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Workfare first became government policy, at least in theory, more than a decade ago. Congress strengthened a Work Incentive (WIN) program in 1971 during the Nixon Administration. But WIN suffered from inadequate funding, mismanagement and weak enforcement. In 1981, with the advent of the Reagan Administration, Congress passed legislation granting states more flexibility in administering WIN. For the first time, AFDC recipients could work in public agencies rather than in private-sector jobs. States were also allowed to use part of a recipient's welfare grant as a wage subsidy to his or her private employer. Given these new liberties, state governments began cooking up fresh workfare programs. "Obligation" is a word that workfare supporters use frequently, arguing that welfare recipients have not fulfilled their responsibilities as citizens. Lawrence Mead, professor of politics at New York University, makes such a case in his new book, Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship (Free Press; $19.95). His most controversial theme: the poor need to have standards of behavior set for them. "We have to say, 'You have a real obligation we're not going to let you get away from,' " says Mead. Workfare, he maintains, can give poor people the discipline he feels they lack. Mead advocates expanding workfare programs to include mothers with children above age three rather than simply those whose children are old enough to be in school.
Workfare's philosophical opponents see it as a sort of punishment for being poor. They contend that the vast majority of welfare recipients are young unwed mothers with few if any marketable skills, who are often forced to take demeaning, low-paying jobs under workfare. Critics question whether there is even enough work to go around for the programs' undereducated participants. Says California Democratic Assemblyman Tom Bates: "When Ronald Reagan says, 'Go to the want ads and look for jobs,' he doesn't point out that they're for electrical engineers and highly skilled people."
There are other well-reasoned objections to workfare: that it displaces people in the regular labor force; that by exempting single parents with preschool-age children, it excludes 60% of all adult AFDC recipients; that, as Ohio has experienced, welfare savings can be less than program costs; that workfare places too much emphasis on getting clients into the job market quickly rather than enrolling them in education courses that could help them gain entry to more useful and lucrative lines of work.
A report released last month by the House Government Operations Committee criticizes programs that do not provide adequate child care for participants. Said the study: "The lack of safe and affordable child care can foreclose the possibility of employment, training, education and even opportunity to job hunt." Moreover, say critics, workfare does not address America's most serious unemployment problem: the jobless rate among black teenagers is currently 41.6%, compared with 6.9% for the U.S. as a whole.