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Review: Life After Welfare
Jun. 26th, 2009 10:21 amOne fairly recent policy idea has been to just kick people off welfare after a certain amount of time, regardless of whether they could actually use the services anymore or not. The impending doom will motivate people to go get a job already.
Wondering if that were really true, I checked out Life After Welfare by researchers Laura Lein and Deanna T. Schexnayder. It did not answer my question. First, they ignored people who had been kicked off welfare looking only at people who left for other reasons such as getting a job, getting married, getting more child support, or getting sick of dealing with the associated bureaucracy. Second, they only watched them for 18 months. Of course after 18 months they are still struggling. I want to know how they are doing after five years. Or ten. Third, although they do show evidence that most people on welfare do want to work and do want to be seen as people with jobs (claiming they were employed when they had been hired but had not yet started work or when they had been hired by a temp agency but hadn't gotten any jobs yet), the authors had a bias to talk only about those people. Surely there are some people who would rather have hand-outs than jobs. There was no sign of this in the book whatsoever.
The book was really addressing the question of what if you were trying hard but just had some bad luck? What would be the best way for welfare to work then? The introductory example was of a single parent who had had her children while married but then was divorced and was now job hunting, but had trouble finding affordable childcare.
They recommended that providing health insurance and child care subsidies, even after people got their first crappy minimum wage jobs with no benefits, is a big help. Disallowing welfare for people with cars over a certain value makes it difficult to get reliable transportation while still job hunting. Having to go in for appointments when you can't get permission to leave your job is also unhelpful.
The author of the book explained that people with relatives who could take care of their kids or provide crash space or lend a car or drive them around did a lot better at staying off welfare than people without any of these advantages. That whole inter-generational family thing that some other cultures have comes in handy at times like these.
One thing that surprised me is that I was in a very similar situation myself once but had so many advantages that I never thought to look for welfare. This is when I graduated from college with no job. My first advantage was that I had parents who let me move back in with them for free without my worrying about wearing out my welcome there. My second advantage is that I had no dependents myself. My third advantage was good health.
Still, I had the problem of there being no good jobs nearby, no mass transportation, and I didn't have a car. So, I got a crappy job in walking distance (fast food) to save up money until I could get a car. However, once I had a down payment, they still didn't want to give me a loan for a car even with full-time work at just above minimum wage and even though I had no expenses at all except for having a car. I didn't think of buying the sort of car I buy now (very old but still reliable). I was going for a slightly used car.
My parents couldn't co-sign a loan with me, but my mom had found a lender willing to take a risk on her after the bankruptcy and she talked him into taking a risk on me too, explaining that I was actually going to be much less of a risk. So that fourth advantage meant I was able to get a car loan and a car.
My fifth advantage was I had a college degree. So then I got a job as a teacher's aide, and I could have worked up from there into actually being a teacher and voila, no longer needing any help. Instead I went to grad school.
After grad school, I once again took advantage of the free room-and-board, no dependents, good health, and college degree advantages. At least I still had a car this time. And that's the last time I've needed help.
The authors implied in one place that most people were much better off by the time their kids were in high school and beyond, but didn't discuss why. Did they finally have time to work their way up the corporate ladder? Were their kids less dependent and easier to take care of?
There was a PBS show (I think) that showed one guy who, because he got kicked off welfare, got so desperate that he finally did something he would never have done if he could have stayed on welfare. He also had free living space, in a trailer in his parents' back yard. He lived in the country and there were no jobs around him and he had no transportation. But he couldn't afford to move into town. Finally, he decided to walk into town (2.5 hours each way) to job hunt. For a while, he would just have this horrible commute, but eventually he could save for either a car or the deposit on a closer-in apartment. So that's at least one example where it seemed impossible to get by without welfare, but then once it was gone, it turned out to be possible after all.
One thing I did learn from the book is that welfare in Texas sucks. Even if you can qualify, you won't get much ($300/month for a family of 3 plus medicaid and maybe some child care subsidies, maybe some food stamps, and maybe some job training). I also know that Texas houses an extremely high percentage of its residents in prison. There might be a correlation. The book did not mention this issue at all.
