Unintended Consequences, Term Paper Example

Examining the Effects of Welfare Programs in the United States on African Americans

Beginning in the 20^th century, the U.S. federal government established a number of federal agencies that were intended to offer financial support and other forms of assistance to those in need.  Several of the most notable programs are associated with the Democratic Presidential administrations of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, but Republican presidents have also implemented social welfare programs of different types (such as the Medicare Drug Coverage expansion program created under President George W. Bush).  While all of these programs were developed and implemented with the best of intentions, critics argue that long-term welfare programs and benefits serve to undermine, rather than promote, self-reliance and achievement. Because social welfare programs are often heavily politicized, it can be difficult to make determinations about how effective and helpful such programs really are, and whether they do, in the main, help those they are intended to help. The following paper offers an examination of some of the short- and long-term effects of welfare programs on a number of different demographic populations, and clearly demonstrates that such programs often have significant negative consequences.

Background and Overview

While a thorough accounting of the history of social welfare programs in the U.S. is beyond the scope of this discussion, it will be helpful (and perhaps even necessary) to examine several of the most well-known and far-reaching of these programs. In addition, it will be helpful to place the development of these programs into their proper historical and political contexts in order to provide a better understanding of why they were created, how they were intended to work, and the unintended consequences these programs had both on the populations they targeted and the nation as whole.

The United States has a long history of using public resources and government agencies to offer assistance to those in need, but there are two eras in particular where large-scale social welfare programs were established and that continue to operate to this day. The first ear was during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, who led the nation in the 1930s and into the 1940s. It was while Roosevelt was president that the United States entered World War II, but in the years before the war the nation and the world endured the harsh economic conditions now known as the Great Depression. It was in response to the economic conditions in the U.S. that Roosevelt announced a series of social welfare and domestic economic policies that were collectively known as the New Deal. Under Roosevelt the federal government expanded significantly, as he created a number of new government agencies such as the Emergency Relief Administration and the Works Progress Administration,, both of which were intended to offer financial relief and work programs to the vast number of people who were then unemployed.

Roosevelt also created one of the country’s largest government programs at the time, developed under the Social Security Act. Social Security was intended to offer financial support to older Americans who were retired or were simply too old to work. This evolved into a permanent system of retirement benefits that exists to this day. The Social Security program was structured to tax current workers and offer benefits to workers later in life, meaning that those who benefited from it were also those who had previously paid into it. This program was not intended to offer the same sort of social welfare that later programs would offer, but it did set the precedent that the U.S. government would assume a larger scale of responsibility for the welfare of its citizens, and with it came higher taxes and an expansion of government powers that has continued to grow into the 21^st century.

It was during the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, however, that a further expansion of social welfare would be put in place, and it was this same set of programs that continues to draw significant criticism today. Where Roosevelt developed his social welfare programs in response to economic catastrophe, Johnson developed his social welfare programs during a time when the United States was in a fairly strong economic position. Johnson’s position was that the United States had an obligation to share its economic good fortune with those members of society who were less well off, and he described his set of social welfare programs as the being necessary to bring about his vision of the Great Society (heritage.org. n.p.). These programs were enacted at a time when the United States was witnessing the rise of the civil rights movement, and critics of his programs argued that they were intended to shore up support for the Democratic Party at least as much as they were intended to help the poor.

Johnson’s Great Society programs focused on three general areas: cities, the environment, and education (heritage.org, n.p.).  These programs poured millions of dollars into urban renewal programs and other programs intended to revitalize inner cities, and many of the specific functions of these programs were designed around social engineering as much as economic recovery. Among the most notable of the programs enacted under the Great Society intuitive were Medicare, Medicaid, and the Older Americans Act. While these programs were largely unpopular with political conservatives from both major parties, they would continue to expand under the subsequent administrations of Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In addition to the federal-level programs, the Great Society initiatives provided funding through grants and other means to states and cities to establish welfare programs that offered direct financial support, food stamps, and other benefits to millions of Americans.

The Impact of the Great Sociey on the African American Community

Although Johnson’s vision of the Great Society was revealed at a time when the U.S was in generally good economic shape, there was no question that not everyone in the nation was prospering. In the years after World War II the U.S. experienced its greatest period of economic expansion, as the manufacturing-based economy grew exponentially. This growth led to new jobs and provided the foundation for an expanding middle class of Americans. Cities grew in size and population density as people flocked to them to take good-paying jobs, and the automobile became a symbol of the freedom, prosperity, and mobility that capitalism offered. During the mid-20^th century millions of African Americans migrated from the South to cities in the North where factory jobs and their financial benefits could be found. This migration would, unfortunately, set the stage for problems to come.

