Welfare as We [Don't] Know It: A Review and Feminist Critique of Welfare Reform Research in the United States
2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/135457004200217757
ISSN1466-4372
Autores Tópico(s)Work-Family Balance Challenges
ResumoAbstract Reform of the United States welfare system in 1996 drastically changed welfare receipt for low-income lone mothers. This paper explores the effects of these changes on lone mothers by summarizing empirical work on caseload reduction, labor force participation, income, poverty, material hardship, and family formation. While it appears that the economic status of many lone mothers improved during the economic expansion in the late 1990s, many lone mothers continued to experience poverty and material hardship. Building on the work of feminist scholars from both the US and other countries, this paper goes on to critique mainstream research on welfare reform. It identifies a particularly feminist approach to welfare reform research, stresses its advantages over mainstream research, and speculates about why there is comparatively less feminist research to date. The paper concludes by calling for more structural analyses of poverty and of lone motherhood itself. Keywords: Welfare reformlone mothersfeminist researchwomen's employmentpovertyraceclassgender ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author thanks several people for their constructive feedback: Randy Albelda, Susan Himmelweit, Jane Humphries, Avery Kolers, Cindy Negrey, Ellen Scott, Sarah Staveteig, Nancy Theriot, and two anonymous reviewers. She takes full responsibility for errors that remain. Notes JEL Codes: I30, I38, J12 I use the term "welfare reform" because it is so commonly used to refer to PRWORA. However, because "reform" carries the connotation of a positive change, this term is contested by feminists and others who see the legislation as more punitive toward poor families than the previous inadequate provisions. In 2000, about one-third of TANF families consisted of "child-only" cases – i.e., only a child in the household was receiving TANF cash assistance (US Department of Health and Human Services Citation2001: Table I-2). However, of these, one-half live with a parent – usually a mother. Parents are excluded from TANF for a range of reasons, including receiving another form of assistance, not being a US citizen, or being sanctioned for noncompliance of TANF rules (US Department of Health and Human Services Citation2001: Table II-3). Individuals must be employed in order to receive the EITC, so this program provides an employment incentive. See Blank (Citation2002) or Robert Moffitt and Michele Ver Ploeg (Citation2001) for in-depth discussions of "leaver studies" and their drawbacks. In particular, leaver studies "cannot give a full picture of the effects of policy changes because they focus only on those receiving welfare at a given time, not the entire population that might be affected" (Moffitt and Ver Ploeg Citation2001: 28). Former recipients who left welfare because they were sanctioned – or failed to follow the new rules under welfare reform – had substantially lower employment rates than women who left welfare voluntarily (Mary Corcoran, Sandra Danziger, Ariel Kalil, and Kristin Seefeldt Citation2000). These statistics are similar to those describing all of the poor in 2001, only about 38 percent of whom had private health insurance (about 47 percent of the poor had health insurance provided by the government) (US Census Bureau Citation2001). An exception is a recent study of low-income single-parent families conducted by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (Avis Jones-DeWeever, Janice Peterson, and Xue Song Citation2003). They find that a slight increase in labor force participation before and after welfare reform, but virtually no changes in the types of jobs low-income parents take. The Vartanian and McNamara (Citation2000) study looks at leavers who initially left welfare in the 1970s and 1980s, some of whom returned to welfare during this time. See also Sharon Hays (Citation2003) for in-depth accounts of the economic hardships in the lives of lone mothers many would deem "success stories" of TANF. Other research suggests that while most leavers earned about $2,500 in their first three months after leaving welfare, they experienced a 10 – 15 percent increase in quarterly earnings after the first year of leaving (Richer, Savner, and Greenberg Citation2001). One complicating factor is that the total family income of welfare leavers is more influenced by other family members' income than by their own. Of former recipients, Moffitt (Citation2002: 3) writes: About half experience an increase in income immediately after leaving, with the other half experiencing a decline. After a year or two off the rolls, earnings gains slightly exceed the losses in TANF benefits. … However, the major change in income comes from increased income from other family members. … Such income is a larger component of total household income than either the earnings of the leaver herself or TANF and food stamp income. The poorest quintile of earners included those with disposable incomes of less than $7,850 in 1998 (Zedlewski Citation2002). Other research using these disposable income