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We the People Book Cover
We the People: A Concise Introduction to American Politics, 4/e
Thomas E. Patterson, Harvard University
Welfare and Education Policy

Chapter Outline


Introduction

The U.S. welfare system reflects the country's individualistic culture, tinged with an element of egalitarian compassion. Economic security is not a right of citizenship, which makes the U.S. different from most European nations.
  1. Americans expect individuals to care for themselves and believe that welfare payments to able-bodied individuals discourage personal effort and create welfare dependency.
  2. Americans, on the other hand, believe in helping those who are incapable of working or those who need assistance while training for work.
  3. Federalism affects welfare. Before the 1930s, states took primary responsibility for it. Now, some programs are jointly run by both the national and state governments under national guidelines. There is considerable contention over the control, cost and adequacy of these programs.

Poverty in America: The Nature of the Problem

Social welfare policy refers to those efforts by government to help individuals avoid becoming burdens to society or to assist individuals who cannot fully support themselves to meet their basic human needs, including food, clothing and shelter.
  1. Americans are better off economically than most of the world's peoples, yet poverty is a significant and persistent problem in the United States, especially compared with other industrialized nations.
    1. The poverty line in the U.S. is defined as the annual cost of a thrifty food budget for an urban family of four, multiplied by three to include the cost of housing, clothing, and other expenses. In 2000 this amount was $16,700.
    2. America's poor include individuals of all ages, races, religions, and regions, but poverty is substantially more prevalent among children, especially in single-parent, female-headed families and in rural or inner-city areas. The next most prevalent groups are African-Americans and Hispanics.
    3. Nearly seven percent of Americans who work full time do not earn enough to lift their family above the poverty line.
  2. Though some people are trapped in welfare dependency, most people are poor as a result of transitory circumstances rather than chronic dependency.

The Politics and Policies of Social Welfare

Republican and Democratic leaders have handled social welfare policy differently. While Democrats took the lead in devising social welfare policies, Republicans maintain that the role of the government should be kept as small as possible. Both parties support helping people in job training, special education, income redistribution and individual-benefit policies.
  1. Job training--Americans prefer work over welfare as a means of public assistance. The 1996 Welfare Reform Act ended six decades of federal guarantees of cash assistance to needy families, replacing it with a system of cash grants to the states, which have responsibility for caring for welfare recipients and getting them into jobs.
  2. Special education programs such as Head Start are geared to preschool education for poor children.
  3. Income and tax measures are designed to redistribute tax revenues received from the upper income levels of society downward to lower- income groups through social welfare programs. The earned income tax credit (EITC) is a transfer payment (government benefit) that is given directly to an individual.

Individual-Benefit Programs

Individual-benefit programs are designed to alleviate the personal hardships associated with such conditions as joblessness, poverty and old age. Such programs are called entitlement programs since any individual who meets the established criteria of eligibility is entitled to the benefits.
  1. These benefit programs are the major thrust of U.S. social welfare policy and consume more money than any other government activity.
  2. Approaches to social welfare policy historically reflect the two philosophies of negative government and positive government.
    1. Negative government holds that government governs best by staying out of people's lives, thus giving them as much freedom as possible to determine their own pursuits and encouraging them to become self-reliant.
    2. Positive government holds that government intervention is necessary in order to enhance personal liberty and security when individuals are buffeted by economic and social forces beyond their control.
  3. Individual-benefit programs upon which Americans have come increasingly to rely include social insurance and public assistance.
    1. Social insurance programs include social security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and workers' compensation. These programs are partially self-financed and popular. Not all elderly qualify for this program.
      1. Most social security recipients receive more money from the government than they have paid into the fund, thus payments are largely financed by the current workforce. This program will have to be revised to be sustainable at current levels.
      2. Unemployment insurance is a joint federal-state program funded by payroll taxes. Payments to someone involuntarily out of work are limited.
      3. Medicare was enacted in 1965 to provide medical assistance to retirees and is funded primarily through payroll taxes.
    2. Public assistance programs are funded through general tax revenues and are available only to the financially needy who must pass a means test.
      1. Supplemental Security Income assists the blind, elderly poor, and disabled.
      2. Aid to needy families includes Aid for Families with Dependent Children and is partly funded by the national government but administered by the states. In 1996 AFDC was terminated as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act and was replaced by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant. Strict guidelines are provided for administering this program, the biggest impact of which will be on poor children.
      3. The food stamp program is funded by the federal government and provides credits to qualified people which can be spent on grocery items.
      4. Subsidized-housing is available to low income persons through rent-subsidy vouchers. Middle- and upper-class homeowners are assisted with housing costs through tax deductions for mortgage interest payments.
      5. Medicaid was enacted in 1965 to provide health care for poor people who are already on welfare and is funded by general tax revenues. Over 40 million working Americans who cannot qualify for Medicaid also cannot afford health insurance. Americans do not have access to comprehensive health expense.

Education As Equality of Opportunity: The American Way

All democratic societies promote economic security, but they do so to different degrees. Americans and Europeans differ in attitudes toward liberty and equality.
  1. Americans prefer equality of opportunity, which is the idea that individuals should have an opportunity to succeed on their own. The key to this opportunity is public education.
  2. Europeans provide government-paid health care for all citizens, compensation for all unemployed workers and retirement benefits for all elderly citizens. Educational opportunities are somewhat restricted and class-biased.
  3. Educational success in America is related to income, so the public is interested in issues of access to and quality of public education; hence, school choice and use of vouchers have become battlegrounds for this issue.
  4. Though education is a state and local responsibility, increasingly the federal government has been drawn into assisting public schools and colleges.

Culture, Politics and Social Welfare

The welfare system in the United States is charged with being both inefficient, in that much of the money spent on welfare never reaches intended recipients, and inequitable, in that most of the money spent on social welfare never gets to the people who are most in need of help.
  1. The U.S. system of welfare is intricate, with separate programs to address different, often overlapping needs. It is also highly labor intensive both because of the need for supervision of recipients and because of the extensive paperwork to implement the system. The 1996 reforms continue high costs of administration, raising questions about whether the new system will be cost-effective and whether it will in fact give poor people incentives to work and the ability to find employment.
  2. Other sectors of American society, while not supportive of the disadvantaged, are in favor of continuing public funding of social security, which benefits the middle-class majority. Families in the top fifth of the income population receive more in federal social insurance benefits than is spent on TANF, food stamps, and housing subsidies combined.
  3. Americans will continue to support both social security and Medicare, though some funding problems with these programs will have to be faced.
  4. The future of social welfare involves Americans who are in fundamental conflict over individualism versus equality, Congress versus the president, national authority versus local authority, public sector versus private sector, Republicans versus Democrats, poorer versus richer, and social insurance versus public assistance.








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