ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996 TAG: 9603010090
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEOFF SEAMANS
THE WORD "welfare" has become so loaded with negative connotations that its meaning is frequently broadened to include any governmental program or policy to which the speaker is opposed.
On the right, for example, "welfare" is sometimes used to mean virtually anything - food stamps, subsidized school lunches, Medicaid, public housing - that aids the poor. Meanwhile, some on the left have made "corporate welfare" and "welfare for the rich" commonplace phrases to describe tax and other policies that favor the affluent.
The word stands in danger of being expanded into meaninglessness. Under this expanded rubric of "welfare," you could just as logically (though not as easily politically) add veterans' benefits, farm subsidies, the mortgage-interest tax deduction, Social Security retirement benefits, the progressive income tax, a flat income tax, unemployment benefits, whatever. Virtually all government policies and programs - or, for that matter the absence of same - help or hurt some people more than others, and so could be called "welfare."
So, a definition: By "welfare," I mean the dispensing of unrestricted cash benefits (not housing vouchers or food stamps or school lunches) to able-bodied (not disabled or elderly) people (not corporations) by reason of their having low or no other income (and not because they have served in the military, or accrued unemployment-insurance credits while working, or in some other way earned a benefit).
In other words, by "welfare" I basically mean Aid to Families with Dependent Children, though some states also have other general-relief programs that might qualify. This, I think, is what most people mean by "welfare" when they're not trying to make debating points.
AFDC is not, as sometimes assumed, a Great Society legacy of the '60s. It has been around as a national program since 1935; it supplanted the "mothers' pensions" that had begun in Illinois, as a state program, in 1911.
It is the sharp criticism of AFDC, and resentment of "welfare mothers," that is of more recent vintage.
The question: Why did welfare, after existing more or less quietly for decades, become widely regarded as in desperate need of reform, even abolition?
Answer: If the essence of the program didn't change, then something external to it must have.
Next question: What changed externally that affected attitudes toward welfare?
A few possibilities:
Erosion of unofficial sanctions against unwed motherhood.
The idea of providing assistance to low-income parents (usually mothers) of young children whose other parent was dead or absent, arose in an era when few people willingly chose single parenthood. Today, illegitimate-birth rates are soaring; many people, including many AFDC recipients, have voluntarily opted for single parenthood.
For that, some people blame AFDC. But if AFDC is to blame, why has the number of illegitimate births continued to climb even as AFDC benefits have shrunk? And if economic calculations were governing the decision, why would anyone choose unwed parenting - a strong predictor of lifetime poverty - at all?
One quick-fix reform, already adopted in many places, is to make two-parent families eligible for AFDC. But if welfare is only a marginal cause of the rise in illegitimate births, this reform likely will have only a marginal effect on reducing unwed parenthood.
Working mothers.
During AFDC's early decades, mothers were generally expected to stay home with their children. AFDC was a way of providing an income to widowed, abandoned and never-wed mothers so they could stay home with their children.
Today, more mothers work outside their homes than not. Staying at home with the kids is regarded as a fine thing if you want to and can afford to. No longer, however, is it regarded as something that the taxpayers - many of whom themselves depend on two incomes just to get by - ought to subsidize.
The economic decline of low-skilled labor.
Welfare critics frequently note that you sometimes can make more on welfare than by working. About that, they're often correct, particularly when Medicaid eligibility is taken into account.
Less often, though, is the follow-up point made: This is not the result of welfare becoming so lucrative, but of jobs at or near the bottom of the employment ladder coming to pay so little.
All in all, welfare seems less a failed program than a program that has failed to keep up with the times. Reform welfare? Sure. But take a look, too, at what's happened to the times.
LENGTH: Medium: 89 linesby CNB