[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 67 (Tuesday, May 14, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5014-S5016]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             ADVISORY BOARD ON WELFARE INDICATORS APPOINTED

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, just last week, on May 7, the 
House of Representatives appointed its four members of the Advisory 
Board on Welfare

[[Page S5015]]

Indicators, as provided by the Welfare Indicators Act of 1994, 
incorporated in the Social Security Act amendments of that year. The 
measure was introduced on the first day of the 103d Congress, January 
31, 1993, the first legislative day that is, and signed just at the end 
of that Congress. In a floor statement at the time of introduction, I 
noted that the measure was directly modeled on the Employment Act of 
1946. This was a statement of a large national goal, accompanied by 
provision for an annual assessment of progress toward that goal. 
Congress declared it to be the continuing policy and responsibility of 
the Federal Government to promote maximum employment, production, and 
purchasing power. Words at first, but great consequences followed in 
our ability to measure and understand these purposes. I stated on the 
floor:

       Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Welfare 
     Dependency Act of 1993. The purpose of the bill, which is 
     directly modeled on the Employment Act of 1946, is to declare 
     it the policy and the responsibility of the Federal 
     Government to strengthen families and promote their self-
     sufficiency. To this end, the bill directs the Secretary of 
     Health and Human Services to conduct a study to determine 
     which statistics, if collected and analyzed on a regular 
     basis, would be most useful in tracking and predicting 
     welfare dependency. Within 2 years, the Secretary would 
     report the conclusions to Congress, and, a year later, would 
     submit a first report on dependency. Thereafter, reports 
     would be submitted annually. These reports would include 
     annual numerical goals for recipients and expenditures within 
     each public welfare program. For the interim, the bill 
     establishes a goal of reducing dependency to 10 percent of 
     families with children.
       For the first time in American history the largest 
     proportion of persons in poverty are to be found among 
     children, not among adults or among the aged. This is new. 
     When we first began to notice this trend in the 1960's, it 
     seemed that we had discovered something uniquely American. 
     Then we began to get the returns of the Luxembourg Income 
     Survey. Children, it seems, are poorer than adults in all 
     manner of places: Australia, Canada, Germany, England, as 
     well as the United States. For too long we have been trying 
     to measure a postindustrial phenomenon--dependency--with 
     statistics designed to track industrial-era phenomena.
       We used to know something about how to predict welfare 
     dependency. In the early 1960's when I was Assistant 
     Secretary in the Department of Labor for Policy, Planning, 
     and Research, we found that there was an extraordinary 
     correlation between male unemployment and new welfare cases 
     from the period starting in 1946 up to about 1958-59. Then 
     the correlation weakened, until finally in 1963 the lines 
     crossed and the relationship became negative--the lower the 
     unemployment rate, the higher the number of AFDC cases. Now, 
     even during prosperous periods for our Nation, a shockingly 
     high percentage of our children are dependent on public 
     support.
       We do have some data on the magnitude of this problem, if 
     not its origins. Back in the 1960's the Office of Economic 
     Opportunity had the good sense to put up money for a 
     longitudinal study of families at the Institute for Social 
     Research at the University of Michigan. The researchers 
     computed the incidence of welfare dependency among children 
     born in the late 1960's. The findings are dismaying. Almost 
     one quarter--22.1 percent --of these children were dependent 
     on AFDC for at least 1 year before reaching their 18th 
     birthday. That's 72.3 percent of black and 15.7 percent of 
     nonblack children.
       But these findings on the extent of the problem tell us 
     little about what causes it or how to address it. Certainly 
     some part of this explosion in welfare dependency can be 
     attributed to changes in family structure. Three decades ago 
     there was nothing notably amiss with the traditional family. 
     American divorce rates were high, but stabilizing. The 
     traditional family of parents with children was the norm. As 
     recently as 1970, 40 percent of the Nation's households were 
     made up of a married couple with one or more children. The 
     proportion dropped to 31 percent in the next decade. It is 
     now around a quarter of all families. Simultaneously, the 
     proportion of families headed by a single mother has 
     exploded. In 1970, 11.5 percent of all families with children 
     were headed by a single mother. In 1980, 19.4 percent. In 
     1990, 24.2 percent. Now a quarter of all live births are out 
     of wedlock.
       Our data collection needs to become more systematic and 
     institutionalized. As we did earlier in this century for the 
     problem of unemployment when we enacted the Employment Act of 
     1946, we need to define welfare dependency as a national 
     problem and to begin to measure, analyze, and address it. 
     Since 1946 unemployment has hardly disappeared but neither is 
     it ignored, much less denied. I am introducing this bill on 
     the first day of the new Congress because I believe that its 
     passage would represent one of the most important moments 
     in social welfare policy since Aid to Families with 
     Dependent Children was enacted as part of the Social 
     Security Act of 1935.

