dependence and child poverty while increasing employment amongst single mothers.
FACT: Children in single-parent homes are more than five times as likely to be poor compared to their peers in married-parent homes.
- In 1964, only 7 percent of births in America were outside marriage. Today, this number has climbed to more than 40 percent.
- Marriage reduces the probability of child poverty by 80 percent, and children raised by married parents are more likely to avoid risks that would hinder their ability to thrive.
- Marriage is one of the top factors in promoting human happiness; the decline in marriage rates over the past several decades should be of utmost concern to policymakers.
For more see Solutions: The Policy Briefing Book
