Impact of Government Policy on Families

Abstract

This article will focus on the impact of government policy on families. It will provide a description and analysis of the US government's public position on the family and the state as well as the government agency that oversees and implements family-related policy, the Administration for Children and Families. This article will introduce the 1996 reforms to the welfare state and discuss the related consequences to families and issues of child mistreatment, childcare problems, child Medicaid enrollment levels, and childhood poverty. Government treatment of families with illegal immigration status will also be addressed.

Overview

Families, which the United States Census Bureau considers to be "a group of two people or more (one of whom is the householder) related by birth, marriage, or adoption and residing together" ("Current population survey," 2015), provide stability for American society. Families, understood to be a type of social institution, transmit cultural and social norms, values, and behaviors. Families are a source of familial and political socialization. The US government and industrialized nations in general depend on families to successfully care for, educate, feed, house, nurture, and socialize children. The US government recognizes the important role of families in stabilizing society and socializing children and, in response, develops and implements policy to help strengthen the family unit. The explicit goal of American family policy is to improve the overall well-being of American children.

In the United States, public policies address the needs and interests of multiple constituents and stakeholders including families as well as ethnic and racial minorities, children, veterans, women, aging Americans, and the disabled. Government policies implicitly and explicitly, intentionally and unintentionally affect American families by a very wide range of public policy concerning education, taxes, monetary support, childcare, emergency relief, and marriage law. Public policy refers to the basic policy or set of policies that serve as the foundation for public laws. Public policy is often characterized as a social goal, enabling objective, or social solution. The policy-making process is a problem-solving activity that solves or resolves a problem or conflict in society. Public policy, requested by society and enacted by government, unites and mediates the relationship between society and government. Public policy is created within specific historical and socio-cultural contexts and political systems. Public policy encompasses and regulates nearly all areas of human and social behavior. One particularly large body of public policy, often referred to as social policy, concerns families and children.

Social policy, like all public policy, is an expression of values held by both citizens and government. Family policy is a type of social policy. Social policy is an expression of moral and economic values and viewpoints. In the United States, social policies that are enacted through social welfare programs serve as a social safety net and regulate and govern human behavior in areas such as general morality and quality of life. Social policy is created, in part, to respond to pressing social needs such as poverty, social exclusion, unemployment, aging, children, mental illness, learning disabilities, and physical disabilities. Social policy is developed, enacted, and implemented to create self-sufficiency, equity, and social cohesion for all members of a society. Examples of significant social policy created in the United States during the twentieth-century that impact families include the social security system, welfare, public housing, hunger and nutrition programs, childcare and child support, health care for people on low incomes, public education, and the social and health services of the Veterans' Administration. All social policies reflect moral, political, and economic choices.

The US government represents itself as pro-family. In contrast, critics of government family-centered policy argue that much of the government policy in the United States negatively affects American families. This article describes both of these positions, and will discuss critical appraisals of the impact that federal welfare reform has had on families. This article will introduce the 1996 reforms to the welfare state and discuss the related consequences to families and issues of child mistreatment, childcare problems, child Medicaid enrollment levels, and childhood poverty.

The US Government's Public Stance on the Family & the State. In 2004, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the US Department of Health and Human Services published "A Celebration of the Family — Observance of the Tenth Anniversary of the International Year of the Family," which was a report to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly's International Year of the Family in 1994. The report emphasized the foundational role of the family in the United States and recognized the family as a social institution vital to the health and prosperity of the nation. The report had three main goals: to highlight the family as a social institution, to explore the relationship between family and state, and to offer values to guide the government’s family policy.

Themes that appear in the report and in US social policy concern the role marriage plays within a family unit, the relationship of the family and the common social good, and the pressures modern families face. The United States, as described in the report, believes that the relationship between family and state allows the government to offer families three broad categories of support including “respecting the prerogatives of families, proactive support for healthy marriages, and supporting all families that need assistance” (“A celebration...”, 2004, p. 7).

