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The Implications of Welfare Reform on Urbanized Areas The questions about effectiveness of a welfare programs have been of a great importance throughout the world for the last twenty years. In the United States, the problems of welfare become vital after the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal proposed the creation of welfare system. It was the first time in the U. S.
history when government started to use public and federal funds in order to finance people. One of the most important welfare programs is Aid to Families with Dependent Children. It the most expensive program, but it is the most needed too. This program was proposed in 1935. However, for the last 65 years the whole welfare system had suffered significant changes.
One of the most important changes was the Family Support Act of 1988, which required welfare recipients to attend job-training programs. Another welfare programs that exist today are Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Supplemental Security Income. A lot of federal money is used to finance all these expensive programs. Such a program as Medicaid is very important especially to the low-income families with many children. Statistics shows that in 1994 approximately 35 million people had received financial assistance, which resulted into 140 billion dollars spent from the federal budget. For instance, Food Stamps can be used to purchase food items just as money.
In the same year, the value of the Food Stamps given to the low-income families totaled 24 billion dollars. The Congressional Digest gives an example of how food stamps are distributed, "A four-person household with countable income below the federal poverty guidelines and specified assets of less than $ 20, 000 qualifies for up to about $ 380 worth of food stamps monthly. Everyone would like to have a good welfare system, but when it comes to paying the taxes, the support for it drops. In order to have an extensive welfare system, it would be needed to raise taxes to levels with which many would not feel comfortable. Another problem with welfare is that it brings with it more bureaucracy. The money that should be used to help people is actually used for running the program.
In August of 1996, president Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. According to the Washington Post, since that time, there are seven million fewer people on welfare. The welfare roles have been cut in half. So far, the major changes from welfare reform have been the changes in participation experienced by education and employment preparation agencies. Some agencies have experienced declines, while others have seen gains. In some places, like Philadelphia, welfare agencies quickly changed the focus of their welfare-to-work program, causing education and training agencies to respond to this shift.
The agencies responses to meet the needs of welfare reform were to compress the curriculum and make services shorter, which may not be the best ways to serve all welfare recipients. In addition, many observers have commented that as the most employable recipients leave welfare for jobs, the largest group remaining on welfare are people who are the most difficult to employ. It is unclear whether agencies will be prepared to deal with this hard to serve group. In the early implementation phase, welfare reform did not transform social service agencies.
Nonetheless, some agencies did begin to experience changes that they attributed to new welfare policies. Basic education and literacy programs in Philadelphia suffered drops in participation when clients in that city responded to the welfare departments new job search mandate. In response, some of these agencies reported changing their curriculum in order to retain students. Education agencies in the other cities reported either increased participation or no effect from reform, which points to the importance of local policies. New contracts from welfare departments contributed to increased participation in job training and employment preparation programs.
A minority of agencies responded to the new needs and demands caused by welfare reform by taking on recipients in community service slots and attempting to advocate for their clients through communication with the welfare department. In the early stage of welfare reform, basic need agencies appeared to be less affected than education and employment preparation agencies. However, a few agencies in Cleveland experienced increased demand that they attributed to a rise in sanctioning by the welfare department; they provide a cautionary exception to this trend. This result seems promising, but should it be used to evaluate welfare reforms success?
This question divides the issue among party lines. Generally, republicans view this outcome as a reliable way to measure reforms success. In contrast, democrats probe deeper into welfare, considering additional data. This includes knowing that one third of children in America are living in poverty.
This value has varied little since 1996. The question then rises, what can be wrong with the reform that is not getting people from poverty? To answer this question, a few facts must be considered. Including, how reform has changed welfare and the characteristics of a welfare recipient. As a result, of the seven million people that stopped receiving welfare benefits since 1996, three-fourths of them have jobs.
These jobs provide no health benefits and offer an average wage of $ 6. 50 per hour. Consequently, in order to pay their bills and avoid eating smaller meals, they must supplement their income with food stamps and Medicaid. Not only are they still living in poverty, we are still buying their groceries, thus revealing the failure of welfare. Considering these factors should lead to a plausible solution to welfare's failure.
The solution seems simple; resources to education, job training, day care, and transportation need to be offered. These resources are prerequisites to achieving gainful employment. Yet, these resources are in effect being hidden from welfare recipients. In welfare offices across the state, the theme of the posters on the walls is; get back to work and get off welfare. This is when not to mention of local school financial aid programs or day care programs, also community bulletin board with information such as in-home day care or car-pooling in the neighborhood.
