On August 22, 1996, President William J. Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), ending a federal program which, for six decades, had guaranteed financial aid to needy single-parent families in the United States. This program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), has become synonymous with the term "welfare" in America, and it has dominated the recent debate surrounding welfare reform. The cancellation of AFDC as a federal entitlement program and its replacement by a block grant to the states marks a new watershed in the development of the program’s complex and fascinating history.

Since the passage of the PRWORA, the media has been full of glowing praise for the effects of the new legislation. In August 1997, Newsweek declared that the PRWORA "blows the door off even the most optimistic predictions." One year later a front-page article from The Washington Post announced "Welfare Reform’s Unprecedented Success."1 Further, in April 1999, the White House published state-by-state data demonstrating that the number of welfare recipients was at its lowest level for 30 years and showing that the welfare rolls had been cut in half since Clinton had became President. The Clinton administration credits this success to the PWRORA, a strong economy and the President’s liberal granting of federal waivers to the states since his coming to office.2

The hero in the states’ success story to implement effective welfare reform initiatives has been the state of Wisconsin. In a radio address to the nation in May 1996, Clinton praised the "solid, bold welfare reform plan" initiated by this state. Listing "the things about the Wisconsin plan which [were] compelling to [him]" at a National Governors’ Association (NGA) conference in July 1996, Clinton emphasized the work requirements imposed by that state, but also the guaranteed health and child care services provided for those willing to work or be trained, as well as the guarantee of community service jobs if employment was not available in the private sector.3

At least since the early 1970s, Wisconsin has led the way in experimenting with welfare reform initiatives in America. Furthermore, since the ascendancy of State Governor Tommy Thomson in1986, it has proven to be highly effective at reducing its AFDC caseload, which fell 55% in the first decade under his administration.4 At the core of the Wisconsin Works (W-2) plan is the stipulation that "for those who can work only work should pay," which sets stringent eligibility criteria and a stiff work-test requirement for benefits. Welfare mothers are required to go to work once their youngest child has reached 12 weeks of age, and penalties such as a reduction in benefits are enforced for jobs rejected or hours of labor missed. Benefits can be collected for a maximum of two years at a time, and a 5-year lifetime limit is imposed. In addition, children born to aid recipients are not eligible for welfare benefits.5

Under the Wisconsin Works plan, private "partnership companies" engage W-2 recipients at jobs, often receiving subsidies from the state to pay them minimum wages or slightly more. In addition, those welfare mothers who cannot be placed in private-sector jobs are put to work answering phones in city offices or sweeping streets for their public assistance checks. Child care and medical services are provided as long as one fulfills the work conditions of the "social contract" laid down by the state’s authorities and some counties in Wisconsin have been able to find work for up to 91 percent of their welfare caseload.6

Given the robust economy, it is perhaps not surprising that welfare reform successes have been documented in most states of the nation. Indeed, according to a study conducted in 1998, the national unemployment rate in mid-1997 was at its lowest level in 24 years. The study predicted that the U.S. economy could easily absorb welfare recipients whose benefits were terminated.7 However, why had the welfare role not been reduced during earlier periods of economic upturn?

According to many commentators, it is because the welfare reform measures are changing the work behavior of one-time AFDC recipients. In February 1999, Daniel Casse, a senior director of the White House Writers Group, wrote that:

"It is a mistake to believe that the welfare debate was ever about the amount of money the country was spending.... Money alone was never the problem. Instead, what distinguishes the current reform is that it has forced both federal and state governments to take seriously the idea that welfare policy can deter, or discourage, behavior.8

If the observation that the present reforms are changing the behavior of America’s poor is correct, it would seem to confirm the hypothesis of conservative academics such as Lawrence Mead, who has argued that "behavioral conditions on aid" are a necessary prerequisite for enforcing the work ethic and other traditional values.9

Supporting the view that work values are receiving renewed attention under the new regional reform initiatives, New York’s Republican mayor Rudolph Giuliani has maintained that:

"The work ethic is like a muscle. If it is not exercised, it atrophies. And we’re succeeding in returning the work ethic to the center of New York City life. Over the past four years we’ve moved 440,000 people off the welfare rolls—more than the entire population of St. Louis".10

Moreover, the idea that a fundamental transformation is taking place in the self-image and behavior of America’s poor presented a major theme in a recent Newsweek article, investigating the condition of African-Americans. Entitled "The Good News About Black America," the article begins by reporting that welfare participation and out-of-wedlock births among African-Americans are at their lowest levels in decades. It then points out that when asked whether they though "welfare-to-work laws have resulted in more black self-reliance," 63 percent of black respondents answered affirmatively, with another 57 percent attributing an increase in available jobs to these new rules. Acknowledging the role the present economic expansion has in making it easier to find work, the author of the article, Ellis Cose, insists that:

