Welfare reform: 10 years later
The poor went from porch to porch, knowing a farmer's wife often would leave a plate of food on the back stoop, if any leftovers remained. Jobs were difficult to find. Finding work — and keeping it — meant seizing any opportunity. In 1935, as cities and farms collapsed, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established a temporary federal relief program now known as welfare. Demand was high. The rolls grew. The poor learned to lean on welfare. Thirty years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society sought to eliminate poverty. Welfare rolls expanded to include a larger chunk of the population; the percentage of people on welfare was nine times that of the Great Depression. Welfare got bigger. The numbers suggested — and studies backed it up — that Roosevelt's short-term assistance became a way of life. That temporary relief eventually would support 14 million recipients, with numbers projected to increase indefinitely unless something changed. Ten years ago, that change came: A law, signed by President Clinton in 1996, promised to force people to trade work for welfare. No more money would be coming their way, unless they were in the pipeline to get a job. At the time, politicians, advocates and more than a few welfare recipients were skeptical. It didn't seem like the best bet. “Will the system be fixed in my lifetime? It's doubtful,” Congressman Mike Rogers said in late 1995. Social workers and policy analysts who'd made careers studying numbers and trying to manage a ballooning system echoed Rogers' pessimism in varying degrees. Then everything changed. In Alabama and nationwide, reform triggered an exodus from the welfare rolls. Calhoun County had 1,118 families on welfare in 1996; by 1998, that number had dropped by half, to 559. One of out of every 80 adult women in Calhoun County left welfare in two years. How did it work so fast? And did those 550 women go to work? In the end — echoing a question advocates had in 1996 — would they be better off? The answers can be found in the stories of three former welfare recipients: Yvonne Kemp, Elaine Ingram and Rhonda Vermillion. In 1995 The Anniston Star interviewed the women, as part of a report on the upcoming welfare reform. Today, almost exactly 10 years after the act took effect, they speak of the years after welfare with a calm distance, at first pausing and rubbing their foreheads in an effort to remember. They have moved away to elsewhere in Calhoun County, trading the public housing of Constantine Homes for private space; their children are grown; their stories diverge more often than they align. But the women agree: Welfare reform made sense. A check every week For many, leaving welfare was not a choice. The reform, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President Clinton, put a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance. It imposed sanctions for anyone not following job training and child support programs. Ingram, Kemp and Vermillion could not have stayed on welfare for 10 years even if they had tried. But the fact welfare cases declined not in five years but right away reflects a trait more abstract than the changes in policy. Equally important was a shift in how recipients viewed welfare — what Ron Haskins, who as a congressional aide was a key players in getting the legislation passed — called “the imponderables.” “Welfare caseworkers themselves and politicians and local officials, everybody began to communicate the same message: 'You've got to work,'” he said. The message — work — resonated with recipients. It was intuitive, they said. Whether they ended up with a steady job or not, all three said the program was fair because they agreed with the basic values emphasized in the reform: self-sufficiency, independence and the American work ethic. In fact, former welfare recipients, who advocates feared would be welfare reform's victims, are some of its biggest supporters. Kemp, an Anniston mother of three who has moved in to a house on South Leighton Avenue, said she did not wait for her welfare to run out. Before the legislation was signed, she said, she got a job at Burger King and ended the welfare checks herself. “I just got out and found me a job,” Kemp said from her porch. “I couldn't do nothing but that.” She works at Sentinel in Anniston, where she seals plastic bags of cotton balls and Q-Tips. She said she thought the program was a good idea because it forced people to become independent. “I couldn't get that car,” she said, pointing to a green sedan in her driveway. “I couldn't get new furniture, stuff for the house … “I get a check every week instead of waiting for a welfare check every month.” John Bradford, Alabama's welfare director for 15 years, said cases today rarely reach the five-year limit. In Calhoun County, the vast majority of current recipients have been on the rolls for less than two years. “If you think about how societies change, probably some of the message of welfare and it not being like it used to be permeates a community,” Bradford said. “If a young girl is inclined to think of welfare, she will know that it's not going to be a free ride.” Kemp's approval perhaps is not surprising, given the reform pushed her to work. But even for Ingram and Vermillion, who did not get jobs and were helped little by reform, the program nonetheless was a good idea. Ingram's life got worse. She had hoped the new requirements would inspire her — to get an equivalency degree and find work, maybe as a babysitter — but losing welfare provoked no such period of financial independence. She struggled. She did not get a general equivalency diploma or find consistent work, and without a $137 monthly welfare check, she had trouble paying for gas and electricity. At times, she had to move in with friends. Yet Ingram still said she supported the values of welfare reform. |
