‘Welfare reform’ — its toll on the working class

Under the blows of the slow-burning depression signaled by the 2001 and 2008-09 recessions, the four million single mothers without jobs in 2014 (by government figures) was higher than the number unemployed when the Clinton- Gingrich so-called “workfare” reform was adopted. What’s more, the percentage of women counted by the government as part of the labor force has been pushed down to 56.6 percent, the lowest since 1988.

Yet the proportion of families below the poverty line receiving benefits plunged from nearly 70 percent to 23 percent.

In addition, a third of state governments have adopted caps of lower than five years (e.g., two years in Kansas, only one in Arizona), and the buying power of benefits has been cut by at least a third, since the “reform” has no cost-of-living adjustment in states’ block grants, which haven’t increased since 1997!