Facts and Myths About “Welfare”
As we enter the holiday season, many people’s thoughts turn to those who are the less fortunate among us. Coins are dropped into Salvation Army pots, new toys are purchased and placed into Toys For Tots collection boxes, volunteers roll up their sleeves and pitch in to serve meals to the hungry. Yet at the same time there is a sizable segment of American society who look down their noses at the less fortunate, and who believe that the folks who receive assistance from charities and the government are totally responsible for their own predicament. The recent election period provided ample evidence of that attitude, with all of the talk about the “47% who are dependent on government,” and the “makers and takers” comments.
There seems to be waves of ridicule that come and go on social media. Every so often Facebook is covered with the little “ecards” and other items that complain about “lazy people on welfare” who have an iphone, a new car, buying cigarettes, and who are just generally living the good life off of the rest of us who work for a living. Close your eyes for a moment, and develop a mental picture of an “average welfare recipient.” I’m not going to analyze what you saw, but I want you to use that as a frame of reference for what I am about to share. Be prepared to have your beliefs about welfare shattered.
Myth: ”People on welfare are lazy and sit at home collecting it while the rest of us work to support them.”
Fact: The welfare reform law that was signed by President Clinton in 1996 largely turned control over welfare benefits to the states, but the federal government provides some of the funding for state welfare programs through a program called Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF). TANF grants to states require that all welfare recipients must find work within two years of first receiving benefits. This includes single parents, who are required to work at least 30 hours per week. Two parent families are required to work 35 to 50 hours per week. Failure to obtain work could result in loss of benefits. It is also worth noting that thanks to the pay offerings of companies such as Walmart, many who work at low wage jobs qualify for public assistance, even though they work full time.
Now I can’t speak to the issue of whether welfare recipients want to work, but the law gives them no choice; within two years they have to find work or face losing benefits. This fact about welfare was what Mitt Romney brought up during the campaign when he claimed that President Obama was going to get rid of the work requirements for welfare, which was a lie. Several governors, including the Republican governors of Utah and Nevada, requested a waiver of the work requirement for various reasons.
Myth: “People who go on welfare stay on it forever.”
Fact: According to the site statisticbrain.com, the vast majority of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients (80.4%) receive benefits for five years or less. AFDC is the program that seems to be most often identified with the term “welfare.” AFDC programs were replaced at the federal level by TANF in 1996, but it is still common to hear the program referred to as AFDC.
Myth: “There’s a woman in Chicago. She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards. … She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income alone is over $150,000″-Ronald Reagan
Fact: Ah, the “welfare queen.” Ronnie loved to tell his stories, and his welfare queen story is one of the most popular. The only problem is, the woman he talked about didn’t exist. There is some evidence that this story may have been based on an actual woman, but her abuses were wildly exaggerated by Reagan.
Myth: “Welfare recipients keep having more kids so they can get more benefits.”
Fact: The most recent information I could find on this was from 1994, but I seriously doubt that things have changed much since then. The average family receiving AFDC at that time had 1.9 children, which was about the same as the national average. (Here’s another site that has more information about that.) I also found a chart showing the amount benefits increase with additional children. Again, it’s old, from the 90′s, but even doubling the amounts shown to allow for inflation, it is quite plain that having additional children is NOT going to work out in the recipient’s favor. I’m pretty sure adding a child to the family is going to cost a lot more than the additional $100-200 (inflation adjusted from the chart) that the child will bring in in benefits.
Myth: ”I see these guys all the time, hanging out and drinking, and doing drugs, collecting welfare instead of working.”
Fact: The able bodied single male with no dependent children who collects welfare in the United States pretty much does not exist, since the primary goal of most welfare programs is to provide temporary support for children and families. Single males can receive certain benefits, such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) if they are disabled.
Myth: “Most welfare recipients are minorities.”
Fact: While I am not sure why this should even be a concern, other than because of racism, percentage-wise roughly the same number of whites are on welfare as blacks. (38.8% of welfare recipients are white, 39.8% are black) The percentages of Hispanics and Asians on welfare are much lower (15.7% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian. So much for the right wing claim that “illegals” come to the U.S. and collect welfare benefits.)
Myth: ”People collect welfare instead of work, and they get rich. They all have iPhones, drive new cars, have widescreen tv’s, etc. I work and I can’t afford any of that!”
Fact: Since welfare payments vary by state and by the size of the family, it’s hard to provide all the pertinent numbers here, but here are some ranges:
- A family of four can expect up to $500 a month in food stamp benefits. A single person can expect an average of $200 a month.