The main principles of government family policy, as described in the 2004 Administration for Children and Families' report, include the following (“A celebration...”, 2004, p. 9):

• Principle 1: Government ought to create the conditions that allow families to thrive.
• Principle 2: Government ought to recognize the unique and irreplaceable contributions of both mothers and fathers to the lives of their children.
• Principle 3: Government ought to do what it can to strengthen healthy marriages and the two-parent family.
• Principle 4: Government must support children and families regardless of family structure.

The US government works to put these principles into practice through the development of US family policy. Policies include comprehensive initiatives to help all families succeed, as well as more targeted policies to encourage healthy marriages, responsible fatherhood, and measures to assist children who specifically need help. Significant family policies have included:

• Taxes and workforce participation: Federal tax cuts, most notably in 2003 by Republican president George W. Bush and extended in 2012 by Democratic president Barack Obama, were designed to lessen the tax burden on families and help reduce the necessity of dual-income families.
• Education: The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was crafted among other things to provide parents with more options in the choice of schools their children can attend and to level the playing field for children taking standardized tests.
• Health care: The Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 is intended to offer senior citizens greater choices of prescription drugs as well as establish Health Savings Accounts for the general population. In 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly called Obamacare, sought to reform a number of aspects of the US health insurance industry as well as improve the access to and quality of health care services.
• Housing and home ownership: George W. Bush’s American Dream Downpayment Act of 2003 and the housing initiatives supported by the Obama administration in 2012 were passed to assist families and families of service men and women build long-term financial security through homeownership.
• Marriage: The Healthy Marriage Initiative of 2004 assisted couples in accessing services to help them acquire skills and knowledge needed to build and maintain healthy marriages and reduce the instances of divorce.
• Fatherhood: The Fatherhood Initiative of 1995 was created by the Clinton administration and was under the auspices of the Head Start program for disadvantaged children. It coordinated a series of grants, publications, and conferences, to encourage fathers to participate in their children’s healthy early childhood development.
• Children in need: Through the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, the Tax Relief Act of 2001 and the Adoption Promotion Act of 2003, the US government has worked to streamline, encourage, and accelerate the adoption process.

An important example of government policy that affects families in all socio-economic levels includes “family-friendly” work policy of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) (Saltzstein & Ting, 2001). The Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993, is a federal law that provides individuals with a maximum of twelve weeks leave from work based on medical necessity for self or immediate family members including children, parents, or a spouse. The Family and Medical Leave Act has significant influence on parents’ leave taking and job satisfaction (Han & Waldfogel, 2003).

Administration for Children & Families. US government family policy, as described in the previous section is, in most cases, overseen and implemented through the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Created in 1991, the Administration for Children and Families "promotes the economic and social well-being of families, children, individuals and communities with funding, strategic partnerships, guidance, training and technical assistance" ("About", 2016). The Administration for Children and Families 2017 fiscal year budget for mandatory and discretionary programs totaled over $53 billion.

The Administration for Children and Families implements and manages programs for a wide variety of children and families such as Native Americans, persons with developmental disabilities, refugees, legalized aliens, children and youth with special problems, children of low-income families, abused and neglected children, children in institutions or requiring adoption or foster family services, runaway youth, children with disabilities, and migrant children. Administration for Children and Families programs, largely implemented by state, county, city, and tribal governments and public and private local agencies, are constructed to encourage family life that is stable, economically secure, responsible, and self-sufficient. The Administration for Children and Families’ programs help families in both short-term financial crisis and long-term education, training, and employment counseling situations.

The family services provided by the Administration for Children and Families include adoption and foster care, child abuse and neglect support, child care, child support, support for the disabled, energy assistance, head start, healthy marriage initiative, and assistance to families in need.

Applications

American Welfare Policy & Reform. The framework of the American family has changed significantly in the twentieth-century due to industrialization, rising divorce rates and out-of-wedlock birth rates. The changes in the American family have created both new patterns of poverty and new social policy to aid people (particularly children) in need. The government's efforts to aid poor children come primarily through the welfare system.

