Leaving Welfare: Independence or Continued Vulnerability?.

Data from two semi-structured interviews gathered approximately six months apart from seven women who were receiving cash welfare benefits at the time of the first interview and were not receiving benefits at the second interview were used to analyze the experiences of leaving welfare. Emergent themes about the post-welfare experience are: (1) the low wages and lack of advancement opportunities in jobs, (2) confusion related to program administration, (3) the continued reliance on income support programs and kin, and (4) the banking of cash benefits under the five-year time limit as a new safety net. Moving welfare recipients off welfare rolls and into paid employment is one of the principal objectives of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) signed into law by President Clinton on August 22, 1996. Yet little is known about what happens to families once they leave the welfare system. To date, caseload figures are the most commonly cited measures of the success of welfare reform. Between January 1993 and September 1998, the number of welfare recipients in the U.S. declined by 44 percent (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services 1999). In that same period, which parallels roughly the initiation of Iowa's Family Investment Program (FIP), containing many of the same provisions as PRWORA (Jensen and Fletcher 1997), the Iowa rolls declined by 38 percent. Often lost in the statistics are the experiences of individuals. The barriers that former recipients confront and the strategies they develop to overcome them provide insight into what it means to lose cash assistanc e and also provide data to inform policy makers at the national, state, and local levels. This article examines the experiences of seven Iowa women who moved off welfare (FIP) between October 1997 and March 1998. Data are drawn from two semi-structured interviews with each woman. The first section contains a review of recent research on welfare exits. The second describes Iowa's welfare policies. The third section of the paper delineates methods used in the study. Fourth, the paper identifies themes of women's vulnerability and survival strategies as they negotiate the new welfare environment. The concluding fifth section suggests incremental policies that would support women's long-term independence and transition off welfare. LEAVING WELFARE AND LIFE AFTER WELFARE: THE RESEARCH Evidence on the economic fate of families who have left the welfare rolls since the implementation of the federal welfare reforms is beginning to appear. Cancian, Haveman, Kaplan, Meyer, and Wolfe (1999) summarize the existing literature on welfare leavers, including early studies of the economic status of women who left welfare (e.g., Bane and Ellwood 1983; Gritz and MacCurdy 1991; Burtless 1995; Cheng 1995; Harris 1996; Pavetti and Acs 1997), recent analyses of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (e.g., Meyer and Cancian 1998; Cancian and Meyer 1998; Sandefur and Cook 1998), and studies that use administrative data (Cancian, Haveman, Kaplan, and Wolfe 1998; Cancian et al. 1999; and Tweedie, Reichart, and O'Connor 1999). Cancian and her colleagues (1999) conclude that, "In spite of the differences in approach and reliability, it is possible roughly to summarize findings regarding several important post-welfare economic effects across studies" (23). First, about two-thirds of welfare leavers receive so me type of welfare benefit (e.g., food stamps, Medicaid) in the first year after exiting cash assistance. Second, about two-thirds of the women work after exiting welfare, but most of them do not work full time all year. Third, although the wage rates of leavers differ across states, they generally lie in the range of $6.50 to $7.50 per hour and increase with time. Yet wages rarely offer welfare leavers enough to support their families above poverty; more than 50 percent of those exiting welfare live in poverty. …