Poverty as we still know it

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Boston Globe

Welfare reform's success at issue
Brandeis study: Data misleading

By Ralph Ranalli, Globe Staff

February 21,2001

Brandeis University think tank has accused state officials of seriously understating the hunger and other problems former welfare recipients face after leaving public assistance. The state Department of Transitional Assistance gave an overly rosy picture of life after welfare in a report last year, and downplayed more disturbing statistics, the university's Center on Hunger and Poverty said.

''What was disturbing to me was that the DTA wasn't giving us the straight story,'' said   Dorie Seavey, director of the center's Food Security Institute, who reviewed the state report. ''There was a discrepancy between what they actually found and how they reported it.''

The question of what happens to women on welfare who are either forced off the rolls, or leave voluntarily, is a contentious one. Advocates for the poor say the welfare reform law, which generally limits recipients to two years of cash assistance, has left some families in more precarious circumstances. But state officials believe the law, which emphasizes work over government benefits, has boosted the quality of life for many families.

State officials yesterday insisted their report was not misleading and said they had already taken steps to address hunger-related issues.

The state report, ''Life After Limits: A Study of Households Leaving Welfare between December 1998 and April 1999,'' said the vast majority of people required to leave welfare were finding jobs and keeping them. The study, the most extensive ever undertaken of former recipients of public assistance in the state, also found that even those people forced off welfare by time limits enacted in 1995 earned on average three times more than their monthly welfare check. The Brandeis review, however, alleges that key statistics on hunger were buried in the back of the state report and barely mentioned in its executive summary or the glowing press release that accompanied it.

The most glaring statistic downplayed in the report, according to Seavey, was that while about 14 percent of those surveyed reported hunger in their families before leaving welfare, that number jumped to almost 22 percent after they left the rolls, a 56 percent increase. There was also a 31 percent increase among families reporting ''food insecurity without hunger'' after they left welfare or their benefits ran out. The food insecurity category includes families who may be at imminent risk of going hungry or who are stretching their food budgets to the point where nutrition is suffering.

Some negative statistics that were mentioned in the report, meanwhile, were offered in a   way that minimized their impact, the Brandeis review alleges. ''Severe food insecurity'' among people forced off welfare by time limits, for example, rose from 13.3 percent to 23.5 percent over the course of the study. The state report,   however, listed the increase as a ''10.2 percentage point'' increase rather than stating the actual percentage of the change - 77 percent. Gloria Nagle, director of evaluation for the DTA and the author of the report, said yesterday that she was ''rather surprised'' at the criticism and defended the presentation of   the numbers as appropriate and ''balanced.''

Department spokesman Dick Powers, meanwhile, said that while the hunger numbers were not highlighted in the report, state officials had noted the trend more than a year ago and had already called for measures to address it, including improvements to food stamp programs.

  © Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.


LETTER TO EDITOR - WASHINGTON POST


Worse Off After Welfare Reform


February 22, 2001

The op-ed piece by Rebecca Blank and Ron Haskins ["Revisiting Welfare," Feb. 14] is   misleading, to say the least. The authors begin by saying that none of the problems predicted by critics of the 1996 welfare law has materialized, although later they concede in passing that research shows that some people are worse off. This is like trivializing an   earthquake because it didn't kill as many people as expected. Research shows that about 40 percent of the 2.5-plus million women who have gone off welfare have neither a job nor cash assistance. This means that more than a million women, who have more than 2 million children, are in a precarious position. Many have moved in with extended families, although those arrangements are often unstable and will be jeopardized whenever a recession reduces the income stream coming into those   households. And significant numbers have been unable to cope. Homeless shelters all over the country are bursting at the seams. Anyone who works i!
n low-income communities can testify as to the facts on the ground.

Furthermore, official income statistics show that the poorest single mothers have actually lost income during the past four years, because they have lost more in benefits than they have gained in income from work. What some of us have predicted has indeed come to pass. That it has not been worse is the result of our increased prosperity. The authors correctly point to the dangers posed by a recession, but they seek to lull us into a satisfaction with the current situation that is manifestly unfounded.

PETER EDELMAN Washington

The writer, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, was an assistant secretary of health and human services during the first Clinton administration.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company