Local Governments' Fiscal Responses to Welfare Reform

The devolution of the social safety net means that local governments must increasingly respond to the needs of their citizens, particularly those who are coming off the welfare rolls and making the transition to work. Based on our findings from a statewide, randomized experiment, this article describes how welfare reforms have affected the well-being of current and former welfare recipients. We look specifically at how those leaving welfare in Indiana are using the township trustee system, the state's general assistance program providing poor relief, to meet basic needs, as well as how the trustees have responded to welfare reform.     

The Politics of Social Welfare Reform in Urban China: Social Welfare Preferences and Reform Policies

China’s social welfare reform since the mid-1980s has been characterized as incremental and fragmented in three dimensions—social insurance, privatization, and targeting. This paper attempts to explore the micro-foundation of China’s urban social welfare reform by examining the diverse social welfare preferences and the cleavages among societal groups. It argues that the diversity of the societal groups’ preferences for social welfare has given rise to two lines of cleavage in urban China with respect to social welfare—between state sector and non-state sector employees and between labor market insiders and outsiders. The Chinese authoritarian regime’s political priority—economic growth with social stability—has induced the government to accommodate public social welfare preferences in social welfare policies. Therefore, the three dimensions of Chinese social welfare reform policies since the mid-1980s reflect and respond to the social cleavages derived from societal groups’ different preferences for social welfare.     

Welfare Reform: Revolution or Retrenchment?

This article introduces the two main themes of this specialissue of Publius: The Journal of Federalism, workfare and federalism.At this early stage in the history of the 1996 Welfare ReformAct, these themes must be stated as questions rather than answers,as hypotheses not conclusions. What does the new welfare policyseek to accomplish? What are the effects—intended andunintended—of its limited devolution of power to the states?     

State TANF Spending: Predictors of State Tax Effort to Support Welfare Reform

State spending on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) greatly varies. Combined federal and state spending by the states per TANF family or recipient reflects the historic level of state generosity for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the failure of the federal government to set any minimum spending standard for the states, and the failure of the federal government to adjust federal grants for huge changes in state TANF caseloads. Our multivariate analysis shows that state spending for TANF is greatly influenced by the percentage of the state population that is black, the percentage of the state population that is on TANF (especially if a significant percentage of the rolls consist of black recipients), and the economic conditions within the state. Some states spend as much as their economies will allow, while other states spend far below capacity. Despite the very different goals of TANF, state spending is still heavily influenced by their historic approach to AFDC.     

State Fiscal Responses to Welfare Reform during Recessions: Lessons for the Future

The 1996 welfare reform transformed open-ended matching grants to states to fixed block grants. This article considers whether, given the new regime, states will be able and willing to meet the need for public assistance during recessions. The accumulation of large balances of unspent federal welfare funds helped states weather the first year or so of the current recession without having to cut programs for needy families. While new fiscal rules promoted positive reform during a period of economic prosperity, they may be leaving states and their most vulnerable citizens at serious risk as the economic and fiscal slowdown continues.     

Section 8 and Movement to Job Opportunity: Experience after Welfare Reform in Kansas City

Abstract

This research addresses the extent to which tenant‐based rental assistance, before and after welfare reform, helps households move to areas with greater opportunities for employment. It was thought that the threat of losing their welfare benefits would encourage participants in the Section 8 program to use the mobility it offers to move to neighborhoods with greater opportunities for employment.

Two samples of Section 8 program participants, one taken before welfare reform and the other taken after it was enacted, have been examined. With the strong economy after welfare reform, more Section 8 households are employed and fewer are on welfare. However, the analysis finds that, independent of welfare reform, households did not use their housing subsidy to move to areas with greater opportunities for employment. Program participants typically remained in racially concentrated areas of the central city, away from those neighborhoods with job growth or large numbers of jobs.     

Making Something Out of Nothing: Welfare Reform and a New Race to the Bottom

The 1996 welfare-reform law has been characterized as a significantact of devolution. For some, this devolution will free statesto become "laboratories of democracy" that develop better welfarepolicies; for others, it will provoke a debilitating "race tothe bottom" where states will reduce benefits out of fear ofbecoming "welfare magnets" that attract recipients from otherstates. This article suggests that neither "laboratories ofdemocracy" nor "race to the bottom" does justice to the complexitiesof the 1996 reforms. In the case of the former, new federalmandates limit state action and states face informal pressuresto "keep up" with one another in developing new restrictionsso that they can avoid becoming "welfare magnets." In the caseof the latter, we find limited empirical support for the existenceof welfare migration that is supposed to be provoking a "raceto the bottom." We find that there is limited welfare migrationbecause the real value of welfare benefits to recipients doesnot vary nearly as much as common portrayals suggest. Giventhese realities, welfare reform may produce a procedural raceto the bottom that turns the myth of migration into a self-fulfillingprophesy.     

Implementing Welfare Reform in Kansas: Moving, But Not Racing

Will welfare reform lead some states to race to the bottom?At least for Kansas, the answer appears to be a resounding no.Data gathered as part of the State Capacity Study's analysisof welfare reform suggest that in Kansas, elected officialsand the bureaucracy have responded in a fashion consistent withthe state's political and administrative culture: cautiouslyand incrementally. First, Kansas' welfare reform policy hasbeen driven primarily by bureaucratic decisions. Welfare administrators,supported by the governor, have minimized legislative resistanceto their policy objectives. Second, from the perspective ofwelfare generosity, Kansas has not deviated significantly fromits typical "middle" position relative to other states' policies.Third, Kansas' administration of reform embraces three primarystrategies: decentralized management authority; new links withother agencies to tackle specific welfare problems; and a newlyintegrated approach to frontline welfare case-management.     

Welfare Reform: Assessing its Political, Economic, and Social Effects

Books reviewed: Rebecca M. Blank, It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty Anne Marie Cammisa, From Rhetoric to Reform?: Welfare Policy in AmericanPolitics Martha Shirk, Neil G. Bennett, and J. Lawrence Aber, Lives on the Line: American Families and the Struggle to Make Ends Meet Robert M. Solow, Work and Welfare