Concurrent with the economic growth in the U.S. a growing civil rights movement was taking shape.  Although slavery had ended a century earlier, there were still many significant social and economic barriers that stood in the way of African Americans achieving the same successes that white Americans experienced. Many parts of the country were still officially segregated, and even when segregation was not officially enforced there was a strong undercurrent of de facto segregation. Schools across the country were segregated by race, and cities and towns had areas where whites lived and other areas where blacks lived. There were many businesses that would not cater to black customers, so African Americans had to establish their own schools, businesses, and neighborhoods. At the same time as African Americans were beginning to reap some of the rewards of the nation’s economic prosperity, they were still held back by many social and political conditions.

By the 1960s the economic boom times were starting to fade in the U.S., and African American were among the hardest hit. As cities stared to decline economically, African Americans who felt hemmed in by segregation began demanding that they be offered the same civil rights as white Americans. The Civil rights Act that was passed in the 1960s was intended to ensure such equitable treatment, but it did not alleviate all of the economic problems faced by members of the black community. Although the Great Society was intended to benefit all Americans in need, there is no question that the focus of many of the programs was on the circumstances faced by African Americans in the 1960s. While such programs were implemented with the intention that they would help poor African Americans and poor members of all races lift themselves out of poverty, the reality is that their continued existence is proof that they do not always work as intended.

The Impact of Welfare in the 21^st Century

According to the National Center for Public Policy Research the aggregate effects of welfare programs have been largely negative, especially for members of the African American community. As a spokesperson for the organization describes it, “five decades after President Johnson initiated the ‘war’ on poverty, America remains at around the same percentage of people still living in poverty as it did back then. In 1964, the poverty rate was approximately 19 percent. Today, it’s around 15 percent,” and the rate at which black Americans live in poverty remains virtually unchanged (nationalcenter.org, n.p.). Among the most notable criticisms of the “war on poverty” and the effects of welfare programs on African Americans is that they have “effectively subsidized the dissolution of the black family by rendering the black man’s role as a husband and a father irrelevant, invisible and — more specifically — disposable” (nationalcenter.org, n.p.). These criticisms are leveled not just by white Americans, but also by black Americans (the National Center for Public Policy is staffed largely by African Americans, and they cite evidence of their position in studies related to poverty, incarceration rates, and other factors).  While it may not be entirely fair to blame welfare programs for all of the problems faced by African Americans, there is significant evidence that they, and others whom welfare programs are intended to help, are caught up in generational cycles of poverty that these programs do not address.

The point raised by the National Center for Public Policy and other critics of welfare programs about their effect on families is borne out by many studies on the subject.  Teitler et al (2009) studied the effect of welfare participation on marriage and marriage rates in the U.S., and found some notable results.  Among their finding is that welfare participation by women who give birth without being married “reduces the likelihood of transitioning to marriage” (p. 878). The study addressed the concerns that welfare participation led to dependence on welfare, and that many women on welfare avoided marriage in order to continue receiving benefits. The findings of the study seem to indicate that there is, in fact, a strong correlation between welfare participation and dependence, and that many women have avoided or postponed marriage until their benefits cease or they find work or other means of support.

This tendency for unwed mothers to depend on welfare benefits and to avoid marriage has broader effects on their children and their families. Yoshikawa (1999) studied the effects of welfare programs to determine their implications for women and their children. According to this study, the rates of poverty among mothers on welfare remained largely unchanged, with these programs seeming to offer little support in terms of lifting mothers from poverty (p. 780). Moreover, long-term poverty was shown to have a significant correlation with poor or delayed cognitive development on children of mothers on welfare (p.780). According to Yoshikawa “children of mothers who remained on welfare across a two-year period had lower PIAT reading and math scores than mothers who left welfare” (p.780).  The study further notes that the children of mothers who cycled on and off welfare tend to test slightly higher than those who remain on welfare, but lower than those who leave welfare (p.780). Such results would seem to clearly indicate that welfare programs can not only provide a disincentive for marriage, but can ultimately lead to significant negative outcomes for children in terms of cognitive development and education.

Overall, in fact, the United Sates saw a drop in marriage rates in the decades following the implementation of Great Society welfare programs, and this drop is disproportionately found in the county’s African American population (Blau, Kahn &Waldfogel, 1990, p.626; Teitler et al, 2009, p. 880). While there are a wide range of economic and social conditions that have led to declines in marriage rates, the potential negative effects of being raised by single mothers appear to be exacerbated both by economic conditions and by dependence on welfare programs. There have been significant changes in the workforce and the American economy in recent years, but Yoshikawa (1999) demonstrated that, at the end of the 20^th century, lower rates of marriage were clearly linked to negative economic outcomes.