In the United States, family and social policies function as a social safety net for citizens. The nation has a welfare program that is designed to protect and provide for its members through social welfare provisions, initiatives, programs, policies. Public sector (or governmental) family and social policy and support became common practice in the early twentieth-century, which is characterized in part, by a switch in national perspective from individualism to interdependence. The social safety net switched from private sector (family, charity, community) to public sector (social policies such as welfare). The government became a source for social welfare provisions such as public education, welfare payments, pensions, and social security for disadvantaged groups such as poor families, the elderly, the disabled, and students (Amenta & Bonastia, 2001).

Significant family and social policy of the twentieth-century includes social security, welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, and public housing. America's welfare system, the cornerstone of much US family and social policy, began in 1935 with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's enactment of a social welfare program called Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) and expanded in the 1960s when President Johnson added Medicare, Medicaid, and public housing programs. The American welfare system as it was first established based on cash assistance policies, traditionally forced parents with poor job prospects to choose between welfare and work and created little opportunity or incentive to leave poverty. In 1996, President Clinton reformed the family and social policies that structure the American welfare state or system to increase work requirements and reduce overall welfare dependence. The 1996 reform was a significant drop in government's protective role.

The 1996 federal welfare reform (entitled “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act”) took the place of the joint federal-state cash assistance program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), with a new block grant known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which ended most federal welfare regulations and gave local governments the power to reshape their antipoverty policies based on their local needs, resources, and values (Sherman, 1999). The reform instituted time limits (continuous participation time limit of two years and a lifetime participation time limit of five years) and established new work requirements for recipients (Lichter, 1997). As of 2013, the block grant had not increased since 1996, meaning that benefit levels in most states have fallen and the number of families living in extreme poverty is up over 100 percent since 1996 (Mencimer, 2013).

Issues

Welfare Reform & Social Problems. The welfare reform described above has had a significant impact on American families. The following sections describe and analyze the relationship between welfare reform and issues of child mistreatment, childcare problems, child Medicaid enrollment levels, and childhood poverty.

Welfare Reform & Child Mistreatment. There is a strong connection between the rates and levels of family poverty and child maltreatment. Research has documented that increased poverty rates are associated with more reported and substantiated cases of maltreatment, physical abuse, and neglect. Child mistreatment rates have increased as a result of the welfare reform. Reports of child mistreatment have risen since the passage of the 1996 welfare reform that replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Forms of reported and substantiated maltreatment include abandonment, neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional maltreatment, and other categories. Family limit caps, lifetime limits, work requirements, and sanctions for non-compliance, have increased reports of maltreatment of children in immigrant families and more children entering foster care. High levels of corroborated maltreatment are associated with strict lifetime welfare limits and more serious sanctions for noncompliance offenses. The 1996 welfare reforms have also resulted in reductions of states welfare benefits and increases in the number of children in out-of-home care (Paxson & Waldfogel, 2003).

Welfare Reform & Childcare. Childcare challenges, both for single-mother families and state governments, have increased as a result of the welfare reform. The 1996 welfare reform, which required poor mothers to enter the workforce and states to oversee support payments, created numerous childcare challenges. To meet the childcare needs of poor mothers entering the workforce, states have increased their investments in childcare as well as transportation, medical coverage, substance abuse treatment, and other services for families who could not otherwise find stable work. Numerous states have increased state-level funding for childcare through investments in means-tested subsidies and expansion of universal pre-kindergarten services. While states work to expand childcare coverage, quality childcare remains expensive and out of reach for many poor mothers. The cost of providing childcare is expected to remain high as more single mothers enter employment. The welfare reform, which has shifted the childcare burden from the federal government to state government and poor families, may need further amendment to address the issue of childcare for the working poor (Meyers, Han, Walffogel, & Garfinkel, 2001).