"It would be a mistake, however, to credit the economy alone for the sense of hope sprouting in many black communities...a strong resurgence of black self-confidence and self-determination has made their realization more probable".11

With all the optimistic reportage on the effects of the different welfare-reform initiatives facilitated by the passage of PRWORA in 1996, it is easy to lose track of the flaws in the rosy picture painted of the new state programs. Nevertheless, critics of the new situation point out that many deficiencies do exist. In a December 1998 report by the Save the Children Fund, which compiled the findings of over 30 state and local studies, it was found that although more families were leaving welfare, many were doing worse than before, lacking necessary food, medical care and housing. In addition, the report revealed that of those single-parent mothers who had found work, 71 percent did not earn enough to raise their family’s living standard above the official poverty line.12 In addition, the question of the absence of affordable housing presents a major issue of concern for researchers analyzing the effects of the new welfare reform programs.13

Reporting on two recent, nationally conducted studies in an article for The New York Times, Jason DeParle has noted that although the federal standards prescribe that housing should consume no more than 30 percent of a poor family’s income, most low-income families are spending an average of 60 percent of their income on shelter.14 Furthermore, although Wisconsin Works provides relatively generous assistance benefits, access to child care and medical services, and subsidies for employers hiring welfare mothers, not all the states offer these standards. The benefit level for a family of three living in Mississippi is $ 120 a month. In Texas, where the absence of an income tax has been used to justify the refusal to pay for expensive child care services—thus hindering efforts by poor women to work—the assistance rate for a family of three constitutes a mere $184 per month.15

Critics have consequently argued that many states are "trying to do welfare reform on the cheap," keeping their benefit levels low in order to avoid becoming a "welfare magnet" for assistance applicants from nearby states.16 They also claim that the press has mainly focused on the success story of the "easy cases," and that many needy families are simply disappearing once their benefits have been cut off.17 Thus, in a 1999 study for the Urban Institute, Pamela Loprest points out that while the falling caseload means fewer mothers are receiving cash assistance, such statistics reveal nothing about the conditions under which families leave TANF assistance, where they go, or whether they are making a successful transition to the job market.18

The question of what happens to welfare recipients who are not officially registered as employed once they leave the roles currently represents a major point of controversy among analysts. Even in the "Wisconsin Welfare Miracle," 55 percent of families who have left the state’s welfare roles have not been accounted for. Have these people found stable, full-time jobs which earn them enough to support their families, or are they now dependent on other family members ("doubling up"), or swelling the numbers dependent on homeless shelters and other emergency relief services?19 Thus, for example, although Mayor Giuliani’s administration drastically reduced New York City’s welfare caseload between 1994 and 1997, the number of meals served by the city’s soup kitchens increased by 70 percent during the same period.20

Finally, since August 1996, the Clinton administration has attempted to soften the harshest features inherent in the PRWORA. Under a budget plan from July 1997, parts of the 1996 cuts to Food Stamps and aid to immigrants were repealed, and the use of welfare recipients in community service work for their assistance checks was prohibited. In addition, federal standards of "regular employment" must be observed as a condition of welfare-recipient labor.21 This attempt to take the squeeze out of the "tough love" measures enacted by most states may, for many one-time AFDC families, appear to be a feeble effort to close the door after the horse has bolted. Regardless of the outcome of such legal and technical amendments to the PRWORA, Aid to Families with Dependent Children as a federal welfare entitlement program for poor women and their families living in the United States, has ceased to exist. And, as Daniel Casse has observed, "whatever the final consequences, it is unlikely we will ever return to the old model."22

The preceding article focused on the tremendous impact which the "work ethic" has had on influencing the creation and maintenance of relief measures to aid poor, single-parent families in the United States. However, other factors have also played a role in affecting this development. Following is a short examination of these other influences which picks up from text of the article and widens the investigation into the causal factors involved in this process. It should be noted that the following text represents an excerpt from a much wider analysis of this question, dealt with in a Master’s thesis examining the history of the AFDC program in America.

The American poor have traditionally been required to work as a precondition for relief. However, in the case of needy, single women with children, the historically consistent pressure to conform to the "work ethic" coexisted with the demand to fulfill culturally prescribed gender roles, defining their social responsibilities as women and mothers. Consequently, traditional American "family values," which define socially acceptable sexual and family behavior, present a second key causal factor, identified in this thesis as playing a regulatory role in determining the accessibility of relief for poor women and their children.