- The average monthly allowance under TANF/AFDC is $900 for a family of four. For a single person the average is about $300.
I’d love to hear what kind of “new car” they’re going to buy on that income, or even an iPhone for that matter. (Remember, despite what Newt Gingrich may have claimed, you can’t use food stamps for anything except food, so when you’re figuring how much money someone might have for an iphone or a car, take that money out of the equation.) It is also worth observing that the people who sneer about welfare recipients having things like that don’t take into consideration that the person may have had that iPhone or car before having to go on welfare. My favorite criticism is of supposed welfare recipients who have tattoos. Tattoos are permanent, folks! How do you know that someone got a tattoo after starting to receive welfare?
One final fact about welfare. Anybody want to take a guess on what the single largest group on welfare in the United States is? It’s children. The page in that link has some other interesting information as well. [My apologies. The info in this link seems to have been moved and I have not been able to find the new location.-WW]
So, there’s a lot of heat being provided by those comments and snarky little posts with the ecards and everything. And when I read comments like the one I saw posted by a friend of a friend about “big rims, grills, and bling,” how am I not expected to think that some of this stems from racism? (If that person had been my friend, they wouldn’t be now.)
As I always aim to do, hopefully this provides a little bit of light.
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Author: WesWilliams
Wes Williams is the pen name of a guy who couldn't use his own name to blog because of a conservative commentator who has the same name. Wes was a "change of life baby" who grew up listening to his parents' stories of the Great Depression and World War II. He comes from a long line of Democrats, and is a proud member of the FDR wing of the party.
Wes lives in Sussex County Delaware with his wife of 32 years and three cats. He grew up in the beach area, went off to school, then came home to work for 29 years teaching in the school district he attended as a student. After working in marketing and PR for a little over a year he now works as a soccer coach and substitute teacher and dabbles in other pastimes, mainly those that involve writing, which has been a lifelong avocation.
10:48 am
If you have a smart phone you have to buy the data plan each month, which is very expensive.
6:55 am
Most smartphones have a 2 yr contract & very expensive to cancel. It is cheaper to pay the monthly fee than paying the cancelation fee.
7:06 am
Well, with an iPhone, you could probably just use wifi, and there’s a lot of free wifi out there.
1:07 pm
Did you actually *read* the article before making this snarky comment? Seriously?
You can buy a cheap no-contract and/or unlocked smartphone off eBay. Many who can’t afford a monthly plan don’t even activate the phone, they use it when there’s free WiFi around.
There’s also no-contract plans from Virgin Mobile, Walmart’s Net10 and others where you can put as little as $10 on the phone for a few minutes and still get unlimited texts. Virgin Mobile has a plan for $35 a month: 300 minutes, unlimited data and texts. I got my VM smartphone a year ago for $49.
In addition, as Laurette pointed out, getting out of a 2 year contract (assuming someone is already in one) comes with a ETF of $175-300.
Considering most people now use a cell phone as a replacement for a landline, it’s a no brainer. And speaking of “no brainers”, your comment (“J”) simply floors me, because it’s EXACTLY the kind of BS that the author wrote AGAINST. Yet you’re so clueless, you seek to perpetuate it.
1:08 pm
I have three lines on my plan, two of which are smart phones, and my bill is $150 a month, which is pretty much exactly what it was before two regular phones were converted to smart phones.
3:40 pm
The rich are always worried about how “well” welfare people do. When I hear this, I tell the person that I know a family receiving welfare who would gladly trade places with them. Then they could live the life or leisure and not have to work. No one has ever taken me up on the offer. They know better. They just mouth off crap they hear from Rush Limbaugh or some other dizzy right-wing dingbat. To make a long story short, the rich don’t want their money to go to the poor. Oh, they’ll hand out some money in a grand display of generosity. But they ain’t about to give the poor a break. Where would they get their cheap labor?
5:30 pm
There are people who abuse the system. Of course there are! One “lives” downstairs from me. “Callie” leaves her windows open in order to facilitate the hunting habits of “her” cats. The landlord regularly has to force her to clean up the squirrel and mouse carcasses then bomb the apartment. She really lives with her boyfriend, her sister and HER boyfriend..The chick downstairs has been on the dole longer than I have lived here:8 years. She has health issues which might be eased if she didn’t drink at least 3 two-liter bottles of soda each day and quit doing so much pot.(pot:good :: eternal buzz:bad) Her son might find it easier to concentrate if he had better nutrition as well. Yes, good nutrition is more expensive, but really! Last summer she got a job. Two weeks later she was “let go unfairly” because her son had to be re-evaluated and the appointments conflicted with her work schedule. ……………She has internet/cable,(her son has special needs, of course) she got her new teeth IMPLANTED!!!FREE!!! She has …….ARRGHH!
