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U nmarried women with children have long been at the core of the welfare controversy in the U.S. In 1984

Charles Murray, currently a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, argued that the increasing generosity and availability of welfare—then called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)—led to the growth of female-headed families. In 2004 there were almost 1.5 million births to un-married women, a quarter of them teenag-ers. Since 2000 the number of unmarried women who gave birth for the fi rst time has averaged at least 650,000 a year. Few have had the resources to rear a child properly.

Murray’s argument regarding the culpa-bility of AFDC, though contradicted by dozens of independent studies, carried the day. In 1996 the U.S. replaced AFDC with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Fami-lies (TANF), which mandated a maximum of fi ve years on the rolls, thereby encourag-ing recipients to join the paid workforce. Proponents have pointed to TANF’s success in lowering welfare rolls, and indeed, as the chart illustrates, the number of welfare fam-ilies declined dramatically. The levels achieved by mid-2005 are the lowest seen since 1969.

TANF, however, may not be the major reason for this development. According to one analysis, it accounted for about 20 per-cent of the decline; other factors, including

a generally good economy and the Earned Income Tax Credit, a program that gives cash to low-income families, accounted for the rest. Another analysis attributes two thirds of the decline to TANF.

The chart also shows that the number of single mothers in poverty began falling well before TANF took effect and continued to drop until 2000, when the current upturn began. Still, the poverty level remains well below what it was before TANF. Not sur-prisingly, with such confl icting data, knowl-edgeable researchers, such as economist Rebecca Blank of the University of Michi-gan at Ann Arbor, have concluded that determining whether women and children are better off with TANF is not possible at this time.

Besides having stricter requirements, TANF also promotes marriage and discour-ages out-of-wedlock pregnancy, mainly through education and counseling. But like AFDC before it, TANF has not had any dis-cernible effect on births to unwed mothers, whose numbers have increased almost every year since 1940, when tabulations began. Any program to “end welfare as we know it” must include a serious effort to reduce the number of unwed mothers, for they are the chief recipients of welfare.

Rodger Doyle can be reached at rodgerpdoyle@verizon.net

Welfare WoesMIXED SUCCESS IN GETTING PEOPLE ON THEIR OWN FEET BY RODGER DOYLE

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FURTHER READING

The Effects of AFDC on American Family Structure, 1940–1990. Steven Ruggles in Journal of Family History, Vol. 22, No. 3, pages 307–325; July 1997.

Welfare Reform: Effects of a Decade of Change. Jeffrey Grogger and Lynn Karoly. Harvard University Press, 2005.

Was Welfare Reform Successful? Rebecca M. Blank in Economists’ Voice. Berkeley Electronic Press, March 2006. Online at www.bepress.com/ev

The Future of Children: The Landscape of Wealth, Poverty and Opportunities for Children. Duncan Lindsey. Oxford University Press (in press).

FAST FACTS: ON THE ROLLS

U.S. welfare recipients, June 2005:

Total families: 1,893,000One-parent families: 1,019,000Two-parent families: 32,000Other (headed by grandparent, aunt, and so on): 842,000

Percent of recipients who were:White, non-Hispanic: 37Black: 39Hispanic: 19Native American: 2Asian or Pacifi c Islander: 2

Families in poverty:Female head, single, with children

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