Another significant ideological factor which historically influenced the access to public relief for African-American women and their children has been racial prejudice. Particularly in the American South and prior to the dramatic changes made to federal social-welfare policy during the 1960s, poor black families were generally excluded from participation in existing public relief programs due to racial discrimination.

Therefore, the three elements of work, family values and racial prejudice constitute the ideological complex or value system which have provided a primary, consistent force, determining the conditions of relief for poor, female-headed families living in the United States. In addition to these three attitudinal factors, three further variables can be observed, affecting the process of welfare-policy formulation in the U.S., and will therefore be included in this analysis of the history of the AFDC program. These are: 1) the need to maintain social control; 2) fiscal constraints; 3) resistance toward federal involvement in social-welfare matters.

The need to protect social order has been postulated by some sociologists as representing the raison d’être for public relief programs in the United States. The validity of this premise as it applies to the development of the AFDC program will be investigated in this thesis. In addition, the analysis will take into account varying regional and national, economic motives for circumscribing the availability of public funds for poor families.

In addition, the tradition of anti-federalism and non-interference of government in social affairs, political trends which have played a conspicuous role throughout the course of U.S. history, will be shown to have exerted a continuous, restraining influence on the development of a federal welfare state in America. And, although these two latter points might also be subsumed in the ideological complex discussed earlier, they represent more attitudes toward the role of the state and not moral or biased attitudes toward the behavior or origin of individuals and thus have been introduced separately.

In summary, these are the six control-factors, whose function in relation to the evolution of the AFDC program in America will be investigated in this thesis.

For an electronic copy of the original and complete work please contact the author at: sweir@zedat.fu-berlin.de

2. White House Information on Welfare Reform: Clinton-Gore Accomplishments Reforming Welfare, June 99 <http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/Welfare/Accomp.html>; "The Crunch that comes from Welfare Reform," The Economist (20 March 1999): 53;

4. For a thorough examination of the historical role which Wisconsin has played in pioneering welfare reform in the U.S. see Thomas J. Corbett, "Welfare Reform in Wisconsin: The Rhetoric and the Reality," The Politics of Welfare Reform (London: Sage Publications, 1996), 19-54. The statistics have been derived from Adam Cohen, "The Great American Welfare Lab," AllPolitics:CNN/TIME, 21 April 1997 <http://cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/04/14/time/cohen2.html>.

21 April 97 <http://cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/04/14/time/cohen.html>.

7. Daniel P. McMurrer, Isabel V. Sawhill and Robert I. Lerman, "Welfare Reform and Opportunity in the Low-Wage Labor Market" <http://www.urban.org/oppor/opp_05.html>; Barbara Vobejda, "Welfare Drop Attributed to Economic Rise," The Washington Post, 10 May 1997, A 9.

12. The Children’s Defense Fund, "Welfare to What? Early Findings on Family Hardship and Well-Being," The Electric Policy Network, December 1998 < http://www.epn.org/>.

13. Christopher Jencks, "The Hidden Paradox of Welfare Reform," Electronic Policy Network (May-June 1997) <http://epn.org/prospect/32/32jenkfs.html>; (anonymous), "Welfare To Work: The Job Opportunities of AFDC Recipients," February 1996 <http://www.iwpr.org/wtwrib.htm>.

<http://www.mdhs.state.ms.us/ea_tanf.html#How much>; Nancy Pindus and Randy Capps, "Income Support and Social Services for Low-Income People in Texas," The Urban Institute, 1997 <http://www.urban.org/>; Justin Blum, "Welfare Recipients Can’t Survive on Wages," The Washington Post, 5 March 1997, 3.

18. Pamela Loprest, "Families Who Left Welfare: Who Are They and How Are They Doing?" The Urban Institute, February, 1999 <http://newfederalism.urban.org/html/discussion99-02.html>.

20. Neil deMause, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind: 1.4 million welfare recipients get disappeared," November, 1997 <http://www.fair.org/extra/9711/welfare.html> 2. See also Carol Jouzaitis, "The Cold Reality of Welfare Reform," The Chicago Tribune, 24 February 1997,1; Christian T. Whitman, "Hype and Glory: Rush to Claim Success for Welfare Stumbles over Facts," Wall Street Journal, 17 October 1997, A1.

25. William J. Clinton, "Radio Address by the President to the Nation," White House Electronic Publications, 5 July 1997 <http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1997/7/7/2.text.1>.

For an electronic copy of the original and complete work please contact the author at: sweir@zedat.fu-berlin.de