Rant off.
There are folk who abuse the system. The system also regularly abuses others. I’ve been outdoors. I won’t make excuses, but I really can’t see HOW it was my fault, even with serious soul-searching. It didn’t last long though, and when I was able to focus it didn’t take me long to get off the dole and tread water on my own. I really didn’t appreciate some woman who reeked of Kimshi from across the counter, and who I could barely understand, telling me that I didn’t know how to spell my first name. She then told me that if I didn’t spell it “correctly”, she would not accept my application for assistance. Having a newborn strapped to my midriff under the field jacket that I earned the hard way, I was still tempted to walk out. I did suck it up and do the right thing for my baby, but I was sore tempted. I was too scared, too angry, and too scared of being angry to realize that being calm and calling for a supervisor who really did speak American English might have saved some of my dignity. That was the worst of it. Losing my dignity at the hands of people who were the worst kind of bureaucrats.
I now have a very good job (relative) and can buy clothes and such retail without having to look for the clearance items at the GoodWill.
Having ranted on this long, if any one is still reading, I didn’t mean to go off. It doesn’t happen often. I can sum things up here in a few sentences.
A few years ago a made and afghan for the local pantry. I later found it in the mud on the street in front of the pantry. ( I think I did give up hope/generosity, but my vanity won out and I decided to keep trying.)
This summer I was at the local riverside park when I heard a woman telling her little girl “Don’t get on your favorite blanket” until she had dried off and brushed the sand off her feet…..
There is a particular,complicated pattern that I like to do. There was a lot of yarn left over from previous projects….
There are all kinds of people. Don’t judge.
disclaimer:
When I realized how much of a rant this is, I also realized that I was articulating something that I really want my girls (3: happy, healthy, and on their respective ways) to know. I was on a roll and I went with it so that I could copy and paste this.
4:50 am
You didn’t “articulate” anything. This rant is nonsensical.
1:09 pm
I second that.
11:28 am
Holden, I don’t think that you can realistically claim that a falimy of 3 with an $8K income in NYC is 70th percentile global wealthy. You can’t just use PPP numbers and multiply, you have to look at the actual basket of goods that the people in question are consuming. I have spent substantial time in Costa Rica and in Kazakhstan, in 1998 and 2000, not today, both are much richer now, especially Kazakhstan. Costa Rica is a mid-second-quintile-wealth country with freakishly high quality of life relative to GDP. Kazakhstan is now a mid-second-quintile petrostate but in 2000 it was a mid-third-quintile former Soviet mess (Aruna, of course, grew up in Kazakhstan 1991-1997, a fourth quintile region in a failing Soviet state). People in both countries had terrible conditions in some respects, but in both cases ordinary people had more stuff, more security, and in many respects better conditions than the poorest Americans, though they did lack some things we consider necessities. The subsequent increase in wealth of Kazakhstan without attendant improvements in standard of living are a testimony to the relative inefficacy of simply giving money to people who aren’t desperately poor. I generally agree with the sentiment you are expressing though
7:32 pm
I don’t believe the majority of people who have an issue with welfare want to do away with it all together. It is something that should be there for the people that deserve it and use it as it was meant to be used. Of course, no one wants children to suffer just to save ourselves a little money either.
On the other hand there are people who repeatedly abuse the system and take advantage. I don’t care how much money they are getting, be it $20 or $2,000. If they are capable of working than they should be and not receiving benefits. If they already work 40 hours a week and are eligible for benefits than give it to them, no problem. If there are 20 percent of people abusing the system then that number is too high. Any percentage of undeserving people taking advantage of hard working Americans is too high in my opinion. I see it everyday. The problem is this feeling of entitlement that has grown to epic proportions in our society.
There are plenty of people not working that could be. The problem is they think they are above certain jobs or aren’t willing to work more than one. From what I’ve seen considering the children of people on welfare (the ones who have made it a way of life) is that they aren’t taken care of anyway. In those situations that money isn’t going to help the children. What was supposed to be spent on groceries is sold to someone for half of what it is worth and used to buy beer, drugs, and non-essentials. Unfortunately, this is very common practice. In my opinion the system has a long way to go before we should all be patting ourselves on the back.
