There is a stigma attached to welfare recipients.
There always has been.
We tend to have less patience with the person in front of us in the supermarket checkout line who is paying with food stamps. It is one of the darker sides of human nature. We assign everyone to a certain class – and we expect them to stay there.
Too many of us assume that people on the lower rungs of the financial ladder – those dependent upon public assistance – are comfortable in that role. There is a perception that it is a free ride and that those on it have little incentive to get off.
But deep down, we are smarter than that. Sometimes, though, a tangible reminder helps broaden our thinking. The Rhode Island College School of Social Work has produced one such reminder.
It is a five-year study that has tracked the economic well being of 638 families – all of them a part of the Family Independence Program (FIP) and recipients of welfare when the program began.
The FIP focused on education and training to prepare participants for work and then on supporting families with access to child care and health care, if necessary, once they went to work. Start-up funding for the on-going project, initiated in 1998, was provided by the Rhode Island Foundation with subsequent support by the state Department of Human Services (DHS) and the United Way of Southeastern New England. Rhode Island College provided in-kind contributions.
Simply put, the early results of the study show a significant number of welfare recipients – some 35 percent – had left the welfare rolls just one year into the program. Lending a hand, it would seem, can go a long way.
These individuals had an 86 percent employment rate, earned an average of $8.40 per hour and were “more likely” to have participated in education and training than those who remained on cash assistance, according to Mary Ann Bromley, a professor of social work and project director.
“The results from the first-year follow-up…indicate that FIP beneficiaries are making progress exiting cash assistance,” said Bromley.
In addition, she said, “many former FIP beneficiaries experienced economic progress during the past year, had success in moving into employment and earning income above the Federal Poverty Level.”
Research at Rhode Island College also tested the attitudes of current and former welfare recipients about their children’s well being and found that 90 percent of those who left FIP were satisfied – or very satisfied – with their children’s quality of life.
And, Bromley said, there were “significant increases” in employment levels over the one and one-half year period of the study among both former as well as current FIP beneficiaries.
Study members who had exited cash assistance during the period basically tripled their employment rate; 29 percent of the sample were employed when the study began – and 86 percent were employed a year later. The increase for those who remained on cash assistance also “increased significantly” from a 19 percent employment level to 29 percent.
The numbers for those exiting cash assistance, according to Bromley, exceeded the national average.
These results of the FIP appear to demonstrate that by simply adding education and training to a package that includes a welfare check, the need for the welfare check will more than likely decrease.
A related economic analysis by researchers at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found that the FIP “significantly increased” the likelihood of work for welfare recipients in Rhode Island from 20 percent in 1996 to 36 percent. They also found that FIP family earnings increased from just over $1,000 per quarter to $2,500 resulting from a combination of FIP policies and increases in the state’s minimum wage.
Rhode Island Department of Human Services Director Jane Hayward notes that a long-term investment that centers on education and training is bound to produce results.
“Changing the culture of welfare doesn’t happen overnight…,” she said.
But change is possible. And that should hold true for that stigma so many of us attach to welfare recipients.
