Factoring Dads Into the Welfare Equation

Funding of reforms that cut welfare rolls by half ends this fall--and the usual players, from politicians to social workers, have already begun lining up to push their ideas into a new, improved version of the 1996 federal mandate.

Some say its work-for-welfare focus pushed thousands of women toward admirable self-sufficiency. Others worry that its restrictions and penalties will leave families stranded in our collapsing economy.

Now, an economist is weighing in, with a suggestion seldom heard in the welfare reform cacophony: You want to cut the rolls of single moms on the dole? Stop focusing on their welfare checks and look at the puny paychecks their babies’ daddies bring home.

The notion that welfare payments encourage single women to have kids “is a familiar idea, something that people on the streets have talked about for decades,� says economist Robert Moffitt, a professor at Johns Hopkins University.

The presumption drives much of the public contempt for the stereotypical welfare mom, though I’ve always considered it absurd to think a woman would have another child just to collect the 50 bucks or so the kid would add to her monthly allowance.

Moffitt has spent 10 years studying the issue, using welfare records in California and New York to track what happens to family size as welfare payments go up or down. He’s found virtually no correlation between trends in benefit levels and the rate of unwed births.

But he has discovered an interesting wrinkle: The rate of births among low-income, single women increases as the earnings and employment levels of their male counterparts decline.

In other words, welfare might not promote childbearing, but it gives women an alternative to marrying the fathers of their kids--men whose limited earning potential makes marriage less attractive than the economic stability a monthly welfare check provides.

“You talk to women on welfare, and they want to be married,� Moffitt says from his office in Baltimore. “They tend to hold very traditional views ... that the man should be the breadwinner, should support his wife and children.�

That’s a charming though outdated ideal. The reality is it gets harder every day for men with limited skills to earn enough to provide for a wife and kids.

The income of less educated men has dropped drastically over the last 20 years as well-paying manufacturing jobs disappeared and wages shrunk in fields like transportation and construction.

“The new economy puts a premium on education, computer skills, having a strong competitive position,� Moffitt says. Men who lack a college education or specific job skills “have been left behind economically.�

“Their unemployment is high, their work patterns are intermittent, their jobs are unstable,� he says. “Some have turned to drugs or crime. From the point of view of women in their neighborhoods, such men are no longer attractive marriage partners.�

Because the men tend to be traditionalists, too, their failure wounds them as well. “They feel shame. They don’t have much pride in their status in society,� Moffitt says. “Many of them are working long hours for wages that don’t provide enough to be able to support a family, to provide for a child. They’re discouraged, cynical.�

Not just deadbeat dads, but emotionally dead, too.

Social policy experts say the issue of single motherhood is likely to emerge as a potent one in the upcoming debate over welfare reform.

Provisions to penalize welfare recipients who keep having children didn’t make it into the federal welfare plan last time around, but 20 states have already moved to adopt so-called family caps that discourage out-of-wedlock births.

In the six years since the reforms took effect, the marriage rate has risen. But is that because couples were scared straight by the reality of dwindling benefits or because they were encouraged by the booming economy? Or have they been influenced by a growing social conservatism that frowns on unwed motherhood?

Moffitt has been awarded a $1.3-million grant by the National Institutes of Health to fund 10 more years of study, tracking families, statistics and trends.

He hopes enough attention is paid to men in the upcoming round of welfare reform. “Most men in low-income neighborhoods receive no support from the government--no job training, no education subsidies, no welfare. If we’re manipulating the system to encourage marriage, we have to factor them into the equation.�

It may not be enough to usher welfare mothers into the work force. If we want their families to succeed, we may have to give their men a hand as well.

Sandy Banks’ column runs on Tuesdays and Sundays. She is at [email protected].