Welfare Dependence

WELFARE PAYMENTS are transfers made by government agencies to people eligible to receive them, either as part of universal provision or through means-tested schemes. When the welfare payments act to deter recipients from seeking work or to alleviate the need for the payment, then this is welfare dependence—the individual prefers or feels no option but to rely on the welfare payment when other options might be possible. This is a subject that has aroused a great deal of controversy, as many people, for reasons of either political ideology or expediency in reducing government payments, have claimed that welfare dependence is a very significant problem and that payments should be withheld or canceled altogether.

As an American presidential candidate, for example, Ronald Reagan launched a campaign against “welfare queens” who supposedly defrauded the system to receive multiple streams of income and were, consequently wealthy enough to drive around in high-per-formance cars and avoid all forms of work. No credible evidence has ever been produced to support Reagan's claim that such people existed. Indeed, accurate statistics and understanding of the issue are difficult to obtain because of the political controversy, but those data that do exist indicate a complex relationship among welfare, dependence, and desire to work.

It is more likely, for example, that those who receive welfare payments do so only temporarily and in response to comparatively short-term need. The quite widely held idea that young women deliberately have children out of wedlock so that they can obtain welfare payments, governmental housing, and similar benefits is also unsupported by any real evidence. In these cases, it is frequently ideological conviction that drives many people to believe that others are out to cheat the system because of indolence and mendacity and, indeed, to cheat them out of their tax payments. It is women, especially unmarried mothers, and foreign migrants who are most commonly accused of behaving in this way and, again, the evidence to support these contentious claims on a wide scale is difficult to find.

There are examples of welfare benefits being set at a very high level, more than can easily be matched by available income. However, these benefits are customarily associated with conditions such as serious illness or incapacity that necessitate considerable levels of expense and which, anecdotal evidence notwithstanding, are very difficult to forge on a long-term basis. In a number of Western countries, women are hampered from entering or reentering the active workforce because of the very high cost of childcare and only sporadic provision of low-cost governmental alternatives. Similarly, asylum seekers and migrant workers are forced to rely on welfare payments in some countries because the law forbids them to work.

In recent years, more sophisticated approaches to welfare payments have enabled governments more effectively to cause people to return to work, through tax credits, child support programs, and encouraging labor market flexibility in terms of job-sharing, working at home, and telecommuting.