Government Should Work Harder to Serve Legions of Working Poor

The nature of poverty in America is changing. But the nature of the government response isn’t changing fast enough to meet the new demands. Unless it does, the promises of politicians in both parties to support families “who work hard and play by the rules” will prove hollow--and welfare reform itself could fail.

For most of the past generation, Washington has focused on the nonworking poor--families on welfare. But increasingly, the most critical issues concern families that do work, for wages too meager to provide a decent life. The latest Census Bureau report found that, among Americans living below the poverty line, a greater share held jobs than at any point in the past 20 years. (In all, 12.6% of poor adults worked full time in 1998--a 22% jump in a single year--and another 41% worked part time.) Millions more work just above the poverty line. With welfare reform moving legions of single mothers into the work force, all those numbers are likely to keep rising.

In one key sense, this is a positive trend. No state pays welfare benefits large enough to lift families out of poverty; the only sure way to reduce the poverty rate is to move more families into the work force. But as supporting work becomes the critical element of combating poverty, Washington and the states have to fundamentally change the way they deal with the poor.

Almost everyone in both parties, from Bill Clinton and George W. Bush on down, agrees that government should bolster families that work hard but still can’t make ends meet. The best expression of that impulse has been the earned income tax credit, which now provides tax refunds sufficient to lift 4.3 million working Americans above the poverty line. In that same spirit, Washington could raise the minimum wage, provide health care for more low-income adults and make the earned income tax credit more generous.

But an even more urgent--if less glamorous--need is connecting working-poor families with the substantial benefits that already exist for them. Millions of working-poor families are eligible for food stamps, state day-care subsidies and federally sponsored health insurance--mostly for their children, but in some cases (primarily former welfare recipients) for themselves. Yet because government hasn’t effectively publicized these programs--and because they are still structured in ways that discourage working families from participating--far too many low-income families are not receiving the benefits to which they are entitled.

“It’s a very big problem,” says Sarah Shuptrine, president of the Southern Institute on Children and Families in Columbia, S.C. “We have families out there that are struggling every day and they have no idea there are programs that can help them meet the needs of their children.”

The numbers are daunting. Only about 40% of working-poor families eligible for food stamps receive them. Only about one-third of working-poor children eligible for Medicaid receive benefits. Likewise, the states have signed up only about one-third of the children eligible for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers children in working families making slightly more than those eligible for Medicaid. Only about half the women leaving welfare for work received the food and health care benefits that the 1996 welfare reform law entitled them to, a recent Urban Institute study found. By contrast, more than 80% of eligible families take the earned income tax credit, which is easily accessible through the tax code.

Proud reluctance among some low-income workers to accept food stamps or Medicaid contributes to the problem, but mostly other factors explain the low numbers. These programs, designed in an era when most poor people didn’t work, are perversely inaccessible to working families. In most states, families seeking Medicaid for their children must still travel to welfare offices and sit for hours without appointments. Similarly, some states require food stamp recipients to present themselves every three months to prove they still qualify. Typically, offices are not open at night or on weekends. Forms are complex; the demand for documentation exhaustive.

These hurdles might have been tolerable when these programs mostly served nonworking families. “But it makes them literally impossible for people in low-wage jobs, who don’t have the flexibility to take off and sit there for hours,” notes Cindy Mann of the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Answers could come in two levels: the immediate and the long-term. First, Washington and the states need to energize their outreach and simplify their procedures. Good ideas are already developing. South Carolina recently sent home more than a million applications for the Children’s Health Insurance Program through the schools. California has seen the program’s enrollment skyrocket since Gov. Gray Davis streamlined the application form from 28 pages to four and allowed families to apply by mail. The Clinton administration has encouraged states to simplify the income-reporting requirements for food stamps. More states are contracting with community groups to spread the word about these programs.

Over time, though, the problem demands a more systemic response. If Washington were serious about supporting working families, it would shift its basic presumption. Rather than requiring families to find these programs, Washington could use the income information all Americans report to the IRS to find low-income families and notify them that they might be eligible for these benefits.

“If we are thinking seriously about the working poor, that makes all kinds of sense,” says Morley Winograd, the director of Vice President Al Gore’s reinventing government project.

Eventually, as privacy concerns are resolved and the technology becomes more widely dispersed, the Internet could also help by allowing families to apply online. What’s needed above all is a public commitment to help working families find the support they need to stay above water--and, for that matter, off of welfare.

“Families want to work, but they often can’t earn enough to pay for all their needs,” says Shuptrine. “If we get information to them about these benefits that could supplement their earnings, we all win. If [we don’t] . . . , it will be the Achilles’ heel of welfare reform.”

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See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times’ Web site at: https://www.latimes.com/brownstein.