These bulletin boards are reserved for mentions of job openings. Jobs for which either do not pay enough to support a family, or require qualifications that a majority of welfare recipients do not have. According to Time Magazine, up to four billion dollars of federal money allocated to the states for welfare programs has gone unspent, solutions are not being considered. The problem has been stated.
Solutions can be seen. The money is available to fix it. Yet, action is not being taken. Thus, revealing yet another paradox. What is holding back the implementation of these solutions to welfare reforms failure?
It can be easily seen that solutions to the unsuccessful welfare program of 1996 are not as simple as providing needed resources to welfare recipients. Before offering these resources can even be considered a century-old attitude must be changed in the minds of our leaders. This ultimately comes down to relinquishing a social bias across our nation. One measure of opportunity in any society is its ability to provide jobs for everyone who wants to work. This problem is very important especially in the urban areas, where the unemployment rate in some cities is quite big. With the enactment of welfare reform in 1996, this issue has taken on new salience.
This brief addresses whether enough jobs are available for all those who are thrust into the labor market by welfare reform, whether former welfare recipients can compete successfully for those jobs, and they do find jobs what their chances are of ever earning enough to become self-sufficient. The experience of some agencies in Cleveland dealing with widespread sanctioning suggests that expectations of increased demand may be fulfilled if recipients lose benefits due to sanctions or time limits. However, many basic need agencies are already operating at capacity and are stretched financially, so they are unable to accommodate increases in demand. Again, information would help agencies be more proactive.
Most agencies in the sample were not very certain about when time limits would hit, why sanctioning rates had increased and whether or not this situation was temporary, and what benefits (for example, food stamps) recipients were entitled to when they left welfare for work. If large numbers of recipients do reach time limits without a job and are cut from the rolls, the private safety net will be forced to respond. Agencies and funders will need to find ways to deal with this increased demand. Today the economy of our country is quite strong.
Many people who were on the welfare started successfully looking for an employment and many of them are already working. Recent job growth and tougher welfare policies together had pulled and pushed into the job market many of those who would otherwise have remained dependent on government assistance. However, if the economy slows, the push may become stronger than the pull, and we could see approximately 100, 000 to 150, 000 additional new workers per year competing for a less rapidly growing number of jobs. Almost despite the state of the economy, the most disadvantaged are likely to encounter real difficulties in securing steady employment.
Most of those who are able to find full-time employment should stay above the poverty line with the help of subsidized childcare and other government assistance (such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and food stamps). The unemployment rate in 1997 was the lowest in the past 24 years; therefore, it is hard to argue that jobs are not available. The economy has been generating an average of almost two million new jobs a year since 1983, and the proportion of working-age adults in jobs has reached an all-time high. In the process, millions of new entrants including baby boomers, immigrants, and women returning to worksafe been absorbed into the labor force. The pace of job creation has been particularly strong in the last four years. Between April 1993 and April 1997, the economy generated almost 10 million new jobs, allowing the unemployment rate to fall from 7. 1 percent to 4. 8 percent even as the number of persons working or looking for work was growing by 6 percent.
This job growth has benefited everyone, including the poorest, the least educated, and the least skilled. Welfare reform, in short, could not have come at a better time. However, how many new workers are there likely to be in total because of welfare reform, and can the economy absorb the influx? Our analysis suggests the new law is likely to be in total because of welfare reform, and can the economy absorb the influx? Our analysis suggests the new law is likely to add over 800, 000 new workers between 1997 and 2002 roughly 140, 000 per year. Compared to the projected growth of the labor force over this same period which, at 1. 4 million a year, is more than 10 times as great 140, 000 is a relatively small addition.
And if the demand for workers continues to grow as rapidly as it has over the last decade (about 2 million per year), the economy can easily produce a sufficient number of jobs to accommodate welfare recipients or other low-skilled workers entering the labor force. Overall, influence of the welfare reform of 1996 had positive and negative effects on the population of urban areas, but mostly it is not considered being successful. The negative influence is that many people who were used to be on the welfare are not succeeding in finding new jobs and therefore, this can result into growing percentage of people with poor income. However, the government is not paying the people who had found the jobs and this positively affects the economic situation in the country.
Nevertheless, it is also possible to notice that in the urban areas, where the concentration of the labor force is quite big, the wages can be low, which will result into poor economic situation of urban population. Sources: web web web web web
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Research essay sample on The Implications Of Welfare Reform On Urbanized Areas