Welfare Reform & Child Medicaid Levels. Child Medicaid enrollment rates have decreased as a result of the welfare reform. The 1996 federal welfare reform law "delinked" Medicaid enrollment from welfare participation. While Medicaid is mandated to cover the majority of low-income and poor families, the trend suggests that welfare reform has resulted in problematic declining Medicaid enrollment for poor children. Unfortunately, state governments have found that preserving children's Medicaid coverage under the 1996 welfare reform is difficult. Kronenbusch (2001) documented a significant decrease in child Medicaid enrollment between 1995 and 1998. In particular, enrollment rates for children in families with no income declined from 81 percent to 68 percent and enrollment for children in families living at half the poverty line declined from 61 percent to 53 percent. These numbers suggest that 926,000 to 1.37 million fewer children were enrolled in the years directly after the welfare reform (Kronenbusch, 2001).

The Affordable Care Act as it was passed in 2010 proposed to expand Medicaid coverage and benefits and address the issues of substandard care for children by increasing Medicaid payment rates to health care providers to help ensure access to primary care providers for more low-income children. The ACA assured that children will also no longer be denied coverage for preexisting conditions and will no longer have annual or lifetime caps placed on their health insurance. For very poor or uninsured families, ACA provides tax credits and vouchers to help with quality health insurance coverage (Children’s Defense Fund, 2012). Additionally, ACA allows parents to keep children on their policy until age twenty-six.

Welfare Reform & Childhood Poverty. Childhood poverty rates have increased as a result of the welfare reform. State policies, though tailored to local needs, have not been able to successfully provide a safety net for poor families with children. State policy is based on the assumption that living-wage jobs are available to all citizens. As a result, the five-year lifetime time limit on welfare leaves many parents without financial resources or government support unable to provide materially (and sometimes emotionally or psychologically) for their children.

The chief characteristics of modern child poverty in America are long-term poverty and dependence on public aid. The poor children of today are more likely than their predecessors to be chronically poor and government dependent. The income composition of poor families includes welfare, AFDC and cash assistance from the government. This dependence on welfare or other public assistance programs is a characteristic not present among poor children two decades ago. The experience of American children living in poverty is not homogeneous. There are six types or patterns of poverty based on number, duration, and spacing of poverty and out-of-poverty spells, that affect children. The patterns include transient poverty, persistent poverty, permanent poverty, occasional poverty, recurrent poverty, and chronic poverty (Ashworth, 1994). The variables of duration, degree, intermittence, and continuity affect poor children. Recurrent poverty is the most common childhood poverty pattern. Children who experience periods of intermittent relative prosperity may collect (material, emotional, and psychological) resources that they can use during periods of scarcity. Chronically and permanently poor children face the most difficult circumstances and the grimmest long-term prospects.

The American anti-poverty policies include social spending such as Head Start, nutrition programs such as school lunch, immunization programs, public education, and structural policies of welfare and tax incentives. Despite anti-poverty policies, childhood poverty persists and grows in America. Poverty puts children at risk for infant death asthma, obesity, poor nutrition, lead poisoning and related health problems of stunted growth, kidney damage, and learning delays, failing to finish high school, crime involvement, and low adult earning potential (Sherman, 1999). The number of families living in extreme poverty (surviving on $2 a day or less) has increased significantly since 1996. During that year, for example, 1.7 percent of households were living in extreme poverty. By 2011, the number had more than doubled to 4.3 percent (Shaefer & Edin, 2013).

Conclusion

Obviously, most government policies will have some effect on American families, and whether families are positively or negatively affected is often not immediately known. Despite the government’s best intentions, poverty rates have increased dramatically, suggesting poverty is not a primary public priority. Corak argues that the lack of effective poverty reducing policies is due to multiple factors (2006):

• Lack of clarity in a policy-relevant definition of poverty
• Lack of understanding of how families and labor markets work to determine poverty rates
• Lack of understanding of the priorities embedded in government tax and transfer programs (Corak, 2006, p. 44).

