[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 54 (Thursday, March 23, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3721-H3722]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              PROFILE OF WELFARE RECIPIENTS IN OUR COUNTRY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Fazio] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FAZIO of California. Mr. Speaker, there has been a tremendous 
amount of discussion about welfare in the last couple of days, and we 
all understand the welfare system has to change. But sometimes I think 
many of us have a different concept of the welfare system, who is on 
welfare, how they got there and how they get off, and perhaps the facts 
would document. So I thought perhaps in my brief time tonight I would 
speak a little bit to the profile of recipients in our society.
  There are some five million families on Aid to Families With 
Dependent Children, but I think many people are shocked to know that 
two-thirds of the people who are benefited by that program are 
children. There is also, I think, some stereotypical beliefs about who 
in our society is on welfare: 38.9 percent of all the beneficiaries of 
AFDC are white, 37.2 percent are African-American, and 17.8 percent are 
Hispanic. The average family size is only 2.9 people.
  There is an assumption, I think, on the part of many of our 
constituents that AFDC is a very remunerative source of income. The 
facts do not really buttress that assertion. The average monthly 
benefit is $373 per month. That is less than $4,500 a year, and I might 
say that in 1970, in current dollars, the average monthly benefit was 
$300 a month more, $676 a month. We have seen a decline in real dollars 
of $300 a month in the last 25 years.
  Of course some States are more generous. In the contiguous 48 States, 
Mr. Speaker, New York has a $703 per month average benefit; 
Mississippi, 
 [[Page H3722]] $120 a month, which goes, I think, to the issue of 
attempting, as we debate this bill, to establish some national norms so 
that people are not solving their economic problems when they are poor 
by moving from one State to another.
  People, I think, have a misimpression of what welfare contributes to 
our overall budget. I hear people estimating that it may range close to 
40 to 50 percent of what we spend at the Federal level. In fact, $13.8 
billion is total Federal spending for AFDC. That is less than 1 percent 
of the Federal budget, and, if you add in State spending, it only
 comes to $25 billion, State and Federal, across the country, an 
average of $156 for each American taxpayer.

  There is also, I think, an assumption in our rhetoric that those 
people who are on AFDC are somehow all teenagers, and we are all 
concerned about young girls becoming pregnant and becoming welfare 
recipients, but in fact in 1993 only 1.2 percent of AFDC mothers were 
under 18 years of age. In fact only 7.6 percent were under 20. In fact 
many people are surprised to learn that 11.8 percent are over 40. There 
is no question that there are misimpressions about who it is that is on 
the welfare rolls.
  I think it may be even more impressive though to realize that AFDC is 
not a safety net without holes. In fact the safety net is frayed. Of 
all poor children in our society, only 40 percent of them are on AFDC. 
In fact 60 percent of the poor children in this country benefit. Forty 
percent are still out there struggling to find basic sources of income 
to put a roof over their heads.
  Why are people on welfare? Divorce or separation amounts to 45 
percent of all the people who end up, chiefly women, on welfare, and 
you have heard the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Woolsey] talk about 
her 3-year experience on welfare as a result of her divorce. It is not 
an uncommon phenomenon. Only 30 percent of the people on welfare get 
there because, in fact, they were unmarried when they had a child. 
Twelve percent, as the gentlewoman from Ohio indicated in her comments, 
are on welfare simply because the earnings of the single mother fall, 
making them eligible, giving them the additional incentive of getting 
health care for their children.
  But why do people leave the welfare rolls? Thirty-five percent 
through marriage, 21 percent because the mother earns more income and 
can afford to leave, 14 percent because of a rise in other benefits, 
chiefly food stamps, and 11 percent because children grow and leave the 
home and the mother is no longer eligible. Not enough leave the welfare 
rolls because of employment, because of the opportunity to work.
  It is important, I think, to point out that child support is chiefly 
available to upper income women. Unmarried mothers above the poverty 
level who get child support from their fathers amount to 43 percent. 
For poor women it is only 25 percent.


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