When the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) issued a report in May on an experimental Minnesota welfare program, showing that it had cut poverty levels, increased marriage rates and reduced domestic violence, newspaper editorialists and columnists were quick to proclaim this a sign of the success of welfare reform. Only one problem: The Minnesota project, in place from 1994 to 1998, was almost the exact opposite of most sanction-based “reform” programs—and even of Minnesota’s current law.
Unlike other welfare reform efforts, which have largely focused on work requirements, time limits and other punitive measures, the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) emphasized incentives: Grant levels were higher, employed parents were allowed to keep 38 percent of their wages while still receiving welfare payments (an “income disregard,” in welfare lingo), and families were exempted from the state’s five-year lifetime limit on benefits. Sanctions for violating the rules were less harsh than in many states: Instead of losing benefits entirely, families had them cut by 10 percent for each violation.
The results, as compiled by MDRC, were promising: Earnings among the experimental group were 23 percent higher than for those receiving AFDC, and women reported lower rates of domestic abuse (49 percent versus 60 percent) at the end of the four-year study. Other indicators considered measures of workfare progress were likewise higher under MFIP: more recipients were in the workforce (50 percent versus 37 percent) and were more likely to be married (67 percent versus 48.5 percent).
The results seemed to confirm what critics of welfare cutbacks have said all along: Give poor women money without sanctions attached, and they’ll pull themselves out of poverty, which will alleviate the other supposed “pathologies” of welfare. During the study period, in fact, Minnesota was sixth to last in caseload reduction, traditionally the benchmark of “success” for conservative welfare critics.
Yet media coverage by and large treated the Minnesota study as a vindication for welfare reform as a whole. “For the first time, researchers have found that moving people from welfare to work can boost marriage rates, reduce domestic violence and help children succeed in school,” wrote Richard Wolf in USA Today (6/1/00)—though report author Virginia Knox had told NPR (5/31/00) that it was the more generous benefits, not work requirements, that were “the component that brought about a lot of the positive effects for families.” Utah’s Deseret News (6/9/00) editorialized that “the beauty of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act was that it turned each of the 50 states into laboratories that were free to experiment with ways to get people off public assistance and back into the work force. . . . Minnesota now offers evidence that the plan is working.”
Media coverage also fixated on the increased marriage rates, which were treated as a far more significant outcome than a mere drop in poverty or in domestic violence. Syndicated columnist Jane Eisner was particularly insistent that marrying off the poor should be the goal of any reform: “That noble idea got lost in the apocalyptic cries of those who feared that hundreds of thousands of poor women and children would end up on the streets or in the poorhouse,” she wrote (Philadelphia Inquirer, 6/12/00). “Isn’t it wonderful when real life proves the doubters wrong?”
The “doubters” can still point to increased rates of homelessness and hunger in many cities in the wake of welfare reform. Studies by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have found that from 1995 to 1997, income levels for the poorest 20 percent of female-headed households dropped 14 percent, even as the economy as a whole surged. ‘While employment and earnings did increase, even for that group, the drops in welfare and food stamps were much greater than the gains in employment,” explains Mark Greenberg of the Center on Law and Social Policy.
A few media outlets did recognize that MFIP’s significance was in how it differed from most state programs, with the Chicago Tribune (6/4/00) noting that the positive trends in the study “resulted not primarily from sanctions, but from incentives.” But no major paper outside of Minnesota reported what should have been big news: The pilot project lauded by MDRC was terminated by the state in 1998, replaced by a statewide program with the same name that cut grant levels, lowered the income disregard and reestablished time limits.
“All the coverage said Minnesota’s welfare program is a great success, but this was actually a program that doesn’t exist any longer,” says Deb Konechne of the Minnesota Welfare Rights Committee. “It could have disastrous effects on the welfare debate in the future, because the current program is creating more hunger and poverty and homelessness in Minnesota. So the whole celebration of the results of this welfare program was a complete sham.”
Neil deMause is editor of the zine Here and writes frequently on poverty issues for In These Times.
