Welcome to Welfare Utopia
Welfare Utopia
Oregon, one of the whitest states in the union, also has one of the most generous safety nets. Is that a coincidence or something more troubling?
Alana SemuelsMay 31, 2016
SALEM, Oregon—In much of the country, poor people are finding that there are fewer and fewer government benefits available to help them stay afloat. But here in this progressive corner of the Northwest, the poor can access an extensive system of state-sponsored supports and services.
In Oregon, a higher share of poor families is on welfare (now called TANF, or Temporary Aid to Needy Families) than in most states. The state has some of the highest food-stamp uptake in the country. It subsidizes childcare for working parents, asking the poorest of them to contribute as little as $27 a month. It helps people get off of welfare by linking them to employment and paying their wages for up to six months, and then allows them to continue to receive food stamps as they transition to higher wages. Families can be on welfare for up to 60 months, as opposed to 24 months in many other states, and once the parents are cut off due to time limits, their children can still continue to receive aid.
“I think there’s a certain culture here in Oregon: We think there’s a role for government in the lives of working people,” former governor Ted Kulongoski, who went on food stamps when he was in office to raise awareness for the program, told me.
When Bill Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it” in 1996 and passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (commonly known as welfare reform), many states took the opportunity to gut their safety nets. Oregon, on the other hand, has tried to patch the holes. When, during the recession, the number of people seeking welfare skyrocketed, the state loosened some work requirements and allowed more people to receive cash assistance. The state nearly doubled its welfare caseload over the past decade, while other states have been drawing down the number of families that can receive benefits by putting more and more barriers in place.
That Oregon still maintains a safety net while other states have eradicated theirs is testament to the state’s progressivism. But the example of Oregon also highlights a troubling aspect of federal policy that turns social programs over to the states. Now that states have so much discretion, a few miles can make a big difference in how a poor person is helped by the government. Across the border, in Idaho, poor people are not as lucky.
What makes a state generous, like Oregon, or punitive, like Arkansas, which I visited earlier this year? Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording, and Sanford F. Schram, the authors of the book Disciplining the Poor, point to a number of things, including which party controls the state legislature and the benefit-to-wage ratio in the state (basically, the higher wages are relative to benefits, the less likely states are to make cuts). And Oregon, a blue state with a strong historyof labor unions and policies that have protected workers, such as a high minimum wage, definitely fits that description. The state has gotten more progressive over time; it has voted Democratic in all presidential elections since 1988, both of its senators are Democrats, as are four out of five of its representatives.
“I think what you see in other states is you see this kind of partisan, ‘we are going to take it out on poor people,’ philosophy. You just haven't seen that here,” Tina Kotek, a Democrat who is currently the Speaker of the House in Oregon, told me.
But Soss and his co-authors have also found a more troubling explanation for the differences between Oregon’s strong safety net and those in other states. Their research shows that states with a higher percentage of minorities on the welfare rolls are more likely to be punitive, implementing policies that reduce welfare caseloads, such as strict time limits on TANF; family caps that deny benefits to additional children; and benefits disqualification for small violations, like a child’s poor school performance. By contrast, states with poor populations that are predominately white are more likely to be generous, adopting the federal government’s five-year lifetime limit, waving work requirements if participants have young children, and continuing to give benefits to children even if the parents reach the time limits.
The demographics of Oregon, where the population is 86.6 percent white, may help explain why the state’s safety net is so strong. In 1995, the year before welfare reform passed, 79 percent of families receiving welfare were white in Oregon. In Arkansas, by contrast, which is 80 percent white, 55 percent of families receiving welfare in 1995 were black and 44 percent were white. People, it seems, are much less giving when it comes to helping out people who don’t look like them.
The case of Oregon highlights what can happen when federal programs are turned over to the states: They help some Americans more than others, depending on where people live, and, often, depending on the color of their skin.
