User:JuliaK/Sandbox

Week 6: Summary article

Welfare Dependency

Welfare dependency is the state in which a person or household is reliant on government welfare benefits for their income for a prolonged period of time, and without which they would not be able to meet the expenses of daily living. The United States Department of Health and Human Services defines welfare dependency as the proportion of all individuals in families which receive more than 50 percent of their total annual income from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, and/or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits.

Welfare dependence in the United States is typically associated with female-headed households with children. Welfare reform during the Clinton presidency placed time limits on benefit receipt, replacing Aid for Families with Dependent Children with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and requiring that recipients begin to work after two years of receiving these payments. Such measures were intended to decrease welfare dependence: The House Ways and Means Committee stated that the goal of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was to "reduce the length of welfare spells by attacking dependency while simultaneously preserving the function of welfare as a safety net for families experiencing temporary financial problems."

Long-term welfare dependency may be marked by repeated short periods of time in which benefits are not drawn. Analysis of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1983 to 1988 found that one-quarter of women in the study returned to receiving welfare within one year of exiting, and forty-two percent returned within two years.

Mechanisms of Action

There is an association between a parent's welfare dependency and that of her children; a mother's welfare participation increases the likelihood that her daughter, when grown, will also be dependent on welfare. The mechanisms through which this happens may include the child's lessened feelings of stigma related to being on welfare, lack of job opportunities because he or she did not observe a parent's participation in the labor market, and detailed knowledge of how the welfare system works imprinted from a young age. In some cases, the unemployment trap may function as a perverse incentive to remain dependent on welfare payments, as returning to work would not significantly increase household earnings as welfare benefits are withdrawn. This trap can be eliminated through the addition of work subsidies. Other factors which entrench welfare dependency include lack of affordable childcare, low education and skill levels, and unavailablity of suitable jobs.

Measurement

The United States Department of Health and Human Services defines ten indicators of welfare dependency:

• Indicator 1: Degree of Dependence
• Indicator 2: Receipt of Means-Tested Assistance and Labor Force Attachment
• Indicator 3: Rates of Receipt of Means-Tested Assistance
• Indicator 4: Rates of Participation in Means-Tested Assistance Programs
• Indicator 5: Multiple Program Receipt
• Indicator 6: Dependence Transitions
• Indicator 7: Program Spell Duration
• Indicator 8: Welfare Spell Duration with No Labor Force Attachment
• Indicator 9: Long Term Receipt
• Indicator 10: Events Associated with the Beginning and Ending of Program Spells

NOTE

Because the page I created for this new article may be deleted by moderators (despite the placement of a notice that this is part of a university Wiki project), I have copied my preliminary bibliography here:

Acs, Gregory and Eric Toder (2007). "Should We Subsidize Work? Welfare Reform, the Earned Income Tax Credit and Optimal Transfers." International Tax and Public Finance, 14:3, 327-343.

Antel, John J. (1992). "The Intergenerational Transmission of Welfare Dependency: Some Statistical Evidence." The Review of Economics and Statistics 74:3, 467-473

Barrett, Alan and Yvonne McCarthy (2008). "Immigrants and welfare programmes: exploring the interactions between immigrant characteristics, immigrant welfare dependence, and welfare policy." Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 24:3, 542-559.

Collins, Jane Lou and Victoria Mayer. (2010) Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom in the Low-Wage Labor Market. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dean, Hartley (2004). The Ethics of Welfare: Human Rights, Dependency, and Responsibility. Bristol: The Policy Press

Harris, Kathleen Mullen (1996). "Life After Welfare: Women, Work, and Repeat Dependency." American Sociological Review, 61:3, 407-426

Hoynes, Hilary and Thomas MaCurdy (1994). "Has the Decline in Benefits Shortened Welfare Spells?" The American Economic Review 84:2, 43-48.

Hu, Wei-Yin (1999) "Child Support, Welfare Dependency, and Women's Labor Supply." The Journal of Human Resources, 34:1, 71-103.

Ihlanfeldt, Keith R. and David L. Sjoquist (1998). "The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis: A Review of Recent Studies and Their Implications for Welfare Reform." Housing Policy Debate, 9:4, 849-892.

O'Connor, B. (2001) "Intellectual Origins of Welfare Dependency." Australian Journal of Social Issues, 36:3, August 2001.

Raphael, Jody (1996) "Domestic Violence and Welfare Receipt: Toward a New Feminist Theory of Welfare Dependency." Harvard Women's Law Journal.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "2008 Indicators of Welfare Dependency." http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/indicators08/ch1.shtml