Welfare: A Solution to Economic Human Rights in the United States

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) has been touted a success by almost every lawmaker in Washington. According to former President and welfare repealer, Bill Clinton, "we now know that welfare reform works," (Rogers-Dillon 3). But it is never explained how welfare is successful nor who it is successful for. As of today, the United States is still the only nation that has not signed the declaration from the 2002 World Food Summit, declaring food a human right (Neubeck 11). This summit outlined a clear plan for the eradication of half the world's hunger by 2015 and set forth both political and resource-minded steps for achieving this end. This summit also began to create a set of voluntary guidelines for member countries to abide by, detailing how governments should acknowledge "the progressive realisation of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security," (Hunger).

The United States attached, in writing, reservations to this specific paragraph, pointing out that the United States will recognize equality of opportunity to adequate food, but "not guaranteed entitlement," (Heileman). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) really spells out the overall basic right to life for all human beings. Through articles twenty three to twenty six, it is made clear that economic entitlements are necessary to upholding the right to life. The United States created the welfare system long before the UDHR was adopted and ratified. Therefore, welfare does not adhere to the principles of the economic human rights set forth by the UDHR as well as needed to be in compliance. However, congress has had several chances to amend this situation, most recently during the 1996 welfare reform efforts. The government made the decision not to take on this responsibility and instead chose to curtail many of the economic safeguards the United States had for its poor, near poor, and people with a bit of bad luck.

Despite attempts to make the poor self sufficient, PWORA has not achieved this level of success. Nor has PRWORA made any gains towards sustaining economic human rights for its marginalized citizens. Congress yet again missed an important opportunity to compensate America's poor for their previous battles to uphold their right to life. Alas the United States chose to ignore this chance and to take welfare reform in the opposite direction. By putting time limits and work requirements on the poor, PRWORA has not only failed to make gains in economic human rights, but has also put strains on them.

Since welfare's inception, programs have been ridden with race and gender bias. Welfare not only fails to provide subsistence standards of living for people in poverty, but the programs created to help do so unequally along color lines. It is critical to understand this problem not only in terms of the effects it has on people of color but also in terms of why and how this situation developed. The foundations of our welfare system were created under a society governed, now and then, by "white racial hegemony," (Cazenave 43). The continuation of the United States to provide inadequate and racially biased assistance to needy families violates articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR), and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

What is generally referred to as "welfare" in the United States is a disjointed combination of services and departments designed to aid the poor sections of the population. It includes the food stamp program, Medicaid, housing subsidies, childcare services, the infamous cash transfers, and other benefits. Cleverly named the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), the law on the books makes clear that, in the United States, no person has the right to any specified standard of living. It is no surprise that PRWORA embodies the racist stereotypes the public has of the poor, especially given the history of welfare programs in the United States. Since the very beginning welfare was meant as a "white child-caring system" and the policy evolution has continued to exemplify this belief (Cazenave 43).

History and Background of Racism and Welfare Policy in the United States

In 1909 the Whitehouse held a conference on Dependent Children, sparked by what is commonly called the Mothers Pensions Movement. The Mothers' Pensions Movement was, like many other feminist movements, divided along color lines. The main social actors were white middle class women whose activism maintained and encouraged the racial status quo (Ward 42). The main impetus for organizing was that the disturbing fact that a large number of children were being institutionalized due to their mothers' inability to provide for them financially. The movement largely sought to create a governmental answer to this complicated phenomenon.

The conference produced three main principles which ultimately became the foundations for mothers' pensions law and have continued to pervade welfare policy today. First, the conference denoted the importance of "decentralization of administrative control to local agencies," this by in large meant that states were to be afforded more control over their own programs and that the federal government would only set loose guidelines for state programs (Ward 35). The conference also laid out two other faulty principles which have continued to plague welfare policy to this day. They set out to provide assistance for certain categories of women, and to create eligibility standards "based on the maintenance of a proper home," (Ward 35). Both of these principles created space for states to write racist welfare policy without having to answer to it legally. By targeting certain populations, the conference was informally targeting white mothers whose husbands had died. The latter principle also allowed welfare officials to exclude people who did not have 'proper homes,' meaning they could, and did, subjectively exclude women of color for no other reason than their morals or homes were deemed improper by white middle class standards. All else being said, "the mothers' pension movement both reflected and reinforced the prevailing race and class structures," (Ward 28).

