ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 11, 1996 TAG: 9612110043
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Boston Globe
PARENTS FORCED to take low-paying service jobs, child advocates say, may lose Medicaid and food stamps and may be unable to pay for child care.
The massive overhaul of the nation's welfare system aims in part to boost people out of poverty by putting them to work, but a new study indicates that most parents of poor children already have some kind of job.
The study, released Tuesday by the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, said that in 1994, 62 percent of poor children under age 6 lived with a family member who worked part or full time. Less than a third of the families of the nation's 6.1 million poor children relied solely on public assistance.
``The message for welfare reformers is that you can move people from nonworking poor to working poor, but they'll still be poor,'' said Lawrence Aber, director of the center. ``If you want people to not be poor, you have to do other things. Just putting them to work isn't always enough.''
The study comes at a time when child advocates are already alarmed about the possible impact that welfare reform may have on children, who account for two-thirds of the nation's welfare caseload. Child advocates worry that under the evolving state welfare plans - many of which set time limits on benefits and exclude from coverage additional children born to recipients - parents may lose their benefits if they cannot find jobs.
Parents forced to take low-paying service jobs, they say, may lose Medicaid and food stamps and may be unable to pay for adequate child care. In the end, they say, working parents and their children may wind up worse off than when they were on welfare.
Another study, by The Urban Institute, a nonprofit policy research organization in Washington, estimates that an additional 1.1 million children under 18 will fall below the poverty line as a result of the federal welfare reform law, even if the majority of their parents get some kind of work.
``The welfare debate not only misses the fact that many poor families already work, but that the law is going to make things considerably worse for some of those families,'' said Deborah Weinstein, director of the family income division of The Children's Defense Fund. ``The issue should be what can we do to make work pay. You do not do that by cutting back on the little assistance there is for working families who are already just barely scraping by.''
While there is hope that welfare reform could benefit children, advocates argue that reformers have been blinded to the full needs of the poor in their zeal to reduce the number of recipients. Advocates say that jobs must be augmented by support services, including child care, health insurance and training programs that lead to well-paying jobs that last.
``The concern is how to make work a viable option,'' said Martha Zaslow, assistant director of research for Child Trends, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington. ``If a mother does not have adequate child care and she is stressed and depressed about working, it will not be good for her children.''
The study also found that the number of the nation's poor children has risen steadily over the past two decades and dispels many stereotypes of who those children are. Between 1975 and 1994, the percentage of children under age 6 living below the poverty level in the United States rose from 18 to 25 percent, a 39 percent increase overall.
Much of the national increase was among white and suburban children. The poverty rate among suburban youths under age 6 rose by 59 percent during the period studied, compared with 45 percent in rural areas and 34 percent in urban areas. While the incidence of poverty among whites is lower than that among blacks, the poverty rate among white children grew twice as fast as that among black children, or 38 percent compared to 19 percent. Among Hispanic children the rate increased 43 percent.
The NCCP's study raises questions not only about the poor children of single parents, who account for the bulk of welfare recipients, but also of those in traditional homes. The study found that the young-child poverty rate in two-parent families in which one parent worked full time, rose from 6 percent in 1975 to 15 percent in 1994.
LENGTH: Medium: 77 linesby CNB