Welfare reform, in times of both boom and bust

Vandy Griffin is known as a "welfare leaver." As a result, she's known some of the best of times, such as when she got her first job, and experienced a renewed sense of independence and excitement about the future.

But she's also known some of the worst of times, such as when she was laid off and couldn't get another steady job, fueling fear that she couldn't feed her kids.

Her experience illustrates two main facets that are emerging on the seventh anniversary of the launch of one of the biggest social experiments in the past decade.

By the numbers, welfare reform is an unqualified success. Caseloads that were bulging at more than 5 million back in 1996 have been cut in half. The child poverty rate, which peaked at more than 22 percent, has plummeted to 16 percent, allowing more than 2.9 million children to move out of poverty.

And the number of poor single mothers who are able to work at some time during the year, such as Ms. Griffin, jumped from about 44 percent in 1992 to a high of 64 percent in prerecession 1999.

The vast majority of welfare leavers, however, are working at low-wage jobs that still don't provide enough income to pull them out of poverty and off all forms of public assistance. And depending on the state, as many as one-third of welfare leavers are unemployed and struggling to feed their families.

There's also been a dramatic increase in the number of people who qualify for help, but aren't getting it. In 1995, 84 percent of people eligible for welfare received it. By 2000, that number had dropped to 51 percent, meaning that almost half of the families with children poor enough to qualify for cash assistance weren't getting it.

Still, even skeptics who worried seven years ago that the reforms would force millions more women into poverty now see it as an example of the good that government can do.

"This shows that given appropriate resources, the public sector can really help families and children," says Barbara Blum, director of the Research Forum on Children, Families, and the New Federalism at Columbia University in New York. "This is a real example of where people stepped up to the plate, worked hard, and did a really good job."

Most experts also agree that the timing of the reform - during the country's longest economic expansion - couldn't have been better. It allowed leavers to take advantage of a booming job market, and gave employers short on employees extra incentives to train and provide extra supports to the welfare leavers. At the same time, states were flush with cash and as their welfare caseloads shrank, they were able to use money that once went to income support to provide job training, child care, transportation, and health insurance for the leavers.

But since the recession hit, vulnerabilities in the much-heralded reform are beginning to show. And as Congress debates the reauthorization of the welfare bill, which must be complete by the end of September, critics are working to close gaps they fear will undermine successes so far.

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