ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 13, 1996 TAG: 9610120016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WENDELL E. PRIMUS
CONSIDERING the level of rhetorical abuse and conflicting public information about our prior welfare laws, it is no wonder many Americans assume our safety-net government programs are a failure, creating dependency and producing poverty. Contrary to the prevailing political wisdom, poverty figures the Census Bureau issued last month show that government welfare programs do work. Both the number and the percentage of individuals removed from poverty by safety-net programs reached an all-time high in 1995.
These census data show that without government programs, 57.6 million people would have been poor last year, but when government benefits are counted - including food stamps, housing, school-lunch and earned-income tax credit benefits - the number of poor people plummets to 30.3 million. In other words, the safety-net programs lifted 27 million people out of poverty.
In addition, most of those who remain poor are significantly less so than they would have been without the safety net. The census data show that safety-net programs reduced the depth of poverty by 70 percent.
To be sure, we cannot determine exactly how individuals and institutions would have acted if Social Security and means-tested programs did not exist. But the conclusion that emerges from these data is inescapable - when the safety net is strengthened, poverty is reduced, and when the safety net weakens, poverty is increased.
Consider what happened in the last two recessions. During both the recession of the early 1980s and the downturn of the early 1990s, the number of people who were poor before receipt of government benefits climbed by 10 million to 11 million. When benefits and taxes are taken into account, the number of poor people still grew by 11 million during the recession of the early 1980s; some people were lifted out of poverty by government benefits, but others were pushed into poverty by the taxes they paid. But in contrast, during the recession of the early 1990s, the number of poor people grew only 5.5 million - half as much - when benefits and taxes are taken into account. Why? Because the safety net was much stronger.
The recession of the early 1980s hit just as we were making most poor mothers with earnings ineligible for Aid for Families with Dependent Children, subjecting more low-income working families to taxes, cutting food stamps, removing individuals from disability rolls and letting AFDC benefits erode sharply in purchasing power. By the recession of the early 1990s, things had changed - Congress and the White House had acted on a bipartisan basis to expand the EITC substantially, restore food-stamp benefit cuts, enable more disabled children to enter the Supplemental Security Income program and extend AFDC to more two-parent families. In addition, some states had secured waivers enabling more low-income working parents to receive AFDC. Further major improvements were made in 1993 in both the EITC and food stamps.
The link between the strength of the safety net and poverty among children is especially strong. The number of children removed from poverty by government-benefit programs doubled between 1983 and 1995. Not coincidentally, federal expenditures for children increased by 50 percent on a real per-capita basis during the same period. It is no mystery why the safety net is now lifting more children out of poverty than ever before.
Also of interest is the fact that most of the children the safety net now removes from poverty are children in working families. Their families' low wages are supplemented by various safety-net benefits.
Furthermore, a strengthened safety net appears to have contributed as much or more to the low poverty rates in 1995 as the strengthening of the economy. Compare 1989, the peak year of the economic recovery of the 1980s, to 1995. In 1989, some 20 percent of Americans were poor before receipt of government benefits. In 1995, some 22 percent - a larger number - were poor before government benefits. In other words, the economy, by itself, lifted fewer people out of poverty last year - and also fewer children - than it did in 1989. After government benefits are factored, however, the poverty rates both for the overall population and for children were lower last year than in 1989. A stronger safety net made the difference.
Today, few elected officials are willing to defend the U.S. social-welfare system. Yet the hard fact is that the safety net lifts millions of children, elderly people and others out of poverty.Yes, our current welfare system has badly needed reforming. But the welfare system did not merit the shredding it will receive as a result of enactment of the new welfare law.
Years from now, we are likely to look back at 1995 and 1996 as the time when our child safety net was strongest. Only in the world of campaign rhetoric can one ignore the evidence and conclude that cutting federal safety-net expenditures by $54 billion over the next six years (and allowing the states to withdraw another $40 billion), as the new welfare law does, will improve rather than weaken the safety net.
When the next recession hits and federal funds fail to expand automatically to meet rising need because welfare is now a block grant, these problems will intensify. Let us hope that by that time, the White House and Congress have ended the politicization - and scapegoating - of poor families and have repaired the damage to a safety net that, for all its flaws, has accomplished a great deal.
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