Women and Welfare Reform

With much fanfare, President Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform act in August 1996 that ended the federal government's 60-year commitment to the provision of financial assistance to the nation's citizens in need. Essentially, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) handed responsibility over to the state governments, abolished Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and set new requirements and time limits for welfare recipients.

According to Clinton and proponents of the new welfare law, the elimination of certain welfare programs and the creation of rigid requirements would provide an incentive for the poor to work, instead of relying upon the government's financial assistance (Disconsiglio, 1997, p. 2). However, advocates for welfare recipients believed that the welfare reform rules would undermine the welfare recipients' ability to survive by eliminating important welfare programs. Furthermore, these advocates asserted that under the new regulations, no supports would be given to the welfare recipients to enable them to make the transition from welfare to work (Lawton, Leiter, Todd, & Smith, 1999, p. 540).

Four years after the passage of the welfare reform legislation, national and state political leaders cite the reduced number of caseloads and the increase in employment as the indicator of the success of the welfare reform. Although these stati

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developments belie the complexity of the underlying reality of many people on welfare. According to Duncan and Brooks-Gunn (1997), it is likely that the female welfare recipients who have returned to the workforce are those who belong to the short-term group of welfare recipients (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997, p. 67). They are clearly the most employable and unencumbered welfare recipients who found work without much difficulty ("Miles to Go," 1997, p. 5). The higher-than-expected decline in the caseloads can also be explained by the fundamental failure of the welfare system to provide adequately for welfare recipients. By standardizing benefits, policymakers allowed the actual value of benefits to decline through inflation. The real value of AFDC benefits in 1996 before the passage of the new law declined by 51 percent during the 26-year period from 1970 to 1996 (Stoesz, 1999, p. 53). Consequently, welfare mothers were forced to raise their families by a variety of means. For example, in child support, researchers found that over half of the AFDC mothers failed to provide crucial identifying information of the fathers of their children in order to qualify for additional income. The insufficient amount of welfare benefits means t
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Approximate Word count = 5235
Approximate Pages = 21 (250 words per page)