Virginia’s welfare caseload has declined by more than 50 percent — to 36,000 — since 1995 when welfare reform took hold. Many former recipients still rely upon government largess such as food stamps, Medicaid, child-care subsidies and energy assistance averaging $3,700 per family per year. But they are increasingly self sufficient. Those numbers come from a JLARC study, “Self-Sufficiency Among Social Services Clients in Virginia,” reports Stacy Hawkins Adams with the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Virginia ranked No. 1 nationally among states based on the proportion of welfare recipients who entered the workforce in 2004. But the situation is far from perfect: Virginia ranked only 48th nationally for increased earnings for welfare recipients, the study noted.
It would be wonderful if everyone in Virginia could earn enough money to climb above the poverty line and become totally self sufficient. That isn’t likely to happen any time soon. Only 54 percent of those surveyed had high school dipomas or GEDs. The occupational prospects for high school drop-outs will only get worse as occupations in the U.S. economy become more and more knowledge-intensive. But the situation is vastly preferable to what it was before 1995 when some welfare mothers never left a state of welfare dependency.
Hopefully, we’re witnessing the shrinking away of the multi-generational welfare class and, with it, a cultural change among Virginia’s poor that will better equip them to participate in mainstream society.