* * *
Oregon didn’t always have such an extensive safety net. In the first few years after welfare reform, the state, like many others, had incentives to get people off the benefit rolls, and that was what it did, Mark Edwards, a sociologist at Oregon State University, told me. Then, in 1999, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a study showing that 12.6 percent of households in Oregon were food insecure, meaning they had uncertain access to adequate food, which made Oregon the “hungriest” state in the nation.
Chagrined, the state started to enact policies to increase access to food and food stamps. The state had convened a Hunger Task Force in 1989 that met frequently to draw together advocacy groups, professors, and legislators to address issues of hunger, and the group figured out ways to tweak the federal SNAP program to make it more flexible, Edwards said.
“There was a big shift to, ‘We need to have more of a service mentality, we should get everyone on SNAP who is eligible, let’s pull out all the stops to do that,’” Edwards told me.
This set the stage for Oregonian advocacy groups and legislators to work together on issues that affected the poor. The state’s governors constantly spoke about hunger, including Governor Kulongoski’s 2007 publicity effort of putting himself on food stamps. Kulongoski asked people to donate food if they came to the inaugural ball for his second term and created a Hunger Awareness Week with the business community. By 2012, 94 percent of those eligible for food stamps received the benefit in Oregon, according to the USDA.
The golden pioneer statue at Oregon’s state capital (Don Ryan / AP)
This environment created a place where advocates had the ear of the government, and could try and convince them to expand the safety net beyond food stamps.
“Oregon is perceived as a place of tremendously high collaboration between nonprofit groups and the state,” Edwards said.
Food stamps are just one of the benefits available to the poor in Oregon. If their income is low enough, they can receive TANF, which, for a single mother with two children, amounts to $506 a month. (In Arkansas, families can receive up to $204 a month.) While they look for a job on TANF, they receive money for childcare and transportation, and, if they find a job, they can receive subsidized childcare from the state, depending on their income. They also receive state subsidized health care. In addition, the state puts people who are on TANF through job readiness classes, and, when those people are prepared for the workforce, the state links them with temporary employment in a program called Jobs PLUS. For six months, participants receive minimum wage from their employers, who are compensated by the state (employers can pay more than minimum wage if they want).
Oregon has been successful at getting people to sign up for these other benefits because of its anti-hunger outreach efforts. Those coming into the Department of Human Services office to ask about food stamps, having heard about them through the state’s outreach efforts, get on other programs, too, Kim Fredlund, the director of self-sufficiency programs for the Oregon Department of Human Services, told me. They fill out one application, and then find out if they qualify for other programs, like TANF, employment-related daycare, and health care.
Rather than trying to discourage people from signing up for government benefits, case workers try to get them into programs that can help them find a job or get the psychological or financial help they need, Brittany Miller, a caseworker, said.
“We're very resourceful in finding ways to make it work,” she said.
Shelby Bivans went into her local DHS office to apply for food stamps in 2014, after she’d lost her job of 14 years as a legal assistant. Her husband had gotten laid off three years before, and they had no savings by the time she was laid off, so they sold everything—TVs, furniture, appliances. Bivans, who is white, didn’t want to get on welfare—she had a perception of it as a program for homeless people. But then her car was repossessed, and she had nothing left.
When she went to apply for food stamps, a case worker convinced her to apply for welfare, too. The benefits allowed her to stay in her home, and the state put her in a 40-hour-a-week program that helped her update her resume and start applying for jobs. She soon moved into a job, subsidized by the state through a program called Jobs PLUS, at a property-management firm, which got her on a regular schedule. With help from state workers who helped her get ready to re-join the workforce, that temporary job eventually turned into a full-time job. Bivans rapidly worked her way up in the organization, and now makes $15.25 an hour, 50 percent more than her starting wage.
Shelby Bivans in her new workplace (Alana Semuels / The Atlantic)
The subsidized-employment program in Oregon, Jobs PLUS, has bipartisan support because it is focused on getting people work experience, something Oregon Republicans and Democrats both see as a good thing. “I believe that if you give a person a job, that’s the best social program you can come up with,” Kulongoski told me.
Welfare Utopia
Oregon, one of the whitest states in the union, also has one of the most generous safety nets. Is that a coincidence or something more troubling?
Alana SemuelsMay 31, 2016
SALEM, Oregon—In much of the country, poor people are finding that there are fewer and fewer government benefits available to help them stay afloat. But here in this progressive corner of the Northwest, the poor can access an extensive system of state-sponsored supports and services.
In Oregon, a higher share of poor families is on welfare (now called TANF, or Temporary Aid to Needy Families) than in most states. The state has some of the highest food-stamp uptake in the country. It subsidizes childcare for working parents, asking the poorest of them to contribute as little as $27 a month. It helps people get off of welfare by linking them to employment and paying their wages for up to six months, and then allows them to continue to receive food stamps as they transition to higher wages. Families can be on welfare for up to 60 months, as opposed to 24 months in many other states, and once the parents are cut off due to time limits, their children can still continue to receive aid.
“I think there’s a certain culture here in Oregon: We think there’s a role for government in the lives of working people,” former governor Ted Kulongoski, who went on food stamps when he was in office to raise awareness for the program, told me.
When Bill Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it” in 1996 and passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (commonly known as welfare reform), many states took the opportunity to gut their safety nets. Oregon, on the other hand, has tried to patch the holes. When, during the recession, the number of people seeking welfare skyrocketed, the state loosened some work requirements and allowed more people to receive cash assistance. The state nearly doubled its welfare caseload over the past decade, while other states have been drawing down the number of families that can receive benefits by putting more and more barriers in place.
That Oregon still maintains a safety net while other states have eradicated theirs is testament to the state’s progressivism. But the example of Oregon also highlights a troubling aspect of federal policy that turns social programs over to the states. Now that states have so much discretion, a few miles can make a big difference in how a poor person is helped by the government. Across the border, in Idaho, poor people are not as lucky.
What makes a state generous, like Oregon, or punitive, like Arkansas, which I visited earlier this year? Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording, and Sanford F. Schram, the authors of the book Disciplining the Poor, point to a number of things, including which party controls the state legislature and the benefit-to-wage ratio in the state (basically, the higher wages are relative to benefits, the less likely states are to make cuts). And Oregon, a blue state with a strong historyof labor unions and policies that have protected workers, such as a high minimum wage, definitely fits that description. The state has gotten more progressive over time; it has voted Democratic in all presidential elections since 1988, both of its senators are Democrats, as are four out of five of its representatives.
“I think what you see in other states is you see this kind of partisan, ‘we are going to take it out on poor people,’ philosophy. You just haven't seen that here,” Tina Kotek, a Democrat who is currently the Speaker of the House in Oregon, told me.
But Soss and his co-authors have also found a more troubling explanation for the differences between Oregon’s strong safety net and those in other states. Their research shows that states with a higher percentage of minorities on the welfare rolls are more likely to be punitive, implementing policies that reduce welfare caseloads, such as strict time limits on TANF; family caps that deny benefits to additional children; and benefits disqualification for small violations, like a child’s poor school performance. By contrast, states with poor populations that are predominately white are more likely to be generous, adopting the federal government’s five-year lifetime limit, waving work requirements if participants have young children, and continuing to give benefits to children even if the parents reach the time limits.
The demographics of Oregon, where the population is 86.6 percent white, may help explain why the state’s safety net is so strong. In 1995, the year before welfare reform passed, 79 percent of families receiving welfare were white in Oregon. In Arkansas, by contrast, which is 80 percent white, 55 percent of families receiving welfare in 1995 were black and 44 percent were white. People, it seems, are much less giving when it comes to helping out people who don’t look like them.
The case of Oregon highlights what can happen when federal programs are turned over to the states: They help some Americans more than others, depending on where people live, and, often, depending on the color of their skin.
