How Welfare Reform Led To Personal Responsibility Reform
There are those who see welfare reform as some kind of scrooging of poor people, but it actually seems to be a plausible ticket out of what psychologist Martin Seligman called "learned helplessness."
Hope Corman, Dhaval Dave, and Nancy Reichman write at VOXeu:
The 1996 welfare reform in the US was a major policy shift that sought to reduce dependence of single parents on government benefits by promoting work, encouraging marriage, and reducing non-marital childbearing.
The reform "led to a decline in illicit drug use among women at risk of relying on welfare, a decrease in female arrests for property crime, and smaller declines in voting for women exposed to the reform compared to several similar comparison groups.
They sum up that:
The findings offer evidence that limiting cash assistance and encouraging work can lead to reductions in socially undesirable behaviours and increases in prosocial community behaviours.
In Corman et al. (2018), we extended this work by exploring age-patterning of the effects of welfare reform on women's property crime arrests, as well as the extent to which specific state-level welfare and criminal justice policies shaped that patterning. We found that:•women's property crime arrest rates declined over the age span,•welfare reform led to an overall reduction in adult women's property crime arrests of about 4% with the strongest effects for women ages 25-29 and women in their 40s,
the effects were slightly stronger in states with stricter work incentives in their welfare programmes, and•the effects were much stronger in states with high levels of per capita criminal justice expenditures and staffing for all age cohorts.
•These findings suggest that welfare reform has conferred societal benefits in terms of a reduction in female property crime that is not only likely to persist (because welfare reform is currently very much in effect today), but is also likely to compound in the future (owing to strong effects for relatively young women). These findings also add to the general understanding of the effects of 'turning points' - life events or noteworthy changes in circumstances - on criminal careers.
Impact on women's civic participation
Finally, in Corman et al. (2017), we investigated the effects of welfare reform on women's voting registration and voting participation. ...We found robust evidence that welfare reform led to smaller declines in voting (about 10% smaller) for women who were exposed to welfare reform compared to several different comparison groups of similar women who were much less exposed.
The effects were largely confined to presidential elections, were stronger in Democratic than Republican states, were stronger in states with stronger work incentive policies, and appeared to operate through employment, education, and income.
These findings, that welfare reform had prosocial effects on civic participation as characterized by voting, again support the premise behind the enactment of welfare reform that restricting cash assistance and encouraging work would bring single mothers from the margins to the mainstream.
More generally, the findings contribute strong evidence about effects of work incentives, and by inference, employment or income, on political participation.
It makes sense that making women more invested in their own lives and futures would make them more invested in society as a whole. When you do nothing and money comes in, even if it isn't very much money, the cause-and-effect chain of work and earning (and the way that is energizing) is not part of the equation.
via @RAVerBruggen
The biggest damage in the loss of personal responsibility fostered by welfare is not in women, but in men. A man whose baby mama collects welfare feels no obligation to provide for the child, and does not. From there, his involvement in the child's life erodes to the point of non-existence. This is why we have so many fatherless children being provided for by the state.
Conan the Grammarian at September 9, 2018 1:39 PM
I'm not sure how v*ting can be considered "prosocial". And I wonder if the effect noticed is due to those women seeking to v*te in order to protect the government payments they are currently getting from being further reduced or eliminated, rather than any actual sense of community involvement.
To v*te is to seek to exert political power over other people. To get a share of the money which is "taxed" from them, or to impose "laws" which violate their life, liberty, or property in some way. The absolute worst excuse for v*ting is to choose a ruler for yourself and others.
That's the difference between the "political method" where someone "wins" at the expense of someone else, and the "economic method" where everyone wins. Politics, including the act of v*ting, is antisocial.
Kent McManigal at September 9, 2018 1:54 PM
"The absolute worst excuse for v*ting is to choose a ruler for yourself and others."
EXCUSE? Thumbing through the Newspeak dictionary, are ya?
Heh. If you don't, one will be provided for you.
You're wasting your outrage here.
Radwaste at September 9, 2018 3:31 PM
"This is why we have so many fatherless children being provided for by the state."
Don't forget about all those rights they have...
But seriously, there is an invisible hand holding the child of a single mother on welfare back: they have no firsthand example of how effort brings reward.
All you have to do to get food, housing and money for beer and cigarettes is breathe. Someone who has made it their job to see that you do not have to work is good at it, and so you remain worthless.
Radwaste at September 10, 2018 3:51 PM
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