In 1935, as part of the Social Security Act, President Roosevelt signed Title IV, Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), into law. This law expanded and regulated aid programs to the poor and provided funding to states that wished to set up ADC programs. During the drafting of the Social Security Act, the discriminatory traditions of the Mothers' Pensions laws surfaced. Under mother's pensions, states were not actually required to provide such assistance; the same was true of ADC. In fact, Nevada was the last state to create their own ADC program because officials knew that the programs would primarily serve the impoverished Native American populations (Cazenave 56).

As the Social Security Act was being drafted, Congress scrutinized and ultimately got the Whitehouse to compromise on three specific points in title IV (ADC), birthing a new era of institutionalized racism. First and most overtly racist in nature, language barring racial discrimination was removed, giving states a strong signal that discrimination would be tolerated by the federal government. States used this to their advantage and provided little welfare for blacks, and when they did it was often less than what was afforded to whites in the same circumstances. ADC was meant to provide, in good faith, "assistance at least great enough to provide, when added to the income of the family, a reasonable subsistence compatible with decency and health," however, when the final bill went through, this language too, had been removed (Cazenave 47). Secondly, it was decided that states would have the prerogative to "design and administer their own welfare programs," (Cazenave 47). Though on the surface this may seem harmless, this agreement coupled with the absence of non-discriminatory language allowed states to provide sporadic benefits and to exploit welfare recipients for low cost labor. In Louisiana, to encourage low wage labor, individuals were denied benefits during cotton-picking season. In some areas those denied benefits included children as young as seven years old (Goldberg 46). Senator Harry Byrd was among those who managed to eliminate the last of hopes that ADC would allow an acceptable standard of living by arguing that, among disturbing racial oppression, including the aforementioned removed language would interfere with the supply of cheap labor available to southern landowners (Goldberg 41).

1996 - The Final Solution

After years of debate and criticism, welfare was finally exterminated. In 1996, the United States landed the final blow to economic human rights - congress eliminated entitlement to welfare programs for the poor with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. PRWORA changed the face of welfare significantly, primarily by giving states more leeway in how they spend federal money and what types of restrictions they put on recipients. Federal law now restricts cash assistance (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, TANF) to sixty months and allows states to sanction individuals by reducing or eliminating benefits, sometimes permanently (Grogger 30). Recipients of TANF are now required to work at least thirty hours a week and many states have implemented "work first" policies which require unemployed TANF seekers to take the first job they are offered - no matter what the salary, hours, or job description.

Under PRWORA, states are required to report to the government the percentages of aid recipients that: are job seeking, have jobs, have left the welfare rolls, are excluded from work requirements due to infant care, and several other categories. If states fail to meet the numbers laid out by the government their funding is slashed. The new policies have strict limits placed on how long and how many aid recipients can be paid while job searching, job training, or attending school. For example, the government will only fund one year of vocational education while most programs of decent caliber take two years to complete (Goldberg 244). Interestingly, capping how much education is funded under TANF actually stagnates the human capital potential of recipients, thereby decreasing the likelihood that they will find jobs to lift them out of poverty and off of public assistance (Kimenyi 146). The manifestation of institutional and structural racism is seen in this phenomenon. For those in poverty, especially those of color, the government systems designed to aid them are actually fighting forces against them. Legislation such as PRWORA can only be truly helpful when designed in conjunction with those who have experienced the problems it seeks to eliminate. When policies and institutions are designed by those who are distanced from the problems, there will always be glitches.

