Welfare reform is 10 years old. On the 10th anniversary of the act’s passage, there is overwhelming consensus: This single piece of legislation has done America a lot of good — more, perhaps, than all the Great Society measures that preceded it. The reform hasn’t been perfect. But hardly anyone would argue that the legislation was unnecessary, or that the reforms haven’t worked.
The more familiar title, Welfare Reform Act of 1996, gives us only half the picture of what the bill was designed to do. In fact, most people point to how the legislation helped break up intergenerational cycles ofdependency; how it arrested the problem of “welfare queens” who found ways to scam the old AFDC system; and how there has been a dramatic reduction of people on welfare rolls since its passage. But maybe we should dwell on some of its subtler successes by considering the complete title: The Work Opportunity and Personal Responsibility Act. In fact, let’s linger on the “personal responsibility” part, after a brief story:
In 1995, when Oseola McCarty was 87 years old, she gave $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi. Such doesn’t sound altogether unusual until one learns that Ms. McCarty wasn’t an alumna of Southern Mississippi at all; nor was she rich, nor was she educated, nor was she white. McCarty took in ironing for virtually her entire life, earning a little here, a little there, and saving over many years.
“I want to help somebody’s child go to college,” McCarty said. “I just want it to go to someone who will appreciate it and learn. I’m old and I’m not going to live always.” Eventually McCarty’s gift was matched by a number of people in her community. Today, her scholarship still provides opportunities for underprivileged youth.
The gift, in-and-of itself, is a testament to the power of both voluntary charity and human benevolence. But even if McCarty had taken her money to her grave, used the money for healthcare expenses, or blown it on a Hawaiian vacation, we could still honor her for her resourcefulness. She must have found great dignity in it, as well as in her resilience, thrift, and work ethic.
For 30 years, the Great Society and the broader welfare edifice may have diminished prospects for other McCartys coming into existence at all. Welfare robs people of the dignity that comes along with an ethic of personal responsibility. And despite the successful reforms of 1996, it still does to some degree. But why?
There is a dictum of sorts that floats around economics departments. It goeslike this: If you reward any behavior, you’re likely to get more of it. It’s the power of incentives. And incentives can be perverse — as when poor people receive incentives to remain poor. It’s a simple, rational calculation: Work for a little money, or do nothing for a little money. One might add that you not only get more of a certain behavior the more you reward it, but over time, expectations are set around such rewards. Words like “entitlement” don’t help.
So from an ill-conceived agenda to help those in need (through the coercive power of the state), we ended up with a kind of learned helplessness phenomenon that caused people to languish. Whole segments of society never knew what it meant to work, to save, and to find dignity in such deliberate self-direction. Welfare gave birth to a generation of wards. And their prospects were diminished by the fact that the state clustered them in structures for which they could never have any sense of ownership. They were a generation of extended hands. Isolated. Sequestered in those housing blocks that quickly degenerated, becoming traps of crime and violence. Finally, thanks to an act of bipartisan political courage, all this is starting to change.
The success of 1996’s welfare reform may cause us to ignore any further notions of refinement in 2006. And that would be a shame.
The kinds of entitlements that cause dependency and perverse incentives are still with us. Not just welfare, but programs dressed up in names benign names like “Medicare,” “Social Security,” and other serious Great Society mistakes. It’s time we turned our attention to these, remembering all the while that the Oseola McCartys of the world won’t go away, even if the welfare state does.
Max Borders is managing editor at TCSDaily.com.
