Word: afdc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...recent years the nation has been conducting what amounts to an ad hoc experiment in discouraging welfare applicants. Under Reagan Administration prodding, states have tightened eligibility rules. Partly as a result, the number of AFDC families peaked at 3.9 million in 1981 and has declined slightly since. Benefit increases since 1970 have lagged so far behind inflation that the real value of combined federal and state AFDC grants has plummeted...
...parsimony has failed to push people off the relief rolls and into jobs, ! and the manifold social evils associated with AFDC have only been getting worse. Poverty rates have generally risen since the late '70s, and the rise has been especially rapid among the children the system was designed to help. Welfare mothers who rear children who in turn go on relief are a core element of the so-called underclass. David Ellwood, a Harvard authority on welfare, figures that a quarter of all AFDC recipients have received benefits, off and on, for ten years or more...
...issue of whether welfare in fact encourages illegitimate births has been hotly debated. Most studies show there is no direct causal relationship. But the AFDC program, by its very nature, inevitably provides some economic incentives for the creation of single-parent families. It offers a steady (though meager) income to young women if they decide to have children they cannot support. It may encourage irresponsible men to father children without worrying how to provide for them. And it can produce a situation where a father with a low-paying job may feel forced to leave home so that his children...
...root problem, say most reformers, is that AFDC does not require recipients to do anything in exchange for their benefits. Indeed, as presently administered, AFDC actively discourages work, in keeping with the bygone society of its origin, which simply assumed that most women would devote themselves to housekeeping and child rearing. Says Moynihan: "AFDC is unable to command stable political support. A program that was designed to pay mothers to stay at home with their children cannot succeed when we now observe most mothers going out to work...
...central idea of the reform movement is a "new social contract" between government and welfare recipient. That concept is not just a vague metaphor: a project in California requires AFDC applicants to sign individual contracts pledging to return to school, enroll in training programs or look for jobs. The welfare-reform report that the National Governors' Association is expected to approve this month calls for making such a system nationwide...