NEW DATA SHOW WELFARE FAILS TO HELP FAMILIES MAKE SUCCESSFUL TRANSITIONS TO WORK
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, April 16 2002 CONTACT: Nancy Coleman or Karen Conner, 202-775-8810 Report available online at http://www.epinet.org
>From 1997 to 1999, while most of the nation experienced a surge of
economic prosperity, one group of Americans was conspicuously absent
from the party. Families who moved from welfare to jobs during this
period found themselves less able to pay for basic necessities like
food, housing, health care, and child care, says a new study released
today by the Economic Policy Institute.
Former Welfare Families Need More Help, by economist Heather Boushey, paints a picture of the rising hardships suffered by families newly off the welfare rolls and struggling to make a go of it in the low-wage workplace. The report documents the clear need for continued and expanded help from the government in the form of programs such as child care and health care that are essential if welfare families are to make a successful transition to work.
The findings of this study support criticisms found in a survey reported
in the Washington Post. Governors and welfare directors in 39 states think President Bush’s welfare plan is “simply not workable” because it increases the hours people will be required to work, but cuts federal grants that states use to provide temporary support to transitioning workers in areas like housing and child care.
“With welfare reform, the government said that the best antipoverty program was a job,” said Heather Boushey, author of the study. “But welfare reform will ultimately fail if jobs don’t offer families a ladder out of poverty.”
Most former welfare recipients left welfare and went to work. However, the earnings from the types of jobs available to most former welfare recipients continued to leave too many families without adequate and affordable child care, regular and preventive medical care, and affordable housing. Nearly half of the families that recently moved from welfare to full time work faced critical economic hardships like the lack of food, eviction, or the inability to receive needed medical care.
* Under welfare reform critical hardships rose 9.3 percent among families that recently left welfare for full-time, full-year employment.
* Under welfare reform critical hardships rose 10.1 percent among recent
recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)/Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) working part-time.
* Recent AFDC/TANF recipients working part-time also experienced an increase in food insecurity, (up 10.5 percent since 1997), and the lack of health insurance increased 8.2 percent.
* For families with a full-time worker, the largest increases in hardships overall were found in the inability to pay child care and housing bills. Indeed there is evidence that homelessness has been increasing in some localities.
Although child care expenditures have increased on both the federal and state level, only 12 percent of eligible families receive assistance through the Child Care and Development Fund. More than six million children are eligible but not enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
“Immediate steps should be taken to bring eligible families into existing support programs, particularly in light of the President’s proposals to raise work requirements,” said Dr. Boushey. “Over the long-term, fundamental reforms should focus on closing the gap between earnings and the costs of basic necessities.”
Heather Boushey is an economist at EPI and co-author of Hardships in America: The Real Story of Working Families, which examines the true costs of living in every community in America. Former Welfare Families Need More Help is an expansion of that report.
The Economic Policy Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan economic think tank founded in 1986. The Institute is located on the web at http://www.epinet.org
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Economic Policy Institute 1660 L STREET, NW, SUITE 1200 WASHINGTON, DC 20036 202/775-8810 FAX 202/775-0819 www.epinet.org