The new provisions of welfare are particularly burdensome for women of color. Single motherhood is most common among black females and black females are also more likely to need public assistance. Under PRWORA all aid recipients must work thirty hours per week, and unlike the old welfare law higher education no longer can be counted towards this minimum (Goldberg). This policy has by default confined welfare recipients to their low paying jobs, again demonstrating how the human capital accumulation of aid recipients is stagnated by the laws designed to help them. Because wages are a function of productivity and productivity is a function of human capital, without an increase in education (human capital) there is little chance that wages will be increased (Kimenyi 146). PRWORA misguides its participants with respect to escaping poverty. Low wage employment is one of the causes of poverty - not one of the solutions to it.

PRWORA has created a backwards incentives system. Instead of encouraging recipients to finish high school and earn degrees, states are pushing them into low paying jobs that come with little hope of upward mobility. Essentially, PRWORA is confining poor people to low paying jobs, in economically depressed areas, that do not help them escape poverty and are then condemned for needing assistance.

Human Rights, Racism, Poverty, and How America is Failing

The United States has a long history of ignoring human rights, especially those of economic concern. Examples of the invisibility of the poor and their plights are not difficult to find. For example, the federal poverty line formula has not been re-examined since it was created in 1964. The outdated food multiplier has been criticized by social scientists, economists, and researchers year after year, and still the government has done nothing (Kimenyi 103). In addition, the State Department's annual human rights report conveniently excludes the United States (Neubeck 162). Not only is this lack of information shameful it is also an indicator that there is no recourse for simply overlooking entire sectors of society, as long as they are poor and have no political voice.

Poverty and issues of economic rights have never been of issue with the legislature, as history proves. The last compromise made by the congress in the drafting of the Social Security Act of 1935 marks an important precedent for welfare policy in the United States as it relates to human rights. This compromise, which eliminated ADC's obligation to provide "assistance at least great enough to provide, when added to the income of the family, a reasonable subsistence compatible with decency and health," certainly set the precedent for America's course in economic human rights. Years later, congress passed up the request from the president to ratify the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, again making their voices loud and clear. Today, the government has alleviated itself from guaranteeing any subsistence to those in poverty with the passage of PRWORA.

Oddly, the sharp drop in welfare recipients has been praised and cited across the country as a sign that the 1996 were successful. Instead, the drop in welfare recipients is frightening when compared to the fact that the poverty rate has been increasing since the year 2000. The Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights specifically sets forth, in article eleven, that every person has the right "to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family," this includes the right to "adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions," (United Nations "Covenant"). By eliminating welfare, the United States has taken away all guarantees to food and shelter and is in blatant violation of article eleven. Even more basically, denying shelter and food to impoverished people in a failure on behalf of the United States to uphold articles one and three of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights," and "everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person," (United Nations, "Universal Declaration"). In essence, by refusing to ratify CESCR and wholly ignoring the human rights put forth in the UDHR, America has reduced its poor to subhuman status.

For America's black, Hispanic, immigrant, and Native American population PRWORA packs a dual punch. Welfare evolution has proven to violate not only International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, but also the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). CERD was adopted by the United Nations in 1965 and signed by the United States in 1966. However, this convention was not ratified by the United States until October of 1994 (United Nations, "International Convention"). Nothing has been done to address the racial injustice embedded in public assistance, and two years after ratifying the CERD the government continued to ignore its provisions by eliminating welfare and creating more hardship for people of color.

PRWORA's strict regulations and block grants system allows states to implement covert systems of discrimination within their policies. States with high concentrations of minorities establish low benefits and black Americans are regularly subject to penalties for failure to meet some criteria set forth by states (Weil 214-15). In fact, black Americans are the most likely of all aid recipients to live in states with strict policies and are therefore more likely to be subjected to their penalties. Plainly put, article three of CERD mandates that "states particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction," (United Nations, "International Convention"). With the system of welfare in place today, this article is added to the long list of those violated by America's practices. Holding true to the racist nature of previous welfare laws, PRWORA still perpetuates stereotypes and treats Americans of color all around unfairly.

