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> In Hartford, Conn., the state is responsible for aid to unwed mothers between the ages of 16 and 21; the city cares for all others. Thus a 20-year-old gets a state check while she is carrying her baby: if she gives birth after her 21 st birthday, the checks come from the city.
> In Berkeley, Calif., a young husband and father, unemployed but trying to improve his future by attending college at night, is receiving aid. His caseworker informs him that by going to school he is violating the rules: he must be available for employment at all times. He quits school and is still on welfare.
> In Oakland, Calif., a middle-aged man, after receiving aid for 13 months, gets a post at last as a security guard. There is one problem: he needs $40 for a deposit on the uniform he will have to wear. Sorry, no money in the rule book. A caseworker deliberately breaks the law to advance the money. The man repays it within a month.
> In New York's Puerto Rican barrio, a 32-year-old woman, born into a welfare family, has lived through an unremitting succession of misfortunes to herself and her five children. She takes some pride in having manipulated public and private welfare agencies to produce benefits of $368 a month. She has never had a stable family life with a man. She finally finds one: a neighbor with a steady job who wants to marry her. But he cannot: she and her children would lose all aid, and they are beyond his means of support.
> She and many others are victims of the "notch effect" that diminishes the impact of America's welfare programs by diminishing incentives for self-improvement. A realistic example: a family receives benefits of $350 a month. The mother gets a $450-a-month job, but it involves expenses such as travel and baby sitters. The salary, however, puts her over the allowable income—the notch—and because the family loses all benefits there is no incentive to work.
Caseworkers and Patchwork
An administrative machine with such unique qualities is not purchased cheaply. Ellis Murphy, 53, soft-spoken but increasingly bitter, runs one of the biggest welfare departments in the country in Los Angeles County. He has the doubtful guidance of the county welfare regulations, which he dutifully keeps just outside his office. They make a pile exactly 5 ft. 2 in. high. "If something isn't done soon," he says, "the whole idiotic patchwork will fall of its own weight. It's a disaster. At all levels of state and Federal Government, it's disgraceful that we have no master plan to direct this monumental spending."
A toll is taken on the people who tend the machine. Welfare supervisors and caseworkers typically begin with the purest will to help and end up either leaving or fighting to remember why they enlisted in what ought to be a noble enterprise. Some workers in welfare offices issue checks bigger than their own take-home pay to families like their own. A high turnover among caseworkers is typical.
Chicago's turnover rate is 55% a year. Most of those who stay handle 150 or more cases each; the federally recommended maximum is 60. One young caseworker, speaking for thousands like her in urban areas, says: "The paper work is just amazing. There are copies and copies of everything, dozens of forms to fill out. And it's like