Welfare Reform's Tenth Anniversary

Today is the tenth anniversary of the Welfare Reform Act, passed by a bipartisan majority in Congress and signed by President Clinton, while opposed by a large coalition, including the Catholic bishops, who claimed that it violated principles of social justice.

Ron Haskins offered these observations (the full piece can be found here):

The left, led by senior Democrats in Congress, the editorial pages of many of the nation’s leading newspapers, the Catholic bishops, child advocates in Washington and the professoriate, had assaulted the bill in terms that are rare, even by today’s coarse standards. Democrats speaking on the floor of the House labeled the bill “harsh,” “cruel” and “mean-spirited.” They claimed that it “attacked,” “punished” and “lashed out at” children. Columnist Bob Herbert said the bill conducted a “jihad” against the poor, made “war on kids” and “deliberately inflict[ed] harm” on children and the poor. Sen. Frank Lautenberg said poor children would be reduced to “begging for money, begging for food, and . . . engaging in prostitution.”

Many Democrats and pundits shouted that the bill would throw a million children into poverty. Marion Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund said that no one who believed in the Judeo-Christian tradition could support the bill. Even God, it seemed, opposed the evil Republican bill.

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In the decade that has passed since the 1996 reforms, the welfare rolls have plummeted by nearly 60%, the first sustained decline since the program was enacted in 1935. Equally important, the employment of single mothers heading families reached the highest level ever. As a group, mothers heading families with incomes of less than about $21,000 per year increased their earnings every year between 1994 and 2000 while simultaneously receiving less money from welfare payments. In inflation-adjusted dollars, they were about 25% better off in 2000 than in 1994, despite the fall in their welfare income.

Over the same period, the child-poverty level enjoyed its most sustained decline since the early 1970s; and both black-child poverty and poverty among female-headed families reached their lowest level ever. Even after four years of increases following the recession of 2001, the child poverty level is still 20% lower than it was before the decline began. Similarly, measures of consumption and hunger show that the material conditions of low-income, female-headed families have improved. Although welfare reform was not without problems, none of the disasters predicted by the left materialized. Indeed, national surveys show that almost every measure of child well-being—except obesity—has improved since the mid-1990s.

Robert Samuelson makes similar observations (his full piece can be seen here):

President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, better known as “welfare reform,” on Aug. 22, 1996. A decade later, it stands as a rarity: a Washington success story. It did not succeed in the utopian sense of eliminating all poverty or family breakdown. It succeeded in a more practical way. It improved life modestly for millions of people and showed that government could orchestrate constructive change. There are small and large lessons in this. The small lessons involve poverty; the large lessons involve politics.

One little-known fact is that we have made gains against poverty in recent decades—and welfare reform deserves some credit. The poverty rate among blacks has fallen sharply, though it’s still discouragingly high. From 1968 to 1994, it barely budged, averaging 32.4 percent. By 2000 it was 22.5 percent. (The poverty rate is the share of people living below the government’s poverty line, about $19,500 for a family of four in 2004.) Similarly, there have been big drops in child poverty. Since 1989 the number of children in poverty has fallen 12 percent for non-Hispanic whites and 14 percent for blacks.

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One lesson is that what people do for themselves often overshadows what government does for them. Since 1991, for example, the teen birthrate has dropped by a third. [Sisk: Note that this is not because teenage girls were forced into abortion with reductions in welfare, asabortion rates fell continuously during the same period.] The mothers least capable of supporting children have had fewer of them. Welfare reform didn't single-handedly cause this. But it reinforced a broader shift in the social climate -- one emphasizing personal responsibility over victimhood.

Of course, poverty endures. Some mothers are unemployable and are worse off without continuous welfare. Even those with low-paying jobs often depend heavily on other government benefits, mainly food stamps and Medicaid (health insurance). And one reason that poverty hasn’t decreased more is an unending inflow of poor immigrants. Unlike non-Hispanic whites and blacks, Hispanics are the only major ethnic or racial group with more children in poverty over the last 15 years. Since 1989 the increase is 58 percent.

So: we've made a stubborn problem a bit more manageable. It’s pragmatic progress, not a panacea. Why can’t we do the same for other pressing problems—energy, immigration, retirement spending (Social Security, Medicare)? Here, welfare reform’s political lessons apply.

Greg Sisk