In order to rectify this, under CERD, parties are required to undertake "in the social, economic, cultural and other fields, special and concrete measures to ensure the adequate development and protection of certain racial groups" in order to guaranteed them "the full and equal enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms," (United Nations, "International Convention"). Until the United States repeals laws racist in nature, implements more aggressive and expansive affirmative action plans, and changes the culture of racism, they will not be doing all that is in their power to eliminate racial discrimination.

The Coming Together of Labor Market Discrimination and Systemic Racism

The volatile combination of labor market problems and a racist welfare system has translated into a sophisticated form of institutionalized racism. As described above the historical development of the current welfare system in the United States is ridden with race and class bias. When coupled with labor market discrimination there is strong evidence to support the

The labor market discriminates against women first and foremost by not rewarding traditionally female labor. Johnnie Tillmon, the first director of the National Welfare Rights Organization described what she would do if she were president, "I would solve this so-called welfare crisis in a minute," she explained, "I'd just issue a proclamation that women's work is real work... I'd start paying women a living wage for doing the work we are already doing - child raising and housekeeping. And the welfare crisis would be over," (Tait 40). Because a large portion of welfare recipients are single mothers there is a great likelihood that they will have to solve problems like childcare in order to hold a full time job. If the labor market were an equal opportunity employer these women would not be faced with this dilemma. Instead they would be paid for doing the single-most important job on the planet - ensuring that human life is sustained.

The disappearance of welfare has also contributed to the "weakening of marketplace bargaining power," (Silver 14). Welfare benefits are often referred to as a "safety net" for the poor, but they can also be seen as a temporary safety net for those in poor working conditions. The poor are now in a lower position in terms of bargaining with employers for better pay and more comprehensive benefits. Before PWRORA, welfare recipients could spend more time choosing a job that suited their needs in terms of pay and hours. Now aid recipients in many states are subjected to "work-first" policies which maintain that recipients take the first job that is offered to them. These policies severely curtailed the power of the aid recipient to use the tools of the market in search for better jobs. Benefits such as unemployment and severance pay still uphold this tradition, but unemployment benefits last for a very short period of time.

Along with increasing the likelihood that welfare participants will be trapped in low wage labor, PRWORA enhances institutional racism within the labor market. Statistical discrimination - the theory that employers discriminate based on what they perceive a particular worker's productivity to be according to stereotypes, despite the actual productivity of that worker - makes it likely that workers of color and female workers will be subjected to a dual labor market and a crowded labor market. Both of these labor market theories posit the reasons for low wage labor among people of color and women.

The dual labor market theory states that there are actually two labor markets in the United States. The primary labor market consists of jobs which come with the possibilities of upward mobility and satisfactory benefits. It consists primarily of white male workers who have built up human capital. This market reinforces "good work habits," as workers are praised for jobs well done and rewarded financially with promotions and raises (Kimenyi 160). On the other hand, workers of color and females are forced into a secondary labor market. These workers are subjected to jobs with poor pay and little chance of upward mobility due to the nature of the job. The secondary labor market also fails to reward "good work habits" because workers have less job security and also have less to lose if their jobs are threatened.

Workers of color and female workers tend to be crowded into the secondary labor market. As a result, there are more workers than jobs available even though they are low wage. This allows for employers to keep wages low and replace workers when they agitate for better benefits, conditions, or pay. Meanwhile, in the primary labor market white male workers enjoy their power to negotiate wages due to heavy initial employer investment in their workers. The cost of firing workers to these employers in the primary labor market is much higher because their workers have important skills and human capital reserves. There are also relatively few workers available to hire with the necessary qualifications because so many women and people of color have been shifted to the secondary market. In the secondary labor market these things are of little concern and there is an abundance of workers willing to take jobs, despite poor wages and opportunities for advancement. These theories of labor market discrimination pose an important realization that welfare policy does not alleviate racial or gender discrimination, rather it reinforces the economic discrimination both women and people of color face.

