The Hassle Factor

Michael W. Lynch from the December 2000 issue

(Page 3 of 4)

This all adds up. According to a study of Work First New Jersey conducted for the state by Mathematica Policy Research, those who left welfare for work earned an average of $1,600 a month. Those who remained on the system and stayed unemployed took in an average of just under $800 a month. Such a disparity isn't unique to New Jersey. Says Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute, "The clear consensus of all the studies is that folks who are working are doing better than folks who stay on welfare."

The View From the Top

The folks who actually run Camden's system aren't convinced that people are better off under the new plan. They're not sure they are working. They're not even sure where they are.

"I don't know where they've all gone," says Andrea Rauer, who runs Camden County's social service department. "I don't know where my clients are." Rauer expresses her concern in the department's second-floor conference room, where we're joined by three other top social service officials. Plaques of appreciation sent by the Red Cross, a local high school, and the U.S. Department of Social Services adorn the room's walls, assuring me we're sitting in a place where good works are done.

The drastic drop in the welfare rolls shocked everyone in this room. Yet with more than 130 years of combined experience working social services in Camden, they're not sure what to make of it, or even if it's a good thing. Of this much they're certain: Work First New Jersey has made their jobs harder, as the state has put pressure on them to get people off the rolls. "There's not much difference in the stress levels now between those serving the poor and the poor themselves," says Clement Carney, deputy director of the Camden County Board of Social Services, who later adds, "It's like we have a gun on us. The state is telling us, 'You have too many people on the dole; you get them off.'"

The board's payroll has dropped along with its clients. It once employed 800 people; today that's down to about 600. "The truth of the matter is that we are no different from clients," says Carney, whose sharp edge and animated face convey a sincere concern about the program. "They want to get rid of the clients and those who are serving them."

Overall, opinions of the reform expressed in the conference room range from dismissive vitriol to cautious optimism. All but one of the officials like the emphasis on responsibility and the program's increased flexibility. Frank Ambrose, who supervises case managers, thinks the caseload reduction is a sign of success. Sandra Mayers, who administers the board's income maintenance programs, disagrees. The 37-year social service veteran decries the reform as "mean-spirited" and slams a state-made video heralding its success as "a fucking P.R. piece-of-shit lie."

"Cash grants are down," says Carney. "I can't tell you if that's good or not. I really don't know what happened to all these families. I think yeah, there's been economic advantage and a lot of people did move out, but whether they are in self-sufficient, career opportunity jobs or whether they are doubled up in housing, I don't know yet."

Why is it so hard to find out where former welfare recipients have landed? Part of the reason is that once people leave the system, the government no longer tracks them. If people are working, you might expect to see evidence of it in the community-more entrepreneurial activity, small industry, shops, and the like. But it's hard to find any of that. "I don't know what the impact on the city would be," says Frank Ambrose, who notes, "You don't see building. You don't see any new companies coming in."

Most national studies of women who've left welfare show that upward of 60 percent of them are working. In New Jersey, Mathematica Policy Research found that 56 percent of former welfare clients in its statewide sample were employed. But no one knows for sure if these figures apply to Camden.

They do know, however, why people are leaving: Welfare isn't worth the hassle. "We put pressure on the recipients to do something," says Ambrose, who thinks the program is getting people to work. "Prior to this we had job training programs, but people weren't put under pressure. We weren't very threatening."

Hitting the Floor Smiling

Ted Goertzel, a sociologist at Rutgers University's Camden campus, started studying welfare recipients in 1992, when the first wave of reform hit New Jersey. Since then, he has conducted a series of focus groups with welfare clients. In the early 1990s, Goertzel says, the assumption among welfare recipients was that the system would always be there, that it was a force of nature. "I would try to raise the question about what would you like to do for a career, for work," says Goertzel. "And it was like talking to kids in grade school. Work was something that was very far off, unrealistic, maybe they'd like to work with children, be a physician. It was nothing practical, nothing that would happen in the short term."

Today, Goertzel finds meaningful short-term planning. "They realize that they are going to have to find jobs, that they have to find some way to support themselves, that they can't rely on the welfare system as a permanent security blanket," says Goertzel. "That idea has gotten across."

Polls and individual experience support Goertzel's focus-group findings. The Mathematica survey found that more than 80 percent of Work First clients know that welfare benefits are limited and that they must work to continue to receive them. Six in 10 said the law's time limits affected their decisions, prompting them to try harder to find and keep jobs or seek out training to get them off welfare. Even a study by Legal Services of New Jersey that doesn't mask the authors' disdain for the new system concedes that it has made clients understand that they must work.