Current Events > Welfare reform in the 90s caused more anti-social behavior in children, not less

One of the large arguments behind welfare reform in switching AFDC to TANF was that 'welfare mothers' trapped their kids in a cycle of poverty and welfare dependency due to a culture of poverty. You still see this argument quite often, imo, but social progress has stymied how loudly and clearly they say it.

A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that, if anything, welfare reform caused kids to behave worse, not better, especially boys. This is despite the fact that there is some evidence that welfare reform did lower crime rates among mothers:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w25527.pdf

Welfare reform had no favorable effects on any of the youth behaviors
examined and led to decreased volunteering among girls, increases in skipping school, damaging
property, and fighting among boys, and increases in smoking and drug use among both boys and
girls, with larger effects for boys (e.g., ~6% for boys compared to 4% for girls for any substance
use). Maternal employment, supervision, and childs employment explain little of the effects.
Overall, the intergenerational effects of welfare reform on adolescent behaviors were
unfavorable, particularly for boys, and do not support longstanding arguments that limiting cash
assistance leads to responsible behavior in the next generation. As such, the favorable effects of
welfare reform for women may have come at a cost to the next generation, particularly to boys
who have been falling behind girls in high school completion for decades.

Pretty interesting stuff.
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pretty sure the internet led to rise of anti-social behavior
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How was welfare reformed in the 90s? Im not very familiar with it.
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King_Hellebuyck posted...

How was welfare reformed in the 90s? Im not very familiar with it.

bill clinton got rid of it
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King_Hellebuyck posted...

How was welfare reformed in the 90s? Im not very familiar with it.

Clinton gutted it
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Clinton did the best he could to gut the bill led by fascist Newt Gingrich. IIRC, he even shut the government down for a while. But TANF did replace AFDC and life became a lot tougher for poor folks. Young men growing up in poverty were especially hit hard. The rich get richer and the poor get prison.
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Antifar posted...

King_Hellebuyck posted...

How was welfare reformed in the 90s? Im not very familiar with it.

Clinton gutted it

I don't know how much program spending fell, because they made the funds available to use for things other than cash assistance for the poor. So basically they used a lot of funds that otherwise would have gone into poor peoples pockets to fund work support services of dubious efficacy
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My dad hates Bill Clinton cause he was an army officer and Bill changed the forced retirement age and made my dad quit the army when he turned like 50 or something

Big surprise that paying people to be unproductive leads to more people being unproductive.
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Until "poverty" is grounds for CPS removal, we'll just continue attempts at well-meaning meddling and social engineering to no effect or making things worse.

Fuparulez posted...

Big surprise that paying people to be unproductive leads to more people being unproductive.

I think you might be misreading the claims of the paper due to your personal biases here, because it is saying that taking no-strings-attached money away from moms on welfare made their kids more violent and more likely to try drugs and to just generally be less pro-social
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Balrog0 posted...

Fuparulez posted...

Big surprise that paying people to be unproductive leads to more people being unproductive.

I think you might be misreading the claims of the paper due to your personal biases here, because it is saying that taking no-strings-attached money away from moms on welfare made their kids more violent and more likely to try drugs and to just generally be less pro-social

waaat, no wai...
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tag
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I see the usual suspects have little interest in this topic. It's a big flaw of humanity that people avoid things that challenge their fundamental assumptions about how the world works/cause and effect. Not that I'm above it all the time.
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legendary_zell posted...

I see the usual suspects have little interest in this topic. It's a big flaw of humanity that people avoid things that challenge their fundamental assumptions about how the world works/cause and effect. Not that I'm above it all the time.

and to be fair, I am someone who has never bought the arguments about the value of work per se and have instead always been more concerned with the side effects of things like work requirements -- so this definitely confirms my biases

I do like to think that I engage with topics where that isn't the case, too, but idk
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Antifar posted...

King_Hellebuyck posted...

How was welfare reformed in the 90s? Im not very familiar with it.

Clinton gutted it

WTF. I hate clintons now. Guess I'm communist nazi now!
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tonicpalin posted...

WTF. I hate clintons now. Guess I'm communist nazi now!

uhhh
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Balrog0 posted...

legendary_zell posted...

I see the usual suspects have little interest in this topic. It's a big flaw of humanity that people avoid things that challenge their fundamental assumptions about how the world works/cause and effect. Not that I'm above it all the time.

and to be fair, I am someone who has never bought the arguments about the value of work per se and have instead always been more concerned with the side effects of things like work requirements -- so this definitely confirms my biases

I do like to think that I engage with topics where that isn't the case, too, but idk

The only people who talk about the value of work are peoplw who profit from the labor of others.
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Balrog0 posted...

I think you might be misreading the claims of the paper due to your personal biases here, because it is saying that taking no-strings-attached money away from moms on welfare made their kids more violent and more likely to try drugs and to just generally be less pro-social

Until we get rid of the "but they'll just buy drugs!!" mentality, well-meaning meddling and social engineering will be the de facto methodology.

So fucking what if they spend it on drugs, anyway? If you can't get your shit together with free cash, you aren't going to with foodstamps and government cheese anyway.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Balrog0 posted...

I think you might be misreading the claims of the paper due to your personal biases here, because it is saying that taking no-strings-attached money away from moms on welfare made their kids more violent and more likely to try drugs and to just generally be less pro-social

Until we get rid of the "but they'll just buy drugs!!" mentality, well-meaning meddling and social engineering will be the de facto methodology.

So fucking what if they spend it on drugs, anyway? If you can't get your shit together with free cash, you aren't going to with foodstamps and government cheese anyway.

well they also damaged more property and fought more
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HylianFox posted...

pretty sure the internet led to rise of anti-social behavior

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but only for boys?
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What exactly were the welfare changed in the 90s?
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King_Hellebuyck posted...

What exactly were the welfare changed in the 90s?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act
Even the goddamned name augurs poorly.
Essentially, it slashed spending on public assistance, imposing stricter limits on who could receive benefits as well as instituting a life-time cap on benefit payments(2 years). It, in the absolute best case, did nothing to reduce poverty(and very likely contributed to it).

Speaking about the topic more broadly(and this is anecdotal, so take it with a hearty shake of salt), but I watched a video about welfare recipients set before and after the implementation of this bill(it was titled something like, "Take It From Me"...) and there was this one lady whose situation was horrible: she had had an apartment with her abusive boyfriend/baby daddy. She left and took the kids(he wanted nothing to do with them). Her kids were taken by CPS because she was homeless, but here's the kicker: she made too much money to qualify for TANF without her kids and didn't qualify for public housing or rental assistance without them. She also couldn't move back in with her parents, because they had a rent-controlled apartment, but wouldn't qualify for benefits if they had a non-dependent living with them. She couldn't get her kids back without a stable housing arrangement.
The foster mom did let her see them, so they actually taped the end of one such visit, featuring the older of her two sons screaming for his mom as the foster mom left with him. I legit cried. It was one of the most awful things I've ever seen. Any system that creates situations like that is broken.

tl;dr
attempts at well-meaning meddling and social engineering to no effect or making things worse

In the end, though, the kids are probably much better off in foster care.

Questionmarktarius posted...

tl;dr
attempts at well-meaning meddling and social engineering to no effect or making things worse

In the end, though, the kids are probably much better off in foster care.

If you assume the foster care system is well designed and managed.

Kinda weird to hold one kind of social engineering to a different standard than another, though.
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Balrog0 posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

tl;dr
attempts at well-meaning meddling and social engineering to no effect or making things worse

In the end, though, the kids are probably much better off in foster care.

If you assume the foster care system is well designed and managed.

Kinda weird to hold one kind of social engineering to a different standard than another, though.

Well, we don't have orphanages anymore.

Can't feed them don't breed them
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Yet another reason to adopt UBI.
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This is why we need abortion. Doesn't help that so many people consider single parents used goods
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This is why we need abortion. Doesn't help that so many people consider single parents used goods
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The family as an institution has been decimated. Welfare has had a major role in this. It goes all the way back to the welfare programs of the 1960s.

Just listen to famous economist Thomas Sowell talk about this, he can explain it far better than I can

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-FqtAOSB8" data-time="
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Europe_Rebirth posted...

The family as an institution has been decimated. Welfare has had a major role in this. It goes all the way back to the welfare programs of the 1960s.

Just listen to famous economist Thomas Sowell talk about this, he can explain it far better than I can

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-FqtAOSB8" data-time="

Really good video. Paying single women to have kids they cant afford presents a perverse incentive. Liberals understand that general concept when they want to understand it, like when they call for carbon taxes and solar subsidies.
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Well who wanted to be raised on welfare?

Sounds like we need a better welfare system
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Europe_Rebirth posted...

The family as an institution has been decimated. Welfare has had a major role in this. It goes all the way back to the welfare programs of the 1960s.

Just listen to famous economist Thomas Sowell talk about this, he can explain it far better than I can

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-FqtAOSB8" data-time="

You get a sticker.

HylianFox posted...

pretty sure the internet led to rise of anti-social behavior

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Truly born in the wrong generation

tennisdude818 posted...

Really good video. Paying single women to have kids they cant afford presents a perverse incentive. Liberals understand that general concept when they want to understand it, like when they call for carbon taxes and solar subsidies.

I understand the general concept pretty well, it's the application to child bearing that I find tenuous.
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Anyway, I don't get it, why is a topic about how reducing welfare benefits made children behave more poorly turning into a bromide against welfare benefits? Seems to be drawing the opposite conclusion you'd expect from the argument presented
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Is that just for children who had to endure the before and after switch or for all children?

I'd read it but I read really slow so a 63 page study would take me probably 4 hours to read.
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Balrog0 posted...

Anyway, I don't get it, why is a topic about how reducing welfare benefits made children behave more poorly turning into a bromide against welfare benefits? Seems to be drawing the opposite conclusion you'd expect from the argument presented

Why change your view when new facts are presented when you can just spout horseshit and pretend its credible?
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fenderbender321 posted...

Is that just for children who had to endure the before and after switch or for all children?

I'd read it but I read really slow so a 63 page study would take me probably 4 hours to read.

It's all kids. They separate kids who are more likely to participate in welfare from kids who aren't based on the demographics of their parents, though, not based on actual data of welfare use (due to the problems associated with linking individuals to that kind of data, I assume). They discuss some of the potential problems with these under the section labeled "Assessing validity of DDD "
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Balrog0 posted...

fenderbender321 posted...

Is that just for children who had to endure the before and after switch or for all children?

I'd read it but I read really slow so a 63 page study would take me probably 4 hours to read.

It's all kids. They separate kids who are more likely to participate in welfare from kids who aren't based on the demographics of their parents, though, not based on actual data of welfare use (due to the problems associated with linking individuals to that kind of data, I assume). They discuss some of the potential problems with these under the section labeled "Assessing validity of DDD "

You make a good point
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