measures confirms that the poorest lone mothers' average disposable incomes fell between 1995 and 1997 (Wendell Primus, Lynette Rawlings, Kathy Larin, and Kathryn Porter Citation1999). This research compared two waves from the longitudinal SIPP (Survey of Income Participation Program) data from the US Census Bureau. The dates of the two waves were: December 1995 – June 1996 and August 1999 – February 2000. Low-income includes families whose income over the four-month period they were surveyed averaged less than 200 percent of the poverty line ($13,290 for a family of three in 1999). The US poverty line uses pre-tax income, which overestimates the disposable income. Second, it does not include the value of noncash benefits such as Food Stamps as income, which underestimates the resources of families. Third, it does not take into account common expenditures of families that can also severely curtail family income, such as childcare or healthcare expenses. It also does not vary geographically or by urban/rural status. See Trudi Renwick and Barbara Bergmann (Citation1993) for an alternative poverty line that takes into account some of these issues. Similarly, the Urban Change project, that examines welfare reform in four large US cities, found that 16 percent of stably employed low-income women (most of whom were former welfare recipients) surveyed experienced moderate or severe hunger (Denise F. Polit, Rebecca Widom, Kathryn Edin, Stan Bowie, Andrew S. London, Ellen K. Scott, and Abel Valenzuela Citation2001). One of the causes of food instability is the loss of Food Stamp benefits. Most welfare leavers remain eligible for Food Stamps, but only about four out of ten of former recipients whose families are eligible receive them (Sheila Zedlewski and Sarah Brauner Citation1999). Recent declines in Food Stamp participation have been the starkest among Latino families (Finegold and Staveteig Citation2002), and disproportionately common in families in which the children are citizens, but parents are not (Robert Greenstein and Jocelyn Guyer Citation2001). The loss of Food Stamps occurs because former recipients may not be able to perform administrative tasks such as appearing in person to apply for benefits or returning repeatedly to update information (Zedlewski and Brauner Citation1999; Greenstein and Guyer Citation2001). This is in part because some former recipients did not know they remained eligible for Medicaid after leaving TANF (Greenstein and Guyer Citation2001; Alan Weil and John Holahan Citation2002). However, in recent years the State Child Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP) have improved public awareness of health benefits available to low-income children. Very few nationally representative datasets ask about recipients' preferences for childcare, so it is difficult to know whether those who did not receive childcare subsidies actually wanted them. But a review of thirteen experimental welfare-to-work programs found that when given greater opportunity to have children in formal childcare programs (rather than informal care by relatives or friends), former recipients often chose formal care (Lisa Gennetian, Anna Gassman-Pines, Aletha Huston, Danielle Crosby, Young Eun Chang, and Edward Lowe Citation2001). Others suggest that while many welfare leavers receive childcare subsidies when they need them, other low-income lone mothers are not eligible because their incomes are too high, or because they do not know about childcare subsidies due to inadequate outreach efforts (Adams and Rohacek Citation2002). Welfare waivers were state-level policies through which states could be exempt from federal AFDC rules; many waivers began enforcing work requirements that became required under TANF. This is not surprising considering past research on the effects of welfare on family formation: Robert Moffitt's research reveals either inconsequential effects of welfare on family formation (1992) or small effects of welfare on fertility (1998) that are sensitive to the methodology one uses. For an analysis of this issue see Mink (Citation1998). While most of it does not address mothers' caregiving per se, there is a substantial literature on the effect of welfare reform on children's behavioral outcomes and well-being. In their review of several local studies on the effects of TANF on children's achievement and behavior, Greg Duncan and Lindsay Chase-Landsdale (Citation2001: 403) conclude that "there is little evidence that elementary-school-aged children are harmed by the welfare reform packages." However, see the Letter to Members of Congress written by the National Center for Children in Poverty (www.nccp.org) for a summary of negative effects of welfare reform on children and adolescents. Though some feminists would disagree with the authors of the Fragile Families Study that policy-makers should "target the 'magic moment' when the likelihood of family formation is highest" in order to strengthen fragile families (McLanahan et al. Citation2003: 13). See Mimi Abramovitz (Citation2000) for an in-depth discussion of other welfare rights organizations both pre- and post-TANF. Additional informationNotes on contributorsKaren Christopher JEL Codes: I30, I38, J12
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