Families Poverty And Welfare Reform

This volume combines essays by public policy scholars with comments by social project directors who speak from their experiences in the field. Essays include critical assessments of policies to reduce dependency on welfare and a discussion of the effects of poverty on women and children, as well as a look at welfare reform in Illinois.

When the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act became law in 1996, the architects of welfare reform celebrated what they called the new "consensus" on welfare: that cash assistance should be temporary and contingent on recipients' seeking and finding employment. However, assessments about the assumptions and consequences of this radical change to the nation's social safety net were actually far more varied and disputed than the label "consensus" suggests. By examining the varied realities and accountings of welfare restructuring, Stretched Thin looks back at a critical moment of policy change and suggests how welfare policy in the United States can be changed to better address the needs of poor families and the nation. Using ethnographic observations, in-depth interviews with poor families and welfare workers, survey data tracking more than 750 families over two years, and documentary evidence, Sandra Morgen, Joan Acker, and Jill Weigt question the validity of claims that welfare reform has been a success. They show how poor families, welfare workers, and welfare administrators experienced and assessed welfare reform differently based on gender, race, class, and their varying positions of power and control within the welfare state. The authors document the ways that, despite the dramatic drop in welfare rolls, low-wage jobs and inadequate social supports left many families struggling in poverty. Revealing how the neoliberal principles of a drastically downsized welfare state and individual responsibility for economic survival were implemented through policies and practices of welfare provision and nonprovision, the authors conclude with new recommendations for reforming welfare policy to reduce poverty, promote economic security, and foster shared prosperity.

The 1996 welfare reform bill marked the beginning of a new era in public assistance. Although the new law has reduced welfare rolls, falling caseloads do not necessarily mean a better standard of living for families. In For Better and For Worse, editors Greg J. Duncan and P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and a roster of distinguished experts examine the evidence and evaluate whether welfare reform has met one of its chief goals-improving the well-being of the nation's poor children. For Better and For Worse opens with a lively political history of the welfare reform legislation, which demonstrates how conservative politicians capitalize on public concern over such social problems as single parenthood to win support for the radical reforms. Part I reviews how individual states redesigned, implemented, and are managing their welfare systems. These chapters show that most states appear to view maternal employment, rather that income enhancement and marriage, as key to improving child well-being. Part II focuses on national and multistate evaluations of the changes in welfare to examine how families and children are actually faring under the new system. These chapters suggest that work-focused reforms have not hurt children, and that reforms that provide financial support for working families can actually enhance children's development. Part III presents a variety of perspectives on policy options for the future. Remarkable here is the common ground for both liberals and conservatives on the need to support work and at the same time strengthen safety-net programs such as Food Stamps. Although welfare reform-along with the Earned Income Tax Credit and the booming economy of the nineties-has helped bring mothers into the labor force and some children out of poverty, the nation still faces daunting challenges in helping single parents become permanent members of the workforce. For Better and For Worse gathers the most recent data on the effects of welfare reform in one timely volume focused on improving the life chances of poor children.

Since their historic high in 1994, welfare caseloads in the United States have dropped an astounding 59 percent--more than 5 million fewer families receive welfare. Family and Child Well-Being after Welfare Reform, now in paperback, explores how low-income children and their families are faring in the wake of welfare reform. Contributors to the volume include leading social researchers. Can existing surveys and other data be used to measure trends in the area? What key indicators should be tracked? What are the initial trends after welfare reform? What other information or approaches would be helpful? The book covers a broad range of topics: an update on welfare reform (Douglas J. Besharov and Peter Germanis); ongoing major research (Peter H. Rossi); material well-being, such as earnings, benefits, and consumption (Richard Bavier); family versus household (Wendy D. Manning); fatherhood, cohabitation, and marriage (Wade F. Horn); teenage sex, pregnancy, and nonmarital births (Isabel V. Sawhill); child maltreatment and foster care (Richard J. Gelles); homelessness and housing (John C. Weicher); child health and well-being (Lorraine V. Klerman); nutrition, food security, and obesity (Harold S. Beebout); crime, juvenile delinquency, and dysfunctional behavior (Lawrence W. Sherman); drug use (Peter Reuter); mothers' work and child care (Julia B. Isaacs); and the activities of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Don Winstead and Ann McCormick). When welfare reform was first debated, many people feared that it would hurt the poor, especially children. The contributors find little evidence to suggest this has occurred. As time limits and other programmatic requirements take hold, more information will be needed to assess the condition of low-income families after welfare reform. This informative volume establishes a baseline for that assessment.

