Welfare reform and racial/ethnic relations

SIGNIFICANCE: Certain racial groups—notably African Americans—receive a disproportionate level of welfare benefits. Attempts to modify the welfare system therefore trigger the issue of race.

Any attempt to alter the distribution of government assistance inevitably encounters intense lobbying by groups who stand to gain and lose benefits. Welfare reform is a case in point. Both recipients of welfare benefits and the taxpayers who fund welfare programs have strong economic interests in how the program is run. In addition, the matter of welfare reform is connected to deeper racial issues. Because a disproportionate number of certain racial groups receive welfare benefits, efforts to reduce welfare spending are sometimes viewed as racially motivated.

Calls for Welfare Reform

The US welfare system was created in the 1930s during the Great Depression. It was greatly expanded in the 1960s under President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society program. Although elements of the system have been altered almost continuously, calls for thorough reform reached a crescendo in the 1980s. These calls were spurred by two factors. First, mounting government debt and increasing hostility to taxes created a political environment that encouraged a reduction in social spending. Second, a consensus began to form that after two decades, the War on Poverty initiated by Johnson had largely failed. In fact, by some measures, poverty had increased even with expanded welfare spending.

The issue of welfare reform had for years been largely associated with the Republican Party. President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, promoted some efforts to reduce welfare spending and tighten eligibility criteria, but the Democrat-controlled Congress was hostile to any serious reduction in welfare benefits. Liberals called the Republican proposals mean-spirited and selfish. More to the point, many minority leaders charged that welfare reform proposals were racist. Although by far White individuals constituted the largest racial group receiving welfare benefits, a much larger proportion, or percentage, of African Americans (up to 30 percent) received welfare benefits, compared with about 10 percent of Americans overall.

Welfare reform thus became a racially charged topic, with minority groups and African American leaders charging that “welfare” had become a code word for “Black,” and thus welfare reform was an insidious form of attack against African Americans. In such an environment, only the most incremental welfare reform proposals could make it through the legislative process. Meanwhile, pressure continued to mount from white and other nonblack groups who were becoming frustrated with the inability of the government to address the ineffectiveness of the welfare system. This frustration was dubbed “donor fatigue,” whereby many taxpayers despaired that the Great Society programs of the 1960s could ever significantly reduce the problems they were designed to eradicate.

The Republican “Revolution”

It was in this environment that the Republican Party won a majority in both houses of Congress in 1994. After decades as the minority party, the Republicans sought to tap in to the rising conservative mood of the electorate and reverse long-standing programs they derided as too liberal. Welfare was one of these. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, quickly agreed to work with the Republicans to “end welfare as we know it”—itself an indicator of how potent the public mood was gauged to be. Clinton was criticized by members of his own party for allegedly capitulating to the conservative mood, but the prevailing political environment made defense of the status quo a fatal stance in most districts.

In the next few years, a monumental welfare reform bill was created in Congress. The bill, formally titled the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, passed in Congress and was signed by President Clinton in 1996. The act had a number of provisions that were racially controversial. One of these denied welfare benefits to immigrants who entered the country after August 22, 1996 (although these immigrants could later receive benefits upon securing U.S. citizenship). Non citizens living in the country before this deadline would also be ineligible for benefits, unless they had worked in the United States for at least ten years. Latino leaders were especially opposed to this provision, since by far the largest number of non citizen immigrants were from Mexico and Central American countries. Although he signed the bill, Clinton promised to fight to “fix” the welfare reform law at a later time. The immigrant provision was removed as part of the following year’s budget bill.

The much more important provision of the 1996 welfare reform law terminated the government’s Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program and converted its funding into grants for state programs. The states would have considerable flexibility in implementing their programs, but several nationwide standards would be imposed. Among these were the limitation of two consecutive years for receiving assistance, a lifetime maximum of five years, and the requirement that persons receiving this aid be actively looking for work, going to school, or performing public work.

Evaluation

Although it would be years before the success of the individual state programs could be evaluated, many immediately weighed in with their assessments of the landmark reform. As regards racial and ethnic relations, groups promoting the interests of African Americans and Latinos tended to be critical of the reforms, although the United States population in general tended to support the reforms. Disagreements focused on two major issues. First, since the reforms required welfare recipients to make a quick transition to the workforce, did the nation’s economic system provide opportunities for all, regardless of race and ethnicity, to earn a living wage? Second, was some form of welfare system necessary to help more people of color join the economic mainstream of society?

In general, the welfare reform of 1996 is premised on the belief that welfare should be a form of temporary assistance rather than a long-term way of life. Opponents argue that although that sentiment may be laudable, the existing economic system makes the goal of self-sufficiency unrealistic for some people. Some argue that the legacy of past racial discrimination, and perhaps even continuing discrimination, make economic self-sufficiency impossible for certain groups, at least within the parameters of the reforms.

Proponents of welfare reform counter that poverty is due to economic rather than racial factors. They further argue that the welfare system of the 1960s and 1970s created disincentives in the areas of work, education, and personal responsibility. The 1996 welfare reform attempts to create a new incentive structure that encourages work and facilitates training and education.

It is unlikely that racial issues connected with welfare reform will disappear until there are no significant differences in wealth and work between different racial and ethnic groups, and after nearly three decades, the 1996 welfare reform bill and the programs implemented at the state level still had not achieved that goal.

Bibliography

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