Why Welfare Reform Has Failed

As data from the Economic Policy Institute show, had we not enacted welfare reform poverty would have probably declined further than it did. Welfare reform increased poverty. Regardless, overall poverty rates have been on the rise again, as have child poverty rates, and more of those who are poor are very poor: according to the Children's Defense Fund, by 2001 more African American children were living in deep poverty than at any time since such data have been collected. Meanwhile, in cities large and small homelessness has risen to historic levels, higher even than during the homelessness crisis of the 1980s. Throughout the nation soup kitchens and food pantries are stretched beyond capacity, struggling and failing to meet new need, much of it from working people whose wages simply haven't kept up. According to the Urban Institute, one-third to one-half of those who left welfare had difficulty providing food for their families. Half or more former recipients are poor (many are poorer than they were before), and some sixty percent of those who left the rolls in 2002 were unemployed. This is success? [more ]

•  House panel gives state ability to test welfare recipients for drugs [more ]