As on the Titanic , the United States is filled with locked gates, segregated decks and policies that assure that women and children will be first - not first to be saved, but first to fall into the abyss that is poverty. Surely the same can be said, with perhaps even more truth, of women and children in poor and developing countries around the world. Three years after the U.S. Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, welfare reform legislation in August 1996, welfare rolls have fallen off more dramatically than anyone expected. Studies have shown that 40 percent of those receiving welfare in 1996 have left the welfare rolls, and that at least half of those have found work.4 Critics of welfare reform, however, make a distinction between pushing people off welfare and moving people out of poverty. They point out that the statistics on people now working who were once on welfare do not reveal at what kinds of jobs and what kinds of wages.
Time limits imposed by reform are arbitrary and counterproductive.
The welfare clock will run out before the job supply catches up. One study found that two out of three former recipients had lower incomes than before they left welfare. Women identify these unmet needs as major barriers to finding and keeping work. While such programs have eased the transition for women and families in some communities, they have touched a minority of affected families. And the hardest part lies ahead.