The Failure of Welfare Policy as a Failure of National Vision

Welfare policy is in trouble. In important respects, the policy is not working, and a majority of the population has lost confidence in it. Especially, there is widespread discontent with the failure of income transfers to the very poor, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). After decades of federal programs, it cannot be demonstrated that means-tested welfare policies permanently change people’s lives for the better. For example, it has been shown that during a twenty year period, income transfers did not alter levels of pretransfer poverty. Although official poverty declined from 17.3 percent of the U.S. population in 1965 to 14.4 percent in 1984, pretransfer poverty did not decline—it was 21.3 percent in 1965 and 22.9 percent in 1984. ¹ The basic conclusion is that while income transfers have helped to ease hardship, they have not reduced the underlying level of poverty. Welfare policy has sustained the weak, but it has not helped to make them strong.