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All welfare recipients are not derelicts

By Daily Bruin Staff

Aug. 4, 1996 9:00 p.m.

Monday, August 5, 1996

Many use government aid to achieve better lives, would be hurt
by reformsBy Henry A. Freedman

Mention welfare, and you’ll get a strong reaction from
Americans. When it comes to welfare, we are a tough-minded, but,
interestingly enough, not unsympathetic, nation. While Americans
want the system changed, they don’t want to see the needy sunk in
poverty and despair.

Yet, the welfare proposals currently afloat in Washington, D.C.,
and many state capitals are confounding. Welfare reform based on
harmful myths about who receives aid and for how long, is not the
welfare reform that Americans really want. If enacted, these
reforms will change the welfare system, but not for the better.

The perpetuation of welfare myths can cause great personal pain.
According to a recent letter to the New York Times by Professor
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, students in her class at the University of
California, Berkeley poured out a "hate feast of negative
stereotypes" about welfare recipients. The students never dreamed
that their professor, who also chairs the anthropology department,
is a former welfare recipient.

Welfare myths also ignore the realities of poor women’s lives.
Consider the story of Emily Baker, a former Aid to Families with
Dependent Children recipient. After she had been abused by her
husband one too many times, she walked out. When it became clear to
her husband that she was not coming back, he stopped child support
payments for their son, and Emily was forced to apply for welfare.
At the time Emily was in law school in Michigan. With the help of
student loans, two part-time jobs and Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC), she finished law school in two years.
Today, she directs a judicial circuit court office in Michigan. Her
son is doing well in school.

When I spoke to Emily Baker recently, she said: "This just shows
what you can do if the system stands behind you." She’s right. But
are Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Emily Baker typical of those who
receive welfare? Much more so than people would think.

A revealing report just issued by the Center on Social Welfare
Policy and Law draws on extensive social science research and
government statistics to refute notions about welfare that most
Americans hold and flies in the face of the proposals now before
Congress. It further suggests the serious harm those proposals will
do if enacted into law.

For example, a proposed time limit for aid to mothers and
children will create and perpetuate crises, rather than providing a
leg up in a time of great need. The fact is that most women with
children do find employment, but these part-time and/or low-paying
jobs are often short-term and unable to extricate them from
poverty. Time limits will leave women who lose jobs through no
fault of their own with no safety net for them or their
children.

Some of the other welfare myths exploded in this report are:

MYTH: Women receiving AFDC have lots of children and go on
having children while they are receiving aid.

FACT: The most typical family size is a mother and one child,
and the birth rate among women receiving AFDC is lower than that of
the rest of the population.

MYTH: Poor people move interstate to get higher benefits.

FACT: Poor people move less often than others, and when they do
move, they tend to move from high benefit states to low-benefit
states, not the reverse.

Clearly, the welfare system needs to be changed to make it work
better for poor people in this country and for all of us. But, the
important decisions made on behalf of the children of the next
generation must be made on the basis of fact, not myth.

Henry Freedman is executive director of the Center on Social
Welfare Policy and Law, a national welfare policy and law
organization in New York City.

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