In the 1960s, United States War on Poverty campaign was based on the idea that poverty was a homogeneous entity and problem (Ashworth, 1994). Today, poverty is understood as a dynamic problem and force. That said, the United States spends less of its gross domestic product on social spending than any other industrialized Western country. The American anti-poverty policies include social spending programs such as Head Start, nutrition programs such as subsidized school lunches, immunization programs, public education, and structural policies of welfare and tax incentives. Despite anti-poverty policies, poverty persists and grows in America. Childhood poverty, affecting one out of every five children in the United States in 2011, is a seemingly intractable problem in the United States. In an effort to positively impact the lives and futures of poor families, local, state, and federal agencies might consider increasing social spending to levels similar to other industrialized Western countries. Examples of additional spending and policy areas include child-care, wage support, job training, and child support. These social services, along with others, could return the social safety net for poor children, and poor families in general, that was reduced or eliminated by the welfare reform of 1996 (Sherman, 1999). Of course, determining the effectiveness of various policies requires careful evaluation research in a variety of areas. But a range of policies—such as universal pre-kindergarten (or pre-K) programs, various school reform efforts, expansions of the earned income tax credit (EITC), and other income supports for the working poor, job training for poor adults, higher minimum wages and more collective bargaining, low-income neighborhood revitalization and housing mobility, marriage promotion, and faith-based initiatives—might all be potentially involved in this effort. Given the strong evidence that already exists on some of these efforts (like high-quality pre-K and the EITC), some investments through these mechanisms seem particularly warranted” (Holzer, 2007, ¶7).

Terms & Concepts

Administration for Children and Families: A federal agency that “provides national leadership and direction to plan, manage, and coordinate the nationwide administration of comprehensive and supportive programs for vulnerable children and families” (“About ACF”, 2007).

Childhood Poverty: The persistent or intermittent condition of living below the poverty line as established by a national government or international organization.

Family: “Two or more persons related by birth, marriage or adoption who reside in the same household” (“Current population survey”, 2010).

Federal government: A form of government in which a group of states recognizes the sovereignty and leadership of a central authority while retaining certain powers of government.

Public policy: The basic policy or set of policies that serve as the foundation for public laws.

Social policy: Policy enacted through social welfare programs and serving as a social safety net that regulates and governs human behavior in areas such as general morality and quality of life.

Social welfare: The relationship and responsibilities of governments to their members.

Social welfare provision: Government program that provides a minimum level of income, service or other support for disadvantaged groups such as the poor, elderly, disabled and students.

Welfare state: The social programs and public institutions providing unemployment support, aging population assistance, public assistance, and health, housing, and educational benefits to citizens.

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Suggested Reading

Baum, C., II (2006). The effects of government-mandated family leave on employer family leave policies. Contemporary Economic Policy, 24, 432-445. Retrieved April 28, 2007, from EBSCO online database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=21660271&site=ehost-live

Boling, P. A. (2015). The politics of work-family policies: Comparing Japan, France, Germany and the United States. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Cancian, M., Mi-Youn, Y., & Shook Slack, K. (2013). The effect of additional child support income on the risk of child maltreatment. Social Service Review, 87, 417–437. Retrieved November 21, 2013, from EBSCO online database Business Source Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=91589904

Ellwood, D. T. (2000). The impact of the earned income tax credit and social policy reforms on work, marriage, and living arrangements. National Tax Journal, 53, 1063-1105. Retrieved April 28, 2007, from EBSCO online database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=3974603&site=ehost-live

Lobao, L., Jeanty, P., Partridge, M., & Kraybill, D. (2012). Poverty and place across the United States: Do county governments matter to the distribution of economic disparities?. International Regional Science Review, 35, 158–187. Retrieved November 21, 2013, from EBSCO online database Business Source Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=73902264

Neumark, D., & Wascher, W. (2001). Using the EITC to help poor families. National Tax Journal, 54, 281-317. Retrieved April 28, 2007, from EBSCO online database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=4783866&site=ehost-live