Monday, March 01, 2010
THE 1996 FEDERAL WELFARE REFORM ACT IS WORKING--A CONTRARY VIEW TO THAT OF ANDRE BAUER
According to "Welfare Reform Turns Ten, Evidence Shows Reduced Dependency, Poverty" by Christine Kim and Robert Rector, The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is working. Ms. Kim and Mr. Rector note that PRWORA had three stated goals: "1) to reduce welfare dependence and increase employment; 2) to reduce child poverty; and 3) to reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing and strengthen marriage." They noted further that, "In the ten years since its enactment, welfare reform has succeeded in each of these areas." They then go on to say:
Welfare caseloads began to decline in earnest after 1996 and have fallen by 56 percent since then.
This decline in welfare dependence coincided with the increase in the employment of single mothers. These trends have been particularly dramatic among those who have the greatest tendency to long-term dependence: younger never-married mothers with little education.
During the late 1990s, employment of never-married mothers increased by nearly 50 percent, of single mothers who are high school dropouts by 66 percent, and of young single mothers (ages 18 to 24) by nearly 100 percent. Welfare reform impacted the whole welfare caseload, not just the most employable.
Not surprisingly, as families left welfare and single mothers transitioned into work, the child poverty rate fell, from 20.8 percent in 1995 to 17.8 percent in 2004, lifting 1.6 million children out of poverty. The declines in poverty among black children and children from single-mother families were unprecedented.
Neither poverty level had changed much between 1971 and 1995. By contrast, six years after PRWORA was enacted, these two poverty rates had fallen to their lowest levels in national history, from 41.5 percent to 30 percent for black children and from 53.1 percent to 39.8 percent for children from single-mother families.
Since welfare reform, the once explosive growth of unwed childbearing has ended. The unwed birthrate was 7.7 percent in 1965 and increased about one percentage point per year for the next thirty years. Had this rate of increase been sustained, the unwed childbearing rate would have hit 41.6 percent by 2003, but welfare reform interrupted this process. Between 1995 and 2003, overall unwed childbearing inched upward by only 2.4 percentage points, a fourth of the pre-reform rate of increase. The black unwed childbearing rate actually fell from 69.9 percent in 1995 to 68.2 percent in 2003.
If the statistics cited by Ms. Kim and Mr. Rector are accurate, we have to agree with them regarding the success of the PRWORA. So we can only surmise that Andre Bauer knows something that they do not know. Else he would not be pushing for reforms. Or would he?
Labels: Welfare Reform
