There are even more options available to those on welfare after 1996. Let's face it; the welfare system has been in need of an overhaul for decades.
Before the reform, states gave out about 80% of the federal money that they dispensed in cash benefits. Now only half goes in cash. The rest goes on job searches, education, training and day-care for children of working mothers. Welfare offices have turned from cash-dispensing machines into job-centers, all using different sticks and carrots to push welfare recipients into work (The Economist, 2001).
Critics on the left predicted disaster. They argued that unskilled welfare recipients would.
be unprepared for the discipline of work. "In fact, welfare rolls have fallen even more than even .
supporters predicted: from 5.1m families at the peak of 1994 to just over 2m now" (The.
Economist, 2001). Indeed, there is a significant decrease in the number of people .
receiving welfare since 1996, but are those people that are off welfare successful in holding jobs.
and earning a decent living? It is difficult to measure the success of welfare reform in that .
aspect, but there is promising statistical information.
The unemployment rate for single mothers had been stuck at around 43% for most of the 1980s and early 1990s. After reform, the rate fell to 28% by 1999. The unemployment rate of never-married mothers fell even faster, from just over half in 1996 to one-third three years later. In the early 1990s, the average stay on welfare had been more than eight years: dependency, indeed. Now, the stay is probably less than half that. In the narrowest sense of the law's aim, it has been a triumph (The Economist, 2001).
The 1996 welfare reform act also put a lifetime limit of no more than 60 months of aid on any welfare recipient. This made it essential to put efforts and money towards educating and training those on public aid. Before 1996, there was not really an incentive to motivate people to go to work and get off welfare because any money they earned was taken directly off the amount of aid they would receive.
