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November 2001
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Is Work Enough?
The Experiences of Current and Former Welfare Mothers Who Work
Denise F. Polit, Rebecca Widom, Kathryn Edin, Stan Bowie, Andrew S. London, Ellen K. Scott, Abel Valenzuela
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Since 1996, when Congress passed the Personal Responsibility
and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act · the "welfare reform"
law · welfare caseloads have dropped sharply, and the number of single
mothers who work has grown dramatically. But how have poor mothers fared,
now that they are playing by the new welfare rules and working?
This report describes the experiences of women from poor urban neighborhoods
who once relied on public assistance and entered the labor market. It presents
findings from the Project on Devolution and Urban Change, a study of the
implementation and effects of welfare reform in the counties encompassing
four big cities: Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, and Philadelphia. This report
draws on representative survey data and in-depth ethnographic interviews
from each of those sites to compare the work experiences and life circumstances
of four groups of women defined by employment status and history.
In May 1995, the 3,900 survey respondents were receiving public assistance
and living in high-poverty neighborhoods. Three to four years later, they
were interviewed about their recent employment experiences: Three-quarters
had worked in the past two years, and about half were working at the time
of the interview. Respondents' stories from the ethnographic interviews
are interwoven throughout the report to complement and augment the survey
findings.
Key Findings
- The majority of women who were working at the time of their interview
had worked in most of the prior 24 months. Full-time employment was
the norm, whether that employment was stable or not.
- Even among women who had been working most stably, the majority had
low-wage jobs with earnings that put their families below the official
poverty level.
- Among the employed women, about two out of five held jobs that provided
no fringe benefits. Even among those who had worked most stably, only
about half had jobs that offered health insurance.
- In most cases, the mothers' earnings were the primary source of household
income. Most women and their families faced multiple material hardships,
such as food insecurity, housing problems, and unmet health care needs.
- Nearly all the women who worked faced barriers or "challenges"
to employment, such as their own or a child's health problems, less
than high school education, or depression. The women who worked most
stably faced fewer such obstacles.
- Public safety net programs (food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance,
child care subsidies) were not used by the majority of the women, despite
their apparent eligibility for them.
Though the strong economic growth of the late 1990s would be expected to
improve employment prospects generally, it is still noteworthy that so many
current and former welfare recipients achieved high employment stability.
Yet most were in jobs with low earnings and could not lift their families
out of poverty without other sources of income. By documenting the pervasiveness
of material hardship and poverty among women in this group (even among those
working full time) and the fact that the public supports available to them
often go unused, this study suggests that government policies aimed at addressing
the needs of the working poor have fallen short of their goals.
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Funders
Ford Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts,
W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (including interagency funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture),
Annie E. Casey Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Joyce Foundation,
The Cleveland Foundation, The George Gund Foundation, William Penn Foundation,
The James Irvine Foundation, The California Wellness Foundation, The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation
The findings and conclusions presented in this report do not necessarily represent the official positions
or policies of the funders.
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