Wondering if that were really true, I checked out Life After Welfare by researchers Laura Lein and Deanna T. Schexnayder. It did not answer my question. First, they ignored people who had been kicked off welfare looking only at people who left for other reasons such as getting a job, getting married, getting more child support, or getting sick of dealing with the associated bureaucracy. Second, they only watched them for 18 months. Of course after 18 months they are still struggling. I want to know how they are doing after five years. Or ten. Third, although they do show evidence that most people on welfare do want to work and do want to be seen as people with jobs (claiming they were employed when they had been hired but had not yet started work or when they had been hired by a temp agency but hadn't gotten any jobs yet), the authors had a bias to talk only about those people. Surely there are some people who would rather have hand-outs than jobs. There was no sign of this in the book whatsoever.
The book was really addressing the question of what if you were trying hard but just had some bad luck? What would be the best way for welfare to work then? The introductory example was of a single parent who had had her children while married but then was divorced and was now job hunting, but had trouble finding affordable childcare.
They recommended that providing health insurance and child care subsidies, even after people got their first crappy minimum wage jobs with no benefits, is a big help. Disallowing welfare for people with cars over a certain value makes it difficult to get reliable transportation while still job hunting. Having to go in for appointments when you can't get permission to leave your job is also unhelpful.
The author of the book explained that people with relatives who could take care of their kids or provide crash space or lend a car or drive them around did a lot better at staying off welfare than people without any of these advantages. That whole inter-generational family thing that some other cultures have comes in handy at times like these.
One thing that surprised me is that I was in a very similar situation myself once but had so many advantages that I never thought to look for welfare. This is when I graduated from college with no job. My first advantage was that I had parents who let me move back in with them for free without my worrying about wearing out my welcome there. My second advantage is that I had no dependents myself. My third advantage was good health.
Still, I had the problem of there being no good jobs nearby, no mass transportation, and I didn't have a car. So, I got a crappy job in walking distance (fast food) to save up money until I could get a car. However, once I had a down payment, they still didn't want to give me a loan for a car even with full-time work at just above minimum wage and even though I had no expenses at all except for having a car. I didn't think of buying the sort of car I buy now (very old but still reliable). I was going for a slightly used car.
My parents couldn't co-sign a loan with me, but my mom had found a lender willing to take a risk on her after the bankruptcy and she talked him into taking a risk on me too, explaining that I was actually going to be much less of a risk. So that fourth advantage meant I was able to get a car loan and a car.
My fifth advantage was I had a college degree. So then I got a job as a teacher's aide, and I could have worked up from there into actually being a teacher and voila, no longer needing any help. Instead I went to grad school.
After grad school, I once again took advantage of the free room-and-board, no dependents, good health, and college degree advantages. At least I still had a car this time. And that's the last time I've needed help.
The authors implied in one place that most people were much better off by the time their kids were in high school and beyond, but didn't discuss why. Did they finally have time to work their way up the corporate ladder? Were their kids less dependent and easier to take care of?
There was a PBS show (I think) that showed one guy who, because he got kicked off welfare, got so desperate that he finally did something he would never have done if he could have stayed on welfare. He also had free living space, in a trailer in his parents' back yard. He lived in the country and there were no jobs around him and he had no transportation. But he couldn't afford to move into town. Finally, he decided to walk into town (2.5 hours each way) to job hunt. For a while, he would just have this horrible commute, but eventually he could save for either a car or the deposit on a closer-in apartment. So that's at least one example where it seemed impossible to get by without welfare, but then once it was gone, it turned out to be possible after all.
One thing I did learn from the book is that welfare in Texas sucks. Even if you can qualify, you won't get much ($300/month for a family of 3 plus medicaid and maybe some child care subsidies, maybe some food stamps, and maybe some job training). I also know that Texas houses an extremely high percentage of its residents in prison. There might be a correlation. The book did not mention this issue at all.