Blogs > Linked! > Topic > Welfare
Out-of-wedlock births in the United States have climbed to an all-time high, accounting for nearly four in 10 babies born last year, government health officials said Tuesday. While out-of-wedlock births have long been associated with teen mothers, the teen birth rate actually dropped last year to the lowest level on record. Instead, births among unwed mothers rose most dramatically among women in their 20s.
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To understand how subjective poverty in America is, one need only recognize the fact that most rich people from a century ago would be considered poor by today?s standards, and today?s poor would be considered rich by the standards of 1900. In 1900, 2 percent of homes had electricity, and 1 out of 10 homes had flush toilets. Today, pretty much all of them do. In other words, the tangible goods that defined wealth have been democratized. Absurdly, according to the official measurements used by the federal government, fewer people lived in poverty in 1973 than today. But in 1973, most poor people didn?t have a car. Today, almost 75 percent of those officially in poverty have a motor vehicle. Today?s poor households, according to statistician Nicholas Eberstadt, are more likely to have telephones and televisions than non-poor families were in 1970. In the 1970s, undernourishment still factored into poverty. Today, obesity is a far bigger problem.
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The Post reports on the beefed-up work requirements in the welfare reform reauthorization legislation of earlier this year. Welfare reform--and especially mandating that more recipients work--seems to have worked great in Maryland, but some are unhappy with that result. They're a bit too eager, perhaps, to "pound the table" in that legal cliche.
Born's body of research, known as the nation's oldest state study of those leaving welfare, has found generally positive outcomes for the more than 11,000 Maryland families it has studied since 1996. Although initial earnings may be low for workers just leaving welfare, they increase steadily, the study found.... Born stressed that much of Maryland's success results from the care with which it was designed and the flexibility the federal government allowed in implementing it. With the new requirements, she said, "the federal government is reneging on a deal."
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President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, better known as "welfare reform," on Aug. 22, 1996. A decade later, it stands as a rarity: a Washington success story.
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In the past, some states have counted activities such as bed rest, shopping, motivational reading and massage toward a recipient's work requirement. Horn said those likely won't qualify in the future. In addition, education and training can be counted only if related to a specific job. Substance abuse and rehabilitation activities will be allowed for up to six weeks per year. Georgia was heralded as an example of a state that forces two-thirds of its welfare recipients to work. B.J. Walker, the state's commissioner of human resources, said work “is like penicillin. It cures what ails.”
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Nationally, in 2004, the last year for which official figures are available, about 32 percent of adults on welfare were working. Under the new rules, 50 percent of adult welfare recipients must be engaged in work or training in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, or states will face financial penalties. The penalties can reduce a state's federal welfare grant by 5 percent in the first year and by two additional percentage points for each subsequent year of noncompliance, up to a maximum penalty of 21 percent.
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The 'benefits' of government-funded childcare--a favorite of moderates in the House and Senate--are just mind-boggling.
Disturbingly, the authors report that children's outcomes have worsened since the program was introduced along a variety of behavioral and health dimensions. The NLSCY contains a host of measures of child well being developed by social scientists, ranging from aggression and hyperactivity, to motor-social skills, to illness. Along virtually every one of these dimensions, children in Quebec see their outcomes deteriorate relative to children in the rest of the nation over this time period. Their results imply that this policy resulted in a rise of anxiety of children exposed to this new program of between 60 percent and 150 percent, and a decline in motor/social skills of between 8 percent and 20 percent. These findings represent a sharp break from previous trends in Quebec and the rest of the nation, and there are no such effects found for older children who were not subject to this policy change. The authors also find that families became more strained with the introduction of the program, as manifested in more hostile, less consistent parenting, worse adult mental health, and lower relationship satisfaction for mothers.
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