Peter Gottschalk, Sara McLanahan, and Gary D. Sandefur (1994)
The Dynamics and Intergenerational Transmission ofPoverty and Welfare Participation
The authors outline two competing views on welfare dependency and poverty. Conservatives such as Charles Murray (1984) have suggested a permanently dependent underclass exists because a “welfare trap” has robbed recipients of the will to better their own lot. Welfare programs encourage women to bear children out of wedlock, families to break up and eliminate the need for absentee fathers to contribute. Scaling back the welfare system is therefore the only way to save people from long-term poverty. By contrast, liberals have assumed the children of the poor to be trapped by poverty not welfare, and see welfare as providing only the transitional financial support necessary to allow the poor to gain the skills to be self-sufficient. Long-term poverty and welfare participation is explained by the lack of employment opportunities or jobs paying sufficient earnings (Wilson, 1986). Liberals tend to believe that it is the intergenerational transmission of poverty that causes the intergenerational correlation in welfare participation, caused primarily by the few resources low-income families have to pass on to their children or to finance their education. Conservatives tend to argue the opposite – that welfare perpetuates poverty across the generations by promoting out of wedlock childbearing and eroding the work ethic. However both groups have also denied or downplayed the existence of permanent poverty: conservatives because they want to emphasize mobility and an open market, and liberals because they have been reluctant to embrace the notion of the underclass and avoiding accusations of “blaming the victim”. The authors approach this highly ideological debate by examining two central issues: the prevalence of long term poverty and welfare participation; and the relationship between poverty, income, and welfare use in one generation and the next
Evidence on intra-generational mobility:
Longitudinal data sets such as the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) have only recently had enough years of data to observe outcomes over multiple generations. The data shows that 59% of poverty spells last just one year, and an additional 17% last only two years. Thus nearly three-quarters of all poverty spells are shorter than two years. However, blacks stay in poverty longer than non-blacks: almost 15% of poverty spells for blacks last 7+ years, compared to only 4% for non-blacks.
Most AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) spells are short. For blacks, 34% of spells last only a year, for non-blacks 44%. By the end of two years, half of the welfare spells for blacks and two-thirds of the spells for non-blacks have ended. This implies that most welfare entrants are not trapped in perpetual dependency. However, a substantial minority of cases do remain open for protracted periods. At the end of seven years, 25% of the spells for blacks, and 6% for non-blacks were still in progress. The duration of a single spell only gives half the picture though, as recidivism occurs. Roughly half of the families leaving AFCD or food stamps will return to these programs at some future date. The number of total years on welfare is substantially higher than the number of years on welfare in the first spell.
Evidence of inter-generational dynamics:
The intergenerational transmission of poverty can be viewed as part of a larger body of sociological research on the effects of family background on social and economic achievement in adulthood. The effects of family background factors are mediated by other variables, most importantly education, which in turn has a strong effect on income. Although parents are more educated than they were several decades ago, father’s occupational status has risen, and number of siblings in the family declined, family instability has increased. The likelihood/ risk of experiencing several “high risk” events – dropping out of school, having a child out of wedlock before age 20, and being idle in late adolescence – is greater for children from non-intact families than from intact families – and all of these high risk events also increase the risk of poverty and welfare dependence in adulthood. Although family structure has a sizable impact in increasing risk, it does not automatically relegate children to long term poverty or welfare dependence, for it is still the case that most children do not experience these high risk events.
There is consistent evidence of strong correlations between parental welfare receipt and daughters welfare receipt, even though research has not yet explained the causes of this correlation and the correlation does not necessarily indicate a causal relationship. Because welfare recipients are poor we would expect children from welfare families to have higher rates of poverty and therefore welfare use. Taking a mother off welfare wouldn’t necessarily lower the probability of the daughter receiving it if she grows up poor.
Summary:
A majority of the poor remain poor for only short periods, and majority receive welfare for only a few years. However, a minority experience long-term poverty or welfare dependence. Thus media and some scholars have overstated the extent to which poverty and welfare are traps in which individuals and families are caught. It is true that individuals who lived in poor families or whose families participated in welfare programs are more likely to experience poverty/welfare participation themselves, but it is also true that as many as two thirds of children from these families manage to escape poverty and dependence when they grow up.