  It might be noted here that in 1946 it was commonly assumed that with 
the war over, the Depression of the 1930's would resume. Western 
society had been stunned by that catastrophic and protracted economic 
crisis, a crisis which was interrupted by world war, but which was 
widely thought to be systemic, and which would accordingly resume. No 
one seemed to know how to make a modern industrial economy work. Some 
economists had ideas about this, but these were not widely subscribed 
to. A more common view was that industrial democracies were inherently 
unstable and would necessarily disappear. It helps in this time of vast 
unease associated with the breakdown of family structure to recollect 
with some tranquillity that capitalism was deemed doomed not a half 
century ago.
  Here are the specifics for the statute:

       (a) Congressional Policy.--The Congress hereby declares 
     that--(1) it is the policy and responsibility of the Federal 
     Government to reduce the rate at which and the degree to 
     which families depend on income from welfare programs and the 
     duration of welfare receipt, consistent with other essential 
     national goals; (2) it is the policy of the United States to 
     strengthen families, to ensure that children grow up in 
     families that are economically self-sufficient and that the 
     life prospects of children are improved, and to underscore 
     the responsibility of parents to support their children; (3) 
     the Federal Government should help welfare recipients as well 
     as individuals at risk of welfare receipt to improve their 
     education and job skills, to obtain child care and other 
     necessary support services, and to take such other steps as 
     may be necessary to assist them to become financially 
     independent; and (4) it is the purpose of this section to 
     provide the public with generally accepted measures of 
     welfare receipt so that it can track such receipt over time 
     and determine whether progress is being made in reducing the 
     rate at which and, to the extent feasible, the degree to 
     which, families depend on income from welfare programs and 
     the duration of welfare receipt.
       (b) Development of Welfare Indicators and Predictors.--The 
     Secretary of Health and Human Services (in this section 
     referred to as the ``Secretary'') in consultation with the 
     Secretary of Agriculture shall--(1) develop--(A) indicators 
     of the rate at which and, to the extent feasible, the degree 
     to which, families depend on income from welfare programs and 
     the duration of welfare receipt; and (B) predictors of 
     welfare receipt; (2) assess the data needed to report 
     annually on the indicators and predictors, including the 
     ability of existing data collection efforts to provide such 
     data and any additional data collection needs . . . [The 
     Welfare Indicators Act of 1994, as incorporated in the Social 
     Security Act Amendments of 1994, P.L. 103-432].

  No notice was taken of the measure at the time of enactment, and so 
it is not inappropriate to do so now that the appointments to the 
Advisory Board are completed. An interim report is due from the 
Secretary by next October 31, 2 years from enactment, as provided in 
the statute, with a regular annual report to be prepared thereafter. I 
would note that the measure was a long time coming; indeed, that we 
seemed somehow reluctant to learn too much about this subject. In March 
1991, the Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy of the 
Senate Committee on Finance held hearings at which a number of the 
Nation's most respected social scientists, including several experts 
who are now members of the Advisory Board, commented on the subject of 
``Welfare Dependency.'' Many urged the need for a continuing Federal 
assessment of this matter, as baffling in our time as was the issue of 
unemployment a half century ago. That eminent scholar, Douglas J. 
Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute, noted that ``There used 
to be a National Center for Social Statistics * * * . It was a Federal 
agency and had a client. Its client was the * * * Social and 
Rehabilitative Service.'' But when that program was reorganized there 
was no client to support the Center and it simply faded away. Now, 
however, we have the responsibility firmly lodged with the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services. We can expect diligent attention from the 
distinguished incumbent, Donna Shalala, and from her ingenious, 
industrious and committed associate, Wendell Primus, Deputy Assistant 
Secretary for Human Service Policy.
  The Secretary will receive, I cannot doubt, great good counsel from 
this Advisory Board, now finally constituted. Its distinguished members 
are as follows:
  Appointed by the Senate majority leader are Jo Anne B. Barnhart, 
political director, National Republican Senatorial Committee; Martin H. 
Gerry,

[[Page S5016]]

director of the Center for Study of Family, Neighborhood, and Community 
Policy, University of Kansas; Gerald H. Miller, Director, Michigan 
Department of Social Services.
  Appointed by the Senate minority leader is Paul E. Barton, director 
of the Policy Information Center, Educational Testing Service.
  Appointed by the President are Judith M. Gueron, president, Manpower 
Demonstration Research Corporation; Kristin A. Moore, executive 
director of Child Trends, Inc.; Joan M. Reeves, Commissioner, 
Department of Human Services, city of Philadelphia; Gary J. Stangler, 
Director, Missouri Department of Social Services.
  Appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives are Eloise 
Anderson, Director, California Department of Social Services; Wade F. 
Horn, director, National Fatherhood Initiative; Marvin H. Costers, 
resident scholar and director of Economic Policy Studies, American 
Enterprise Institute.
  Appointed by the minority leader, House of Representatives is Robert 
Greenstein, executive director, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
  I am sure the Senate will join me in congratulating the board members 
and in expressing our expectation that the first welfare dependency 
report, due next fall, will mark the onset of a new age of information 
in this troubled area of social policy. 

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