11:01 am
I think this is a well written article, but I think you are missing a portion of the population that some people may lump together under the “welfare” label: people on disability. “The able bodied single male with no dependent children who collects welfare in the United States pretty much does not exist,” may be a true statement, but I’ve seen plenty of young, seemingly able bodied people readily accept disability payments for injuries or medical ailments that should have resolved long ago. I had a patient a few months ago who hasn’t worked since 2004 because he said his neck hurt, but he also mentioned how he loved to ride his ATV. I’m pretty sure he could find a job that is less strenuous than riding an ATV.
12:58 pm
I won’t dispute your observation, but anyone who accepts disability payments when they are truly not disabled does so at their own peril. It is my experience that the system eventually catches up with many of them.
1:45 pm
I’m not trying to stir up racism, but, I wanted to point out that the stats for reciepients were skewed. An equal percentage for blacks and whites indicates that a much larger percentage of blacks use welfare programs than whites since whites outnumber blacks nationally by more than double.
3:29 pm
Everyone I know is on hard times. I’m lucky to be working. Please tell me — how and where do single people get qualified for $200 in food stamps?!? My elderly, disabled uncle has to fight to get the $63 a month from food stamps in Texas. One minority worker there told him to go pick-up cans from the ditch because he was white. Yeah, that’s a brilliant suggestion for someone who is legally-blind!
One of my brother’s became disabled after an accident. While in the process of getting accepted for early SS (not SSI), he only received $80/month in food stamps. We paid all his bills, rent, everything from hundreds of miles away. We’d drive into town every other week and buy him groceries.
I would like to know where a single person can get $200/month in food stamps so I can contact the agency here and find out what the problem is for my elderly disabled uncle.
Thanks — times are tough and lots of folks need any help they can get. God bless!
4:13 pm
The numbers I cited in the article are going to vary from state to state. The sources I used for the information in the post said that single people can qualify for up to $200 a month, but since states run the programs that is going to be different depending on where you live. Unfortunately, Texas is one of the states that pays out less per person.
1:14 pm
TANF has a 60 month lifetime limit. Very rarely special conditions are looked at an a limit can be extended, but probably not for more than another year.
Also, if you are getting child support, whether you’d get more child support than you get in TANF or not, the state will take that TANF, so all you GET is the child support OR the TANF. You have to make that decision. And the TANF is such a low amount that if you do get regular child support, it’s almost never worth it to go for the TANF.
Food Stamps are another biggie, but they’re only meant to supplement a family’s income. It’s not enough to solely feed the whole family.
6:52 am
The updated URL for the last link is:
http://archive.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/data-reports/annualreport8/chapter10/chap10.htm
12:11 pm
Thank you! Don’t know why I couldn’t find that.
5:03 pm
To all the oh so smarter than everyone else haters out there:
Citing a case where some slug scammed the system and lives on easy street insinuates that this is the norm. Based on all your posts I think it is safe to assume that you think this is the norm for folks on assistance, not the exception. You’re ignorant. I don’t mean that in a mean or pejorative sense. I mean that you are ignorant of life. Of course there are scammers. There always are.
Drug addicts abuse the system. Now there is another news flash that no one realized before you brought it to our attention.
Some women are so poorly educated that they think having another child for a few more bucks a month will make their economic lives better. My God, you just keep springing new information on me!
I come from lineage that pulled itself out of poverty and entered the mainstream. My father predated any form of welfare. He endured indignities that I doubt any of you-without-sin could have tolerated. Yet, once out of that environment he remained a proponent of the system that provided assistance to the poor.
Please stop making arguments that in no way resolve the issues you see as important. Make suggestions that involve caring for the poor, the sick of body and mind, the needy, the elderly, veterans, and our disaffected children.
I challenge each of you; go do something; anything. I’m not talking about giving some small percentage of your expendable income that makes you feel better about yourself. Work soup kitchens. Provide daycare for a woman who wants to work, but can’t because the day care would exceed her income. Distribute blankets in the middle of the night to homeless sleeping in the streets. Tutor a child who is years behind because they have been in and out of the system since birth. Pay your gardener or maid a living wage.
You are correct. The system needs reform. It needs reform because it is inefficient. It does not need reform because the people needing the help have any less worth, work ethic, or right to life than your family. So write your representatives with suggestions as to how to reform the system. And follow up until you get answers.
If you are unable to contribute toward making the lives of those less fortunate than yourselves better, than please just get out of the way while the rest of us try. Your diatribes about “Libtards” and “our “President”; your citing of worn out axioms “give a man a fish, blah blah blah; your “I’m more Christian than you” delusions are all obstacles to solving the problems at hand. Bring viable solutions or stay out of the way.