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Dear Paul Krugman - The Welfare Debate Didn't Change Anything
The Mobility Agenda challenges Krugman's evidence directly.
He implies that the world has changed in part because the debate over welfare reform in the mid-1990s deracialized government spending issues and made it OK for government to spend on assistance to low-wage workers, writing:
We find exactly the opposite in our review of academic literature on this question. The evidence directly contradicts Krugman’s assertion.
In a report The Mobility Agenda commissioned and released last fall to review public opinion on poverty, welfare, and low-wage work, Matthew Nisbet of American University writes:
Also:
And finally:
By making welfare more “morally demanding,” centrist Democrats hoped to re-instill confidence in the ability of the government to help the poor. Strategists, pundits, and several prominent scholars had predicted that welfare reform would set in motion a powerful policy feedback effect, removing the taint of racism, and opening up the public to support for policies that helped the poor.
Unfortunately, in a systematic analysis comparing multiple indicators of polling data gathered between 1998 and 2004 with data from the late 1980s, [Joe] Soss and [Sanford]Schramm find no evidence for this impact. The tendency for Americans to blame poverty on a lack of effort has held steady, feelings toward the poor have grown slightly cooler, willingness to aid the poor has stayed the same or diminished, and racial attitudes still color support for assistance to the poor.
Yet, pointing to more recent polling data, influential progressives remain optimistic that the public is finally ready to get behind a campaign against poverty. In particular, a widely talked about analysis by Pew (2007) indicates a roughly 10% shift between 1994 and 2007 in the public’s agreement that the government should take care of people who can’t take care of themselves, guarantee food and shelter for all, and help more needy people even if it means government debt.
However…any comparison to 1994 is misleading, since these polls were taken at the height of the welfare reform campaign. During this period, news attention to welfare soared, with this coverage overwhelmingly negative in its tone. By 1998, however, news attention and negativity had both sharply declined. In reality, absent very salient messages attacking welfare programs, what the 2007 polls reveal is a normalization of public attitudes about poverty to their pre-Clinton era levels, rather than any turning point in public sentiment.
Sadly, it seems the welfare debate of the mid-1990s reinforced public opinion rather than serving to shift it. By the way, we should expect the same of any debate over a goal to end poverty in the next administration.
For more perspective on the Krugman commentary, visit our site.
He implies that the world has changed in part because the debate over welfare reform in the mid-1990s deracialized government spending issues and made it OK for government to spend on assistance to low-wage workers, writing:
If Ronald Reagan and other politicians succeeded, for a time, in convincing voters that government spending was bad, it was by suggesting that bureaucrats were taking away workers’ hard-earned money and giving it to you-know-who: the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks, the welfare queen driving her Cadillac. Take away the racial element, and Americans like government spending just fine.
But why has racial division become so much less important in American politics?
Part of the credit surely goes to Bill Clinton, who ended welfare as we knew it. I’m not saying that the end of Aid to Families With Dependent Children was an unalloyed good thing; it created a great deal of hardship. But the “bums on welfare” played a role in political discourse vastly disproportionate to the actual expense of A.F.D.C., and welfare reform took that issue off the table.
We find exactly the opposite in our review of academic literature on this question. The evidence directly contradicts Krugman’s assertion.
In a report The Mobility Agenda commissioned and released last fall to review public opinion on poverty, welfare, and low-wage work, Matthew Nisbet of American University writes:
While core values and psychological orientations play a significant role in structuring American views about poverty, the issue is by no means “race neutral.” In fact, based on analyses of multiple national surveys, the political scientist Martin Gilens…concludes that among whites, the belief that black people are lazy is the most important source of opposition to spending on welfare and to programs that provide direct assistance such as food stamps and unemployment benefits.
Also:
…news images encourage the belief that the prototypical poor person is black. Specifically, the dominant visuals in TV stories related to poverty were blacks in organized activities like marches, meetings, or church; and blacks milling around streets, frequently pictured with police officers. Moreover, beyond images of race… poverty itself was seldom the direct subject of a news story, with reports rarely focused on low income, hunger, homelessness, low housing quality, unemployment, or welfare dependence. Instead, the focus was symptoms associated with poverty, particularly racial discrimination and problems of health or health care.
And finally:
By making welfare more “morally demanding,” centrist Democrats hoped to re-instill confidence in the ability of the government to help the poor. Strategists, pundits, and several prominent scholars had predicted that welfare reform would set in motion a powerful policy feedback effect, removing the taint of racism, and opening up the public to support for policies that helped the poor.
