ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 6, 1996 TAG: 9606060038
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
IN VIRGINIA as elsewhere, the welfare problem and the poverty problem are often considered as though they were one and the same. They aren't.
Welfare reform efforts, such as those proposed by Gov. George Allen and passed by Virginia's General Assembly, may eventually help numerous poor children by helping their parents, mostly mothers, escape the debilitating welfare system.
That's assuming enough investment is made in child care, health care, transportation, education and job placement to help assure a successful transition into the work world.
But as the need for such support services ought to make clear, the prospect of a job - by itself - isn't necessarily enough to assure escape from poverty. A job often provides less support than welfare, when you take into account health care and child care and other costs.
Their enthusiasm for welfare reform notwithstanding, lawmakers in Virginia as elsewhere have shown far too little regard for those trying to do the right thing: working parents and their children caught in a struggle with poverty.
A study released this week by the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation drives home the point. Nationwide, more than one-third of all poor children - 5.6 million kids - live in working-poor families. The problem, suggests the report, is rooted in the steady decline in the value of low-skill jobs - the work of the working poor.
Explains Douglas Nelson, the foundation's executive director: ``In the late 1960s, a young adult working full time at the minimum wage could keep a family of three out of poverty. But in 1994, a household head working full time at the minimum wage earned only 70 percent of the income needed to lift a family of three out of poverty.''
The minimum wage, of course, is a national issue - not in the bailiwick of Virginia lawmakers. But does anyone remember the Commission to Stimulate Personal Initiative and Overcome Poverty? It was doing its thing four years ago, headed by Lt. Gov. Don Beyer. It recommended among other things a Virginia Earned-Income Tax Credit, aimed at increasing the incentives for work and easing the financial struggles of the working poor with children.
That recommendation got the old political heave-ho, the same response state lawmakers have given other proposals of particular help to low-income working families - such as repeal of the shamefully regressive sales tax on food.
To be sure, according to the Casey study, only 13 percent of Virginia's children live in poverty. That's down from 15 percent in 1993, and better than the national average of 21 percent. But it's still a lot of kids in poverty. And, in a number of ways, though more prosperous than most states, Virginia does little more than the minimum to protect children's well-being.
It would be nice to end welfare as we know it. Meantime, Virginia should revisit the earned-income tax credit, repeal of the food tax, health-care and child-care supports and other means of easing the condition of the working poor as they know it.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB