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What Works in Welfare Reform
| Article
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14015 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1995 |
4,523 Words |
| Author
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Patrick Fagan
Patrick Fagan is Fitzgerald Fellow for family and culture at
the Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C. He is a former inner-
city schoolteacher and was a marriage, family, and child
therapist and community organizer. |
Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, one of the nation's most incisive critics and an expert on the present welfare system, has recently pointed out that the welfare state, after remaining at low levels through the 1950s and '60s, has undergone explosive growth since the onset of the War on Poverty. In inflation-adjusted terms, our spending has grown in every year except one since the midsixties. Rector says that in constant dollars, federal, state, and local governments now spend nine times as much on welfare as in 1964, when the War on Poverty was beginning, and welfare spending per capita in constant dollars is seven times as high as in 1964. After adjusting for inflation, welfare spending per capita today is five times as high as during the Great Depression, when a quarter of the work force was unemployed.
Rector goes on to declare that welfare spending is absorbing an ever-greater share of the national economy. In 1964, welfare spending equaled 1.23 percent of the gross domestic product. By 1993, it had risen to 5.1 percent of GDP. This was a record high, exceeding the previous peak set during the Great Depression. Welfare spending in fiscal year 1991, '92, and '93 exceeded defense spending for the first time since the 1930s.
There are repeated claims that Ronald Reagan "slashed" welfare spending. But in reality, Rector claims, welfare spending grew during the 1980s, after adjusting for inflation. In 1993, per capita welfare spending in constant dollars was 43 percent higher than when President Reagan took office in 1980.
Contrary to some claims, the growth in welfare spending has not been limited to medical aid. In constant dollars,
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