Welfare's impact on racial/ethnic relations

Significance: The availability and adequacy of welfare programs affect the economic well-being of many racial and ethnic minorities, a larger proportion of whom live in poverty than do whites. Therefore, efforts to reform welfare often have an impact on racial/ethnic relations in America.

National-level welfare programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the food stamp program, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), provide a minimum level of income to the most economically disadvantaged members in society. Many states and local governments also provide welfare programs such as General Assistance, which provide a variety of services and functions.

Federal Welfare Programs

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) originated in the Social Security Act of 1935 as Aid to Dependent Children and became Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in the 1960’s. The food stamp program began in 1970, and 1974 saw the start of Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which incorporated the adult categories of public assistance programs (Aid to the Aged, Aid to the Blind, and Aid to the Disabled) that originated in the Social Security Act of 1935. Initially, the two cash assistance programs, TANF/AFDC and SSI, were intended to provide minimal support to those poor considered to be outside the wage labor pool, while the food stamp program, which makes use of vouchers, was designed primarily to increase the food-purchasing power of eligible low-income households. Welfare programs are income- or means-tested for eligibility. Monthly TANF/AFDC payments have historically been lower than those of SSI, reflecting the prevailing norms that the value of public assistance should not exceed the wages of low-income workers and that poor mothers should be encouraged to rely on the fathers of their children or their own work effort for income.

Impact and Use of Means-Tested Assistance Programs

Based on the US Department of Health and Human Services' Indicators of Welfare Dependence Annual Report to Congress (1997), the two cash transfer programs, TANF/AFDC and SSI, accounted for the highest percentages of total income for non-Hispanic blacks in 1992, followed closely by Hispanics. The greatest proportional differences occurred among those with the lowest incomes. Food stamps also accounted for the highest percentages of total income that year for non-Hispanic blacks among all income groups. The proportional contribution of food stamps to total income among Hispanics, however, was much closer to that of non-Hispanic whites than to non-Hispanic blacks. Hence, non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics were more dependent than non-Hispanic whites on cash transfer programs for their economic well-being, and non-Hispanic blacks were also more dependent on the food stamp program than either non-Hispanic whites or Hispanics.

As the report shows, the use of and exits from TANF/AFDC, SSI, and the food stamp program also vary by race and ethnicity. From 1992 to 1993, non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics were about five times more likely to move onto the lower benefit TANF/AFDC rolls and only twice as likely to move onto the higher benefit SSI rolls than non-Hispanic whites. Hispanics were nearly four times as likely to move into the food stamp program that year than were non-Hispanic whites. In addition, non-Hispanic whites were more likely to exit each of these means-tested programs than either non-Hispanic blacks or Hispanics. In general, the longer recipients received benefits, the more likely they were to move into one of these means-tested programs and the less likely they were to exit from them. Given the greater likelihood of living in poor or low-income households and the greater impact of means-tested assistance programs on the economic well-being of non-Hispanic blacks and other racial/ethnic groups (such as Puerto Ricans and Mexicans among Latinos/Hispanics and Cambodians, Laotians, and Vietnamese among Asians) than on non-Hispanic whites, changes in the availability and adequacy of benefits subsequently brought about by the welfare reform legislation passed in 1996 most adversely affected members of these groups.

Welfare Reform and Its Impact on Racial/Ethnic Relations

In part responding to social and demographic changes, the Congress of the United States passed and President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Between the 1970’s and 1990’s, an increasing proportion of welfare benefits had gone to young, single mothers. Trends in out-of-wedlock births were such that in 1993, white illegitimacy rates approached 24 percent, while those for black mothers was 69 percent. By the early 1990’s, immigrant welfare participation was, on average, nearly 2 percentage points higher than that of native-born Americans, while some Latino/Hispanic and Asian immigrant groups, notably Cubans, Laotians, and Cambodians, had more than twice the welfare participation rates of American-born blacks. Many whites had come to see welfare recipients as the undeserving poor, and public assistance not as deserved support for the needy but as handouts for malingerers. As reported in the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Reports, many black and ethnic congressional leaders, among others, objected to this welfare reform effort, with little success.

With the creation of TANF, the 1996 act ended the entitlement nature of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), capping the annual amount of federal money available to the states and setting a five-year maximum on the number of years recipients could receive cash assistance from the federal government. States were permitted to decrease the time limit. To be eligible for continued federal funds, states were required to take measures ensuring that increasing percentages of TANF/AFDC beneficiaries were involved in work-related activities. Because of their disproportionately high participation in TANF/AFDC, poor non-Hispanic black, Latino/Hispanic, and Asian women and their children were thought to be most adversely affected by the legislation, which probably forced mothers to seek low-wage, dead-end jobs or otherwise make ends meet without federal cash assistance. The 1996 act also barred legal immigrants, many of whom were from Mexico, from receiving food stamps, SSI, and other federally funded medical and social services for the first five years they were in the country. Most controversial was the enforcement of these provisions retroactively, that is, by applying them to legal immigrants who were already in the United States at the time of passage in August, 1996. An estimated 1.5 million legal immigrants, mostly Latino/Hispanic women and children, faced the possibility of losing welfare and health benefits.

Bibliography

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Haskins, Ron. "Combating Poverty: Understanding New Challenges for Families." Brookings. Brookings Institution, 5 June 2012. Web. 18 May 2015.

Noble, Charles. Welfare as We Knew It: A Political History of the American Welfare State New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print.

Quadagno, Jill. The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. Print.

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