Ain't No Trust. Judith Levine
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of rewarding the undeserving have been with us since the beginning of our welfare state. Over time, single mothers and their children have lost their status as a deserving group and have been seen increasingly as unworthy of our support. Coupled with frustrations with the cash assistance program on all fronts, including among recipients of benefits themselves, this shift led to increasing demands for welfare reform and, ultimately, to the passage of reform in 1996.
WHAT POLICY CHANGES DID WELFARE REFORM MAKE?
While the 1996 legislation made many changes to AFDC and other programs (such as Food Stamps), I outline here the key changes it made to the AFDC program, since, as the main cash assistance program to low-income families, AFDC is often what people mean when they refer to “welfare.” Before reform, women like Bethany Grant, whom we met in the Introduction, received monthly cash assistance through AFDC, but reform replaced AFDC with a new program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).16 The word temporary underscores the idea that women like Susan Schiller, whom I interviewed after reform and whom we also met in the Introduction, should see the program as an emergency, short-term source of support between periods of employment or marriage to an employed spouse. Unlike Bethany, who had no limit on the amount of time she could receive cash assistance, Susan faced a lifetime limit of five years of receipt.17
Susan had received cash assistance, or “welfare,” four times in her life. Three of these were before reform and began when she gave birth to each of her first three children. These three times totaled about five years. Susan then remained off welfare for almost a decade until after reform, in 2001, when she was between jobs, was suffering from depression, and went back on welfare for about four or five months to get herself together before finding another job. Had reform’s time limits been in place during each of the times Susan received welfare, she would have reached her time limit before this last time. Though she had not used welfare in close to ten years, was out of work, was severely depressed, was the single mother of three minor children at the time, and received no child support from the fathers of any of her children, she would not have been eligible. For this reason Susan considered returning to welfare a last resort. However, since only her 2001 short stint was after reform, Susan actually had over four years before she would hit her time limit. If Susan’s trouble finding a job or the pressures of her son’s legal issues led her one day to return to welfare, she might end up reaching that limit. If so, then Susan would never be eligible for cash assistance again in her lifetime, no matter what financial disaster might befall her. Neither the loss of a job, a new baby in the house, a medical emergency, nor any other circumstance would allow her to be eligible.18
Unlike Bethany, who was encouraged but not required to find a job, when Susan was receiving cash assistance in 2001 she did face work requirements.19 The exact nature of these requirements differs across the states, but in Illinois, for a woman like Susan who was not caring for an infant at the time, was not in a domestic violence crisis, did not have a health condition deemed severe enough to warrant an exemption, was not caring for someone else with a severe health condition, and was not over the age of sixty, these requirements began immediately.
Like most Illinois welfare recipients since reform, Susan spent the first thirty days after she filed her application “working for her check,” meaning she had to do volunteer work cleaning, carrying boxes, and filing papers in a welfare office from 9 a.m. until noon five days a week to “earn” the $342 she received in cash assistance for the month.20 She was then sent to a job-training program that sent her out on job interviews. These interviews gave her little control over the kind of job she might get, her hours, or the job’s location. Luckily for Susan, she found a job that suited her needs through her own efforts and left the welfare rolls. It was this job that she left when she was trying to gain control over her son, leaving her in her current situation of getting neither welfare benefits nor earnings from work.21
Before reform, Bethany was guaranteed access to welfare benefits. The Social Security Act of 1935 made cash assistance a federal entitlement for low-income families. This meant that as long as a family met the eligibility criteria, it could not be denied benefits even in times of budgetary stress on the government. Susan enjoyed no such guarantee. Now the federal government gives each state a block grant to cover its cash assistance program for low-income families. If there is high demand for welfare benefits—for example, during a period of economic recession—the block grant could run out of money.22 If so, the state is allowed to say that it will no longer pay welfare benefits because welfare reform has taken away the federal entitlement to those benefits. Many critics of welfare reform point to this ending of entitlement as the most audacious change reform made because it undoes what Roosevelt did when he established a right to benefits under the Social Security Act of 1935.
To discourage nonmarital childbearing, reform also allowed states to decide not to give welfare benefits to new babies if their mothers were already receiving cash assistance. Illinois initially decided to take this option to impose what is called a “family cap,” but it then reversed its decision and began to phase out the family cap provision in August of 2003.23 If Susan had been a welfare recipient when the family cap was in place and had gotten pregnant, she would not have received any cash assistance benefits for her new baby.
Undocumented immigrants have never been eligible for cash assistance benefits. The 1996 law extended limitations on immigrants’ eligibility by allowing states to bar documented immigrants from cash assistance benefits. Both Bethany and Susan were U.S. citizens; several of the other women interviewed after reform were not, but since their children were U.S. born, the children could receive benefits.24 Reform also allowed states to deny eligibility for benefits to those with a drug felony record.
Mothers are now required to establish officially the paternity of their children before they can receive cash assistance so that states can attempt to reimburse their welfare programs with child support payments from absent fathers. When Susan applied for cash assistance in 2001, she was given an appointment with a separate child support office in order to establish paternity. She named the father of her children who were still minors at the time, and the court awarded child support, even though he never paid. Some fear that this provision puts women and children in harm’s way by reinitiating their contact with potentially abusive or hostile men. Provisions have been made for exemptions for women fearing violence, though critics remain concerned that exemptions are too difficult to get. While child support enforcement serves the financial goal of paying back the state for welfare outlays, proponents also argue that it encourages the reintroduction and involvement of fathers with their children. Welfare reform legislation also encourages states to promote marriage in a variety of ways, including “relationship-training” programs whose goal is to teach parents constructive ways to interact with each other. President George W. Bush was particularly supportive of the marriage promotion aspects of welfare reform.
The post-reform changes in welfare rules are enforced through a system of “sanctions” that remove benefits from recipients who fail to comply with rules by not attending required appointments, failing to file paperwork, not meeting job search and work activity requirements, or committing other similar infractions.25 Reform also enhanced work supports for low-income parents. It increased money available for job training, child care, and transportation subsidies. The Clinton administration fought for additional work supports as well. It succeeded in decoupling eligibility for Medicaid from the receipt of welfare so that families with income low enough could maintain Medicaid coverage even if they were not current or recent cash assistance recipients. Reform also was accompanied by a substantial increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which rewards low-wage and even working-class families for being employed with a tax credit that can be sizable.26
WHAT EFFECTS DID WELFARE REFORM HAVE ON LOW-INCOME FAMILIES?
The literature on the effects of the landmark 1996 welfare reform legislation has focused largely on assessing whether reform met its goals of reducing the size of the welfare rolls and increasing the employment rate, earnings, and marriage rate of welfare recipients.27 In general, this research has reported that in the early years following reform welfare caseloads plummeted, poverty rates declined, and