When Unemployment Ends, Welfare Begins

by Josie Raymond · 2010-08-31 07:00:00 UTC
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Put this in the shouldn't-be-surprising-at-all column: as unemployment benefits run out, the unemployed begin applying for welfare. It is surprising, though, for a couple of reasons.

One of the interesting things in this recession has been the fact that welfare caseloads continue to decline while food stamp applications jump through the roof (up 40 percent, so far). Well, I should say that welfare applications had been on the decline over the first two years of the recession. In the last six months more and more Americans have been requesting TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. This is directly correlated to the end of their (up to) 99 weeks of benefits.

The number of welfare recipients started dropping in the '90s, after President Clinton's welfare reform instituted lifetime limits and work requirements. That did lead to people getting jobs, even if they weren't good ones. Now that the unemployment rate is almost double what it was in the flush 1990s, people can't even find crummy jobs.

"It's a work-first program, but the problem is, with the economy the way it is, there's no work," New Jersey social worker Nidia Sinclair told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "The frustration level is very high right now." The job training programs she and her colleagues lead now include a mix not just of drug users, ex-cons and single parents with no work history, but college-educated white-collar workers who used to bring home healthy salaries.

Secondly, there has always been a stigma around cash welfare that differs from food stamps of medical assistance like Medicaid. It's very hard for some former workers to bring themselves to ask for help. After all, many politicians and media personalities act like people receiving government assistance are pariahs, leeches, disgraces to America. A candidate for governor in New York, Carl Paladino, suggests housing welfare recipients in prisons and mandating military service, while Meg Whitman, who's running for governor in California, thinks welfare fraud is a major part of the state's budget troubles. (It's not.)

Despite the recession, the poor are as demonized as ever. Who would want to join that group sooner than they absolutely had to?

Photo credit: Vinni123

Josie Raymond has reported from the streets of the South Bronx, written for several magazines that folded (not her fault) and fixed thousands of typos.
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