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Only a Few Can Be Helped
There are enough who fit each aspect of the composite to unfairly tar all the needy, but the reality of poverty in the U.S. is not what myth would have it. A majority of the welfare recipients in the country are white (58%), and thousands of them—many from high-paying jobs, especially in engineering—are now discovering the shock of poverty for the first time. Forty-two percent are nonwhite, more than three times their proportion of the population—testimony to the dislocation and discrimination in American society. Hundreds of thousands of blacks left the Deep South in the two decades following World War II. But a number of studies indicate that by and large they went north (and still go, though in smaller numbers) looking for work, not welfare. Most do not seek public aid until several years after they arrive.
Very few live better on welfare than they would with full-time jobs at adequate wages. Obviously, cheating does happen. Item: In California, a man combined a secret job and welfare for an annual income of $16,800. Item: a regulation-wise hippie commune in Berkeley reconstituted itself into eight paper "households" and collected $1,000 a month in aid. Item: a group of middle-class suburbanites in Piedmont, Calif., where county rules require only identification and a statement of need before aid is issued, dramatized their displeasure with the system by easily getting onto the rolls at several offices. But the fact is that chicanery accounts for a very small part of welfare's cost. The last HEW study estimates that only four out of every 1,000 of those on welfare actually cheat.
Contrary to common belief, only a tiny number of people who may not really need it get aid. As HEW reports flatly: "Even with the best possible services, only about 5% at most [of welfare recipients] can be helped to self-sufficiency within a reasonable length of time." A more realistic figure is probably closer to 2%. The rest are children too young to work, the aged and hopelessly disabled who cannot work, and mothers who have nowhere to leave their children in order to take a job—if one exists.
In AFDC, the typical applicant stays on the rolls for only 23 months, according to HEW figures, though four out of ten return a second time. Moreover, AFDC families are not all large. Their average is four persons, compared with 4.2 in the general population. In two-thirds of the welfare families, all the children had the same parents; an estimated 31% of all children getting aid were born illegitimately.*
Although they do not live the myth, welfare clients ironically share a belief in it. In a study by Dr. Scott Briar, professor in the school of social welfare at Berkeley, nearly half of a sampling of recipients thought that cheating was much more frequent than it is, 58% thought that many people stayed on welfare too long, and most thought that welfare departments had a right to check on clients and end aid if they found improprieties such as unreported income. Said Briar: "Welfare clients in general share the mores of the wider middle-class society about work and the shame of going on welfare."
Needed: One Miracle
Even when some of the myths are cleared away, however, the fact remains that AFDC is at the heart of the problem. The crisis in welfare