Reforming Welfare

This year marks the tenth anniversary of welfare reform. It was a decade ago that the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act shifted welfare's focus from handouts to a "hand-up." The liberal economist Robert J. Samuelson said of the 1996 law: "A decade later, it stands as a rarity: a Washington success story . . . It improved life modestly for millions of people."

The new approach encourages the pursuit of self-sufficiency through education and training in exchange for welfare checks. It was a shift that was sorely needed, as both liberals and conservatives came to acknowledge during the 1990s. Though the Act was primarily a Republican bill, it passed with bipartisan support, and accomplished an aim set out by President Bill Clinton when he declared his intent to "end welfare as we know it."

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act certainly did that.

Created at that time was the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). This replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children, an entitlement with no time limit attached, which studies found to hurt beneficiaries because it sucked them into permanent dependency. With TANF, no longer would a federal program ignore the need to prepare recipients to eventually leave the welfare rolls, instead languishing in poverty indefinitely.

The number of families on welfare has dropped from 4.3 million in August of 1996 to 1.9 million in June of 2005, lower than any time since 1969. Also, the number of individuals receiving welfare fell from 12.2 million to 4.5 million in the same time period, a 64 percent decrease. Welfare reform has brought the employment of single mothers to its highest level ever - 63 percent.

Most importantly, the child poverty rate has declined from 20.8 percent in 1995 to 17.8 percent in 2004. This striking improvement - and it includes the fact that decreases in child poverty have been the most pronounced among African American and Latino children -- is perhaps the most telling and inspiring effect of reform. It also belies the claim of those who defended the status quo that going forward with this new approach would increase poverty levels.

Vigilance is needed to preserve these gains, of course. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 reauthorized the welfare reform of 1996, and it will further reduce dependence and poverty. A provision in the 1996 law required that 50 percent of the single-parent TANF caseload be engaged in work-related activities. For every percentage point of caseloads that declined, the state governments were rewarded by requiring fewer participants to be engaged in work-related activities. Over time, this cut into the effectiveness of the key reform that encouraged more people to find a job. The Deficit Reduction Act counters this by resetting the provision back up to 50 percent of families benefiting from TANF being required to have one adult engaged in work-related activities.

The reforms we adopted 10 years ago sought to remedy what former Washington Post columnist William Raspberry identified in his own articulate way:

"We know . . . that people need a way to set themselves apart in positive ways, a chance to establish themselves as deserving. Public assistance driven solely by need denies its recipients any way of setting themselves apart and thereby demeans them."

Ten years on, this federal program motivates its beneficiaries to take a hand-up and helps them onto a path of dignity and good citizenship.