* * *
Oregon didn’t always have such an extensive safety net. In the first few years after welfare reform, the state, like many others, had incentives to get people off the benefit rolls, and that was what it did, Mark Edwards, a sociologist at Oregon State University, told me. Then, in 1999, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a study showing that 12.6 percent of households in Oregon were food insecure, meaning they had uncertain access to adequate food, which made Oregon the “hungriest” state in the nation.
Chagrined, the state started to enact policies to increase access to food and food stamps. The state had convened a Hunger Task Force in 1989 that met frequently to draw together advocacy groups, professors, and legislators to address issues of hunger, and the group figured out ways to tweak the federal SNAP program to make it more flexible, Edwards said.
“There was a big shift to, ‘We need to have more of a service mentality, we should get everyone on SNAP who is eligible, let’s pull out all the stops to do that,’” Edwards told me.
This set the stage for Oregonian advocacy groups and legislators to work together on issues that affected the poor. The state’s governors constantly spoke about hunger, including Governor Kulongoski’s 2007 publicity effort of putting himself on food stamps. Kulongoski asked people to donate food if they came to the inaugural ball for his second term and created a Hunger Awareness Week with the business community. By 2012, 94 percent of those eligible for food stamps received the benefit in Oregon, according to the USDA.
The golden pioneer statue at Oregon’s state capital (Don Ryan / AP)
This environment created a place where advocates had the ear of the government, and could try and convince them to expand the safety net beyond food stamps.
“Oregon is perceived as a place of tremendously high collaboration between nonprofit groups and the state,” Edwards said.
Food stamps are just one of the benefits available to the poor in Oregon. If their income is low enough, they can receive TANF, which, for a single mother with two children, amounts to $506 a month. (In Arkansas, families can receive up to $204 a month.) While they look for a job on TANF, they receive money for childcare and transportation, and, if they find a job, they can receive subsidized childcare from the state, depending on their income. They also receive state subsidized health care. In addition, the state puts people who are on TANF through job readiness classes, and, when those people are prepared for the workforce, the state links them with temporary employment in a program called Jobs PLUS. For six months, participants receive minimum wage from their employers, who are compensated by the state (employers can pay more than minimum wage if they want).
Oregon has been successful at getting people to sign up for these other benefits because of its anti-hunger outreach efforts. Those coming into the Department of Human Services office to ask about food stamps, having heard about them through the state’s outreach efforts, get on other programs, too, Kim Fredlund, the director of self-sufficiency programs for the Oregon Department of Human Services, told me. They fill out one application, and then find out if they qualify for other programs, like TANF, employment-related daycare, and health care.
Rather than trying to discourage people from signing up for government benefits, case workers try to get them into programs that can help them find a job or get the psychological or financial help they need, Brittany Miller, a caseworker, said.
“We're very resourceful in finding ways to make it work,” she said.
Shelby Bivans went into her local DHS office to apply for food stamps in 2014, after she’d lost her job of 14 years as a legal assistant. Her husband had gotten laid off three years before, and they had no savings by the time she was laid off, so they sold everything—TVs, furniture, appliances. Bivans, who is white, didn’t want to get on welfare—she had a perception of it as a program for homeless people. But then her car was repossessed, and she had nothing left.
When she went to apply for food stamps, a case worker convinced her to apply for welfare, too. The benefits allowed her to stay in her home, and the state put her in a 40-hour-a-week program that helped her update her resume and start applying for jobs. She soon moved into a job, subsidized by the state through a program called Jobs PLUS, at a property-management firm, which got her on a regular schedule. With help from state workers who helped her get ready to re-join the workforce, that temporary job eventually turned into a full-time job. Bivans rapidly worked her way up in the organization, and now makes $15.25 an hour, 50 percent more than her starting wage.
Shelby Bivans in her new workplace (Alana Semuels / The Atlantic)
The subsidized-employment program in Oregon, Jobs PLUS, has bipartisan support because it is focused on getting people work experience, something Oregon Republicans and Democrats both see as a good thing. “I believe that if you give a person a job, that’s the best social program you can come up with,” Kulongoski told me.