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Ingram, now revived and financially stable, spoke from the center of her West Anniston house as several young children ran around her chair, fighting over a pack of candy. She is a baby-sitter now, as she had hoped, though her recovery mostly had to do with qualifying for disability. She has a voice strong enough to command four unruly children from two rooms over. But as she discussed not having the GED she had promised herself, her tone got soft and hopeful. “Give me your number,” she said. “I'll call you when I get it.” A program's limits The shrinking rolls, however, did not save the federal government money. Many of the billions of dollars went to the states, which either beefed up welfare programs or used the money for something else. Alabama was able to hire 83 new case workers, Bradford said, mostly in cities. The fact local mothers left welfare is indisputable, but experts say the question of where they went is hazier. The stories of Ingram and Vermillion serve as reminders that the success of welfare reform has its limits and always will. Estimates of how many women who left welfare and are working are relatively good. Nationally, studies have concluded that about two-thirds of former welfare recipients have jobs, and Curley Davis, Calhoun County's welfare director, said he estimates his program results in a similar percentage. But helping someone find work does not mean getting him or her out of poverty, said Laresa Johnson, a public assistant at the Calhoun County Department of Human Resources. “The primary goal of the program is jobs,” Johnson said. “It does not matter where they are employed. It could be at Hardee's.” Going off welfare does not mean an end to government support, either. All three aforementioned women receive monthly food stamps, and Ingram recovered financially only after she qualified for more than $500 a month in disability. Welfare experts increasingly focus on a group they call the “disconnected” — those who could apply for welfare but don't. The group grows despite welfare reform's success, they said. The disconnected often are the poorest of the poor and either avoid or do not complete the work programs welfare reform requires. “The story is both about the people who left; it's also about the people who never went,” said Olivia Golden, the assistant secretary for Children and Families in the Clinton administration. Those who fail to take advantage of welfare often share several risk factors in common, said Haskins, who recently finished a book on the welfare reform bill. Researchers at the University of Michigan have identified 18 of them, including problems with addiction or transportation, having three or more kids or having a child with a disability. “Almost all the mothers can overcome one factor,” Haskins said, “but when you get two or three, the percentages get much lower.” Vermillion quit a long time ago. She is the mother of two who was on welfare for four years, and her situation is a case study in welfare's possible frustrations. She is disconnected, and like many women who cannot escape poverty, she shoulders several risk factors at once. Her mother died when she was 17, and she had to take care of her younger brothers. After the father of her oldest daughter lost a court case that would have required him to pay $500 a month in child support, he disappeared. Ten years after welfare, both of her children have ended up in foster care. Like the others, Vermillion said she supported the ideals of welfare reform. She has worked all over: McDonald's, a PVC plant, construction sites. But she got frustrated with welfare and years ago stopped trying to make it work. “The rules and organization they try to apply in to everyday life, it doesn't always work,” she said, couched in a thick, cool shade of trees outside her aunt and uncle's Delta house where she has lived on and off since she was young. “If you're out living this day-to-day life, it's different.” Complications always crop up, she said. She could not make welfare meetings because she could not get time off work. The child-care forms took two weeks to process. The caseworkers sometimes are forgiving, sometimes too busy to help. “One person can only do so much,” Vermillion said. But as she rocked back and forth on the swinging bench outside the house, Vermillion said she has no plans to go back on welfare. “I pretty much just quit,” she said. “It's not that it's more trouble than it's worth. … It's just the way things work out sometimes.” Related SeriesFrom October 1995:
From October 1996
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