Looking at benefits from the recipient perspective suggests that they often do not vary enough to cover differences in housing costs. On the other hand, welfare eligibility standards and requirements often vary widely and are complicated and obscure reducing the likelihood that poor families will chance interstate moves. Welfare reform intensifies this situation. States are setting different work requirements and time limits. Twenty-seven states are requiring work sooner than two years, and 21 states have time limits less than five years.
Research increasingly indicates that welfare migration is virtually non-existent.
While welfare migration does not make sense to recipients, state policymakers make policy as if it did. While not the only rationale for the 1996 reforms, the new legislation enables states to act on their fears about welfare migration. Yet this means that states are likely to squander the latitude given them by the reform legislation. Welfare reform therefore may deconstruct itself with states using their discretion to not to innovate but to engage in pack like behavior of trying to be as conservative as everyone else and not become a welfare magnet. Ironically, this creates a situation where states may end up making the ghost of welfare migration come alive.