The effects of being raised in single-parent households and under challenging economic conditions have been linked to a range of dire social consequences, especially for African American males. According to a report by Fagan and Rector (1996, n.p.) there were 4.7 million families in the U.S. receiving welfare payments through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) Program in 1995, and these families had been receiving benefits for an average of 6.5 years . Further, they assert, the overall average length of time families spent on welfare was thirteen years. In the years since this report was issued, there have been a number of notable efforts to reform welfare programs at the state and federal levels; as such, these figures may no longer reflect the current rate at which families depend on welfare. That said, however, the numbers are significant, and if the findings about the vegetative correlations between welfare and child development are to be believed, it is difficult not to conclude that such long periods of dependency by millions of families have had at least some larger negative consequences for African American communities.

According to Morris, Gennetian, and Duncan (2005) a recent study of data on welfare programs and their recipients in the late 20^th century now reveals that even welfare reform efforts can have negative consequences for children. If efforts that are tied to promoting work-to-welfare are not matched with appropriate efforts to provide daycare and educational support to children, their parents are more likely to return to welfare. For those parents that do find and keep work, it is often difficult to juggle the need to work with the need to provide adequate supervision for children. Their conclusions are that welfare-to-work programs must provide improvements in income levels to offset these and other issues if they are to be successful (p.3).  Such findings demonstrate that welfare programs can not only have negative consequences for those that are on them, they can also become impediments to those who are trying to break free of their restraints and enter (or re-enter) the workforce.

The problems associated with welfare, from political opposition to economic consequences to the long-term damage done to entire comminutes, have long been of concern, and in the 1990s the federal government began to seriously address the issue of welfare reform. Programs that were originally established to provide long-term assistance were revamped to provide short-term economic benefits while making it necessary for recipients to transition to work. While the purpose of these reform efforts was ultimately to make welfare recipients self-sufficient, there have been some unanticipated and unintended consequences associated with welfare reform.  According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, welfare reform has lowered the rate of long-term welfare dependency among African Americans, but it has also been associated with a long-term downward trend in higher-education acquisition (Campbell, n.d.). This trend is further linked with a downward effect on the range of job opportunities for those leaving welfare programs, a finding which is of concern both to those who support welfare programs and those who seek to reform them.

While it may not be fair to blame welfare for all the economic ills of society, or specifically those that plague African American communities, it is difficult not to examine the evidence without concluding such programs have done at least as much harm as they have done good. African American males are disproportionately likely to be incarcerated, are disproportionately likely to be the victims of violent crime, are disproportionately likely to be in foster care as children, and are disproportionately likely to be under-educated and unemployed or underemployed (Riley, 2011; Miller et al, n.d., p.4). There are clearly other factors at work, and it will require moiré than just welfare reform to address these issues, What is also clear, however, is that five decades of government welfare have done little to improve the lives of the millions of people they are intended to serve.

References

Blau, F., Kahn, L., &Waldfogel, J. (2000). Understanding young women’s marriage decisions: The role of labor and marriage market conditions.

Campbell, M. Welfare Reform Has Led to More Work but Less Education. The National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved 16 October 2014, from http://www.nber.org/digest/jan09/w14466.html

Fagan, P., & Rector, R. (1996). How Welfare Harms Kids. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved 16 October 2014, from http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1996/06/bg1084nbsp-how-welfare-harms-kids

Miller, O., & Farrow, F. (2014). Changing course: Improving Outcomes for African American Males Involved with Child Welfare Systems. Retrieved 16 October 2014, from http://www.cssp.org/publications/child-welfare/alliance/Changing-Course_Improving-Outcomes-for-African-American-Males-Involved-with-Child-Welfare-Systems.pdf

Miller, O., Farrow, F., Meltzer, J., &Notkin, S. (2014). Changing course: Improving Outcomes for African American Males Involved with Child Welfare Systems. Center for the Study of Social Policy. Retrieved 16 October 2014, from http://www.cssp.org/publications/child-welfare/alliance/Changing-Course_Improving-Outcomes-for-African-American-Males-Involved-with-Child-Welfare-Systems.pdf

Morris, P., Gennetian, L., & Duncan, G. (2005). Effects of Welfare and Employment Policies on Young Children: New Findings on Policy Experiments Conducted in the Early 1990s. Retrieved 16 October 2014, from http://Effects of Welfare and Employment Policies on Young Children: New Findings on Policy Experiments Conducted in the Early 1990

Riley, J. (2014). The State Against Blacks. WSJ. Retrieved 16 October 2014, from http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704881304576094221050061598

Teitler, J., Reichman, N., Nepomnyaschy, L., & Garfinkel, I. (2009). Effects of welfare participation on marriage. Journal Of Marriage And Family, 71(4), 878–891.

The Heritage Foundation,. (2014). LBJ Launches the Great Society. Retrieved 16 October 2014, from http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/lbj-launches-the-great-society

Yoshikawa, H. (1999). Welfare dynamics, support services, mothers’ earnings, and child cognitive development: Implications for contemporary welfare reform. Child Development, 70(3), 779–801.