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ISSUE GUIDES: Poverty and Welfare

CONSIDER THE CHOICES

 

PERSPECTIVES IN BRIEF

Eliminating the Dependency Trap
Redefining What's Expected from America's Poor
Devising a Jobs Strategy

Government efforts to reduce poverty have made the problem worse by creating a culture of dependency. Welfare programs reward people for being poor, diminish the incentive to work, and undermine the family. The best and most compassionate solution -- and in the long run, the only realistic solution -- is to phase out most welfare benefits. Communities and private charities are better able to help the poor than any government program.
Poverty deepened for decades because assistance was provided unconditionally prior to welfare reform in 1996. Today, the poor should are expected to play by the rules. In exchange for public assistance, government is entitled to make demands on recipients. Benefits are linked to socially accepted behaviors such as getting a job, and having unwed teenage mothers live with their families or other responsible adults. To succeed, government programs must firmly guide poor people toward responsible, self-reliant, and productive lives.
The cause of poverty today is the dire shortage of jobs with livable wages and benefits -- and not government programs or the behavior and values of the poor. A successful anti-poverty program has to begin with a realistic assessment of the needs of the working poor. As long as many Americans don't have a good education, and the number of good-paying jobs is far smaller than the number of job seekers, millions of Americans will be impoverished.

PERSPECTIVES IN DETAIL

Eliminating the Dependency Trap
Redefining What's Expected from America's Poor
Devising a Jobs Strategy


What should be done?

  • Phase out benefits for able- bodied workers.
  • Limit other benefits -- including healthcare and nutrition -- to children.
  • Encourage communities and private charities to take more responsibility for helping the needy.
  • Use benefits as incentives to promote socially desirable behavior, such as finishing high school and responsible family planning.
  • Use benefits to discourage socially undesirable behavior. For example, benefits should be reduced or withheld from parents whose children have too many unexcused absences from school.
  • Reduce poverty by making it possible for people to work, by doing such things as subsidizing public day care, job training, and public transportation to and from work.
  • Provide adequate and equal funding to all public schools, so that all children have access to high quality education.
  • Expand job training programs so more people have the skills for decent jobs.
  • Raise the minimum wage so full-time workers receive more than a poverty-level income.
  • As a last resort, government should provide temporary jobs to unemployed workers.


    • Arguments For This Approach

  • The United States has spent billions of dollars on welfare over the past few decades, but it has done little to reduce poverty.
  • Communities and private charities can help the poor more effectively and efficiently than government can.
  • Automatic assistance to the poor undermines the family by subsidizing out-of-wedlock births and single-parent families.
  • By providing a disincentive to work, welfare creates a cycle of dependency.
  • In the long run, the only compassionate course of action is to help people become self- sufficient.
  • It's fair that working poor families get some kinds of public support.
  • Socially responsible behavior ought to be a requirement for obtaining public assistance.
  • Failing to impose behavioral requirements on recipients of public assistance undermines public support for such assistance.
  • Those who are able to work should be expected to do so.
  • If there aren't enough good-paying jobs, it s futile to expect people to be able to support themselves.
  • Education and job-training are the best poverty prevention programs, and they are the least expensive measures.
  • People don't have a right to an endless series of welfare checks, but everyone has a right to a decent job.


    • Arguments Against This Approach

  • Poor people need and deserve government assistance, including cash assistance.
  • Welfare isn't draining the public treasury, and welfare cuts won't save a lot of money.
  • It is morally wrong to remove such assistance at a time when a lot of unskilled people can't find decent jobs.
  • It's also wrong to punish children for their parents' plight or behavior.
  • Private charities and communities can't be expected to step in when benefits to the poor are sharply reduced.
  • Welfare payments don't increase out-of-wedlock births, according to some studies.
  • The problem isn't welfare. It's that too many poor people don't have the education or skills to find decent jobs.
  • This approach requires government to intrude into people's private lives. In our democracy, government shouldn't tell people what they can and cannot do.
  • It is not clear that linking welfare payments to children's school attendance works. Early studies of the Wisconsin program show that it did not decrease truancy.
  • The poor have a moral right to public assistance. They shouldn't have to jump through hoops.
  • It's not right for the government to use public assistance to promote two-parent families at the expense of single-parent families.
  • Guaranteeing jobs for all Americans, or providing public sector jobs for those who cannot find employment elsewhere, would be prohibitively expensive.
  • Substantially raising the minimum wage would be counterproductive as many employers would be forced to lay off workers.
  • The best way to reduce poverty requires something that government cannot provide: motivation and hard work.
  • In our free market economy, government shouldn't be the employer of last resort. We want less government, not more of it, and we certainly don't want millions of Americans in make-work government jobs.


    • QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: HOW THE PERSPECTIVES DIFFER

    Eliminating the Dependency Trap
    Redefining What's Expected from America's Poor
    Devising a Jobs Strategy

    Q: What is a likely cost or tradeoff associated with each choice?
    A:
    There would be at least a short-term increase in poverty, especially among children.
    A:
    Government becomes increasingly more intrusive as it sets and monitors "socially acceptable" behavior of the poor.
    A:
    This approach would require costly interventions and a wide range of public programs.


    Q: Why haven't anti-poverty efforts over the past several decades succeeded?
    A:
    Government benefits to the poor have perverse effects: They make people more dependent, less inclined to work, and they have contributed to the breakup of the family.
    A:
    The problem is not that welfare programs have provided assistance to people who don't need or deserve it. The real problem is that government did not demand anything in return.
    A:
    The problem is not that welfare programs are too generous, but that our economic and education systems fail the people who most need help.


    Q: What should government be obliged to do for the poor?
    A:
    Government is obliged to help children and those who are not able-bodied. Everyone else should be expected to be self-sufficient.
    A:
    Government assistance to the able-bodied poor is justified for short periods of time, as long as it encourages behavior that in the long run leads to self-sufficiency.
    A:
    Government's responsibility is to help everyone get a job that pays decent wages.