Economic changes within the past few decades have also had a net negative effect for black workers. The shift of the economy from goods focused to a service focused has created shifts in job markets. In densely populated cities with high concentrations of poverty this has meant losses in jobs the greatest of which have been "in industries with lower education requirements," whereas job growth has been "concentrated in industries that require higher levels of education," (Wilson 39). This presents major problems for those who typically under invest in human capital - minorities and women. As labor market discrimination pushes women and minorities to forego accumulation of human capital, the economy is pushing out the jobs these same people could have acquired. Especially for those in with less human capital "this mismatch is one of the major reasons why both unemployment rates and labor-force drop out rates among central-city blacks are much higher than those of central-city residents, and why black unemployment rates have not responded will to economic recovery," (Wilson 41). For those on welfare this added economic discrimination again comes full circle. Aid recipients are typically those with little human capital investment and in order to increase wages they must increase their human capital. However, PRWORA does not allow for sustained periods of education and thus aid recipients must choose between receiving benefits and working a low wage job or acquiring the necessary human capital needed to gain a higher paying job.

An important and often overlooked characteristic of PRWORA is its externalities. Though the negative effects have been explained in detail, the positive externalities PRWORA has generated are worth discussing. The primary beneficiaries of welfare reform are the owning class. As a concept, poverty has been moved to an individualized pathology. Policy language has "obscured its origins in social and economic inequalities," (Tait 174). Politicians have used the negative perception of welfare recipients as political opportunities. The restructuring of welfare in 1996 presented the perfect opportunity for politicians to make radical changes that pleased the minds of the lower and middle class, who also harbor contempt for welfare recipients. At the same time they were pleasing the owning class, which of course includes themselves and their business partners.

Conclusions

The United States welfare policy does not afford a modicum of dignity to those in poverty. Actions and policies put in place by the legislature violate provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international treaties both ratified and not ratified. Even when a human rights document is ratified by the United States, usually congress ratifies them with some reservations. A non-self executing clause is commonly inserted, meaning that a person cannot sue the United States for violating the provisions unless "enabling legislation" is also passed. Enabling clauses are simply never passed. In fact, these violations of ratified treaties continually go unchallenged because there is no mechanism for enforcement of human rights documents in the United States, even internationally.

Welfare policy in the United States today is an inadequate provision of basic human needs. The lack of economic stability felt by the poor is exacerbated by the strict time limits, harsh sanctions, and burdensome work requirements implemented by the passage of PRWORA in 1996. The United States has thumbed its nose at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination with the new welfare policy.

In order to effectively afford economic human rights to individuals in the United States, there must be an international body that non-state actors can file grievances with. In conjunction, the knowledge and language of human rights must be more widely recognized. With this in place and a human rights discourse more broadly accepted in United States legislation, they can begin to implement a series of anti-poverty bills that aim to rid poverty from the roots. Only after these things can individuals in the United States begin to climb out of the "vortex" of poverty.

The current welfare policy is not a solution to economic human rights. Indeed, it actually creates and perpetuates already existing economic hardship. It limits the amount of human capital gains the poor can invest in. The poor are then punished by the labor market for not investing this is manifested in a decrease in jobs that require less education. This drastically decreases the amount of job opportunities for those people on welfare and for those people trying to escape cycles of poverty. The United States must be held accountable for violating human rights doctrines and be forced to provide for its citizens. The misconception that welfare addresses economic human rights within the United States could not be more off target. The current institutional and structural arrangements used to address the needs of the poor are inadequate. Because they are ridden with class and racialized bias, they are actually worsening the conditions of the poor and people of color and weakening U.S. compliance with international human rights standards. As mentioned before, the welfare system began its journey in 1911, long before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was born. This simple fact has lead to the failure of current policies to uphold economic human rights.

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