10th Anniversary of Welfare Reform

Lee at A Bama Blog discusses the success of welfare reform. I would suggest reading his post and the comments first as I agree with all of it. I only wish to expand on Dr. New's analysis. Dr.New was a professor of mine in graduate school and his class made a profound effect on me.

If the strong economy isn’t responsible for the decline in welfare
caseloads during the past ten years, what is? The Heritage study provides some insights. The strength of state-sanctioning policies, for example, substantially affects the size of state-caseload declines. PRWORA gave states the flexibility to sanction welfare recipients who didn’t comply with mandatory work activities. Some states proceeded to adopt tough sanctions that made welfare recipients ineligible for benefits at the first instance of noncompliance. Conversely, other states imposed weak sanctions that allowed welfare recipients to keep a substantial portion of their welfare benefits regardless of their
conduct.

The results of the Heritage study indicate that these sanctioning policies played a major role in explaining state caseload declines. Holding other factors constant, a state that adopted a strict sanctioning policy for six years would experience a welfare caseload decline more than 18 percentage points greater
than a state that implemented a weak sanction for six years.

From the editors at NRO

Since 1996, welfare rolls have been cut by almost 60 percent; 1.6 million fewer children live in poverty; the formerly persistent and rapid growth in illegitimacy rates has ended; and more single mothers are employed than ever before. States with the strictest work programs have experienced reductions of up to 80 percent in their welfare caseloads. The largest decrease in poverty has been among black children: By 2001, black child poverty was at its lowest level in history. Beginning in 1965, the rate of out-of-wedlock births — then 7.7 percent — grew by about 1 percent a year, rising to 32.2 percent in 1995. By contrast, the rate of increase in recent years has been a fraction of the former growth, and consequently about 1.5 million fewer children have been born out of wedlock than otherwise would have been. And the largest decline in dependency has been among the most disadvantaged single mothers: Employment of never-married mothers has increased by nearly 50 percent, and among the youngest of them (ages 18 to 24) it has almost doubled.