Since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was enacted, policy makers, agency administrators, community activists, and academics from a broad range of disciplines have debated and researched the implications of welfare reform in the United States. Most of the attention, however, has focused on urban rather than rural America. Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty examines welfare participants who live in chronically poor rural areas of the United States where there are few job opportunities and poor systems of education, transportation, and child care. Kathleen Pickering and her colleagues look at welfare reform as it has been experienced in four rural and impoverished regions of the United States: American Indian reservations in South Dakota, the Rio Grande region, Appalachian Kentucky, and the Mississippi Delta. Throughout these areas the rhetoric of reform created expectations of new opportunities to find decent work and receive education and training. In fact, these expectations have largely gone unfulfilled as welfare reform has failed to penetrate poor areas where low-income families remain isolated from the economic and social mainstream of American society. Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty sheds welcome light on the opportunities and challenges that welfare reform has imposed on low-income families situated in disadvantaged areas. Combining both qualitative and quantitative research, it will be an excellent guide for scholars and practitioners alike seeking to address the problem of poverty in rural America.

The Brookings Institution's Welfare Reform & Beyond Initiative was created to inform the critical policy debates surrounding the upcoming congressional reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and a number of related programs that were created or dramatically altered by the 1996 landmark welfare reform legislation. The goal of the project has been to take the large volume of existing and forthcoming research studies and shape them into a more coherent and policy-oriented whole. This capstone collection gathers twenty brief essays (published between January 2001 and February 2002) that focus on assessing the record of welfare reform, specific issues likely to be debated before the TANF reauthorization, and a broader set of policy options for low-income families. It is a reader-friendly volume that will provide policymakers, the press, and the interested public with a comprehensive guide to the numerous issues that must be addressed as Congress considers the future of the nation's antipoverty policies. The collection covers the following topics and features a new introduction from the editors: - An Overview of Effects to Date - Welfare Reform Reauthorization: An Overview of Problems and Issues - A Tax Proposal for Working Families with Children - Welfare Reform and Poverty - Reducing Non-Marital Births - Which Welfare Reforms are Best for Children? - Welfare and the Economy - What Can Be Done to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Out-of-Wedlock Births? - Changing Welfare Offices - State Programs - Welfare Reform and Employment - Fragile Families, Welfare Reform, and Marriage - Health Insurance, Welfare, and Work - Helping the Hard-to-Employ - Sanctions and Welfare Reform - Child Care and Welfare Reform - Job Retention and Advancement in Welfare Reform - Housing and Welfare Reform - Non-Citizens - Block Grant Structure - Food Stamps - Work Support System - Possible Welfare Re

This volume examines the effects of mid 1990s welfare reform in the state of Oregon. The reforms made cash assistance temporary and contingent on recipients' seeking and finding employment. Based on comprehensive research conducted in the late 1990s, researchers interviewed and observed low-income families across the state, as well as welfare workers and administrators. These interviews led to new definitions of the problems facing those who work within the welfare delivery system and the people the system serves. The researchers assessed the strengths and shortcoming of welfare reform, and they suggest policy directions that will promote economic security and family well being. The reasons for the overall failure of welfare reform, the authors concluded, are complex and rooted in a misdiagnosis of the reasons that millions of families are poor and dependence on policy solutions "that intensified economic insecurity and reproduced inequalities more than they fostered poverty reduction or economic opportunity." The authors call for an immediate effort to build a stronger social safety net and to repeal the most onerous provisions of welfare reform. They recommend a host of policies to promote economic security including a focus on developing higher wage jobs, health care reform, and access to high quality and affordable higher education, housing and child care.

Noting that the mid-1990s are an era of experimentation in welfare initiatives, this publication summarizes 34 research studies on children and welfare reform. Articles include studies of children and parents in poverty, studies of program models likely to have direct implications for children, and outcome evaluations of welfare-to-work programs that show how some of the programs affect children. Studies were chosen if they illuminated at least one of the three major ways welfare reform affects children's growth and development: by affecting family income; by affecting the levels of stress on adults receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children and their parenting styles; or by influencing the access to and the quality of services that children receive. The studies are categorized into seven areas: (1) developmental risks for children in poverty; (2) profiles of adults on AFDC; (3) economic issues for families leaving welfare for work; (4) program strategies and their implications for children; (5) child care; (6) child health; and (7) strategies for families with teenage parents. Implications of each study for public policy makers, educators, community leaders, and advocates are highlighted. (JPB)