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 Bushs 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 dont 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 Childrens Health
Insurance Program (CHIP).
Immediate steps should be taken to bring eligible families into
existing support programs, particularly in light of the Presidents
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