Unfortunately, in a systematic analysis comparing multiple indicators of polling data gathered between 1998 and 2004 with data from the late 1980s, [Joe] Soss and [Sanford]Schramm find no evidence for this impact. The tendency for Americans to blame poverty on a lack of effort has held steady, feelings toward the poor have grown slightly cooler, willingness to aid the poor has stayed the same or diminished, and racial attitudes still color support for assistance to the poor.
Yet, pointing to more recent polling data, influential progressives remain optimistic that the public is finally ready to get behind a campaign against poverty. In particular, a widely talked about analysis by Pew (2007) indicates a roughly 10% shift between 1994 and 2007 in the public’s agreement that the government should take care of people who can’t take care of themselves, guarantee food and shelter for all, and help more needy people even if it means government debt.
However…any comparison to 1994 is misleading, since these polls were taken at the height of the welfare reform campaign. During this period, news attention to welfare soared, with this coverage overwhelmingly negative in its tone. By 1998, however, news attention and negativity had both sharply declined. In reality, absent very salient messages attacking welfare programs, what the 2007 polls reveal is a normalization of public attitudes about poverty to their pre-Clinton era levels, rather than any turning point in public sentiment.
Sadly, it seems the welfare debate of the mid-1990s reinforced public opinion rather than serving to shift it. By the way, we should expect the same of any debate over a goal to end poverty in the next administration.
For more perspective on the Krugman commentary, visit our site.
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Krugman's still shilling for the Clintons.
June 9, 2008 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
You miss the point.
Poverty is NOT a social problem with economic consequences. It is an ECONOMIC problem with social ramifications. Not until poverty is addressed by policy makers from this point of view and not until poverty is addressed by politicians, think tanks, et al, as a problem of ECONOMIC CLASS will we be able to make a difference.
People are poor because they lack the opportunity to acquire and accumulate appreciating assets. It is when opportunity is denied through racism, classism, overweightism, bad teethism, bad social/economic policy, bad politics or whatever else ism or incompetence we use to deny opportunity, THAT is what makes us poor.
As an aside...Welfare reform, which was started by republicans daring democrats in the Wisconsin legislature to "End Welfare As We Know It", was in reality a way to assist businesses hire unskilled workers at low wages.
Think back to what was going on in the economy at the time--lots of low wage jobs and no one qualified to fill them. TANF was designed to have the GOVERNMENT provide/PAY FOR the training and job readiness skills to welfare recipients so employers wouldn't have to spend money getting welfare recipients "work ready" (understand work culture--get to work on time, call in sick--don't just not show up, respecting supervisors, how to dress appropriately, working with customers, etc) in order to put them to work. Government, through TANF, spent a LOT of money providing direct job training to TANF recipients to entice employers to hire them. The attitude at the time was "give them whatever they want".
This is one of the basic tenets of business--use "other people's money" whenever possible. When the republicans, specifically Newt Gingrich and those of his ilk, pushed the idea that government should "act more like a business", unfortunately, using the government's money to train potential employees was quickly incorporated. What happened? Employers cut money for training. What are we experiencing now? Lots of recently unemployed people with no job skills for current and future occupations.
Additionally, we are spending much more money on "work supports" than under AFDC. With TANF, the idea was to help the employee remain in the job by paying for things that would support/promote work. If your income is low enough, the government will pay for your food, your housing, your childcare, your health care, some job training, the Earned Income Tax Credit all to support you while you work at a minimum wage/low wage job. If the worker wants to move up--they face entitlement "cliffs"--increase your wages by $.10 an hour and you can kiss your childcare, food, housing, healthcare good-bye. Does $.10 an hour, or about $16 a month, cover all of those costs? Nope. Now studies are finding that many people who TANF put to work has also trapped them in "Entitlement Hell"--make a modest gain--and your "work supports" are stripped away.
The other side of the coin is that businesses are not under pressure to increase wages for these jobs. These jobs have seen tremendous declines in real wages recently in part because employees are punished if they pressure the market to pay better.
TANF will never work because it punishes workers for improving their earnings and rewards employers for paying low wages. People are not poor because they are urban black or rural white or stupid or lazy and absolutely not because of a lack of effort (I dare anyone to go to a Job Center/welfare office and try to get assistance you are eligible for and be treated with dignity, respect and provided accurate information on the first try.). It takes a LOT of energy and costs a LOT of money to be poor.
June 9, 2008 10:21 PM | Reply | Permalink