This Annual Report on Welfare Indicators, October 1998 is the second of these annual reports. Welfare dependence, like poverty, is a continuum, with variations in degree and in duration. Families may be more or less dependent if larger or smaller shares of their total resources are derived from welfare programs. The amount of time over which a family depends on welfare might also be considered in assessing their degree of dependency.
Welfare dependence is the proportion of all families who are dependent on welfare.
The proposed definition, unfortunately, cannot be measured precisely at this time with currently available data. Most importantly, current data do not distinguish between cash benefits where work is required and cash benefits that are paid without work. Thus it was not possible to construct one single indicator of dependence. Instead this report includes a number of indicators addressing welfare recipiency, dependence, and labor force attachment. This is approximately the same rate as the previous two years.