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IT HAS OFTEN been said: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. This is true, but it neglects to mention that you teach a man to fish at a river with a pole in his hand, not in a classroom.
It was probably taken for granted by the Chinese, credited with coining this phrase, that they meant on-the-job training. But in Rhode Island, the wisdom of the ages takes a back seat to progress. Efforts to balance the budget are an opportunity for reconsideration.
In the face of a $450 million deficit, Governor Carcieri has proposed saving $50 million with social-service reforms. But if we changed one simple directive in our welfare program we could see savings of 10 times that amount. All we need to do is shift from an “education-first” to a “work-first” program.
Rhode Island currently uses an “education-first” program called the Family Independence Program (FIP) that provides two years of job-readiness programs, even longer under certain circumstances. Other states put more emphasis on on-the-job training.
In a “work-first” program, “work” does not preclude support, it begets support and it has proven to be the most effective and efficient method of increasing self-sufficiency. Here’s how it works (pun intended).
Let’s say someone enters the welfare-application center and wants to become a certified nursing assistant. Under our education-first program the applicant is allowed two years to complete the training and then must find employment. The possible outcomes are as follows: 1. The applicant doesn’t complete training. 2. The applicant does complete training but does not find a job or discovers that working in health care isn’t to his or her liking. 3. The applicant completes training and finds employment.
Under a work-first model, when applicants express interest in a career as a certified nursing assistant, the first order of business is to get a job in the industry — any job. It might not be exactly what the applicant wants, but the goal is to get into the work environment. At that point, the caseworker collaborates with the employer and employee to ensure that the most logical and productive training and supports are provided while the employee learns valuable workplace skills. This method goes a long way in eliminating outcomes 1 and 2 above.
In 2001, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a report from the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. that evaluated the outcome differences between work-first and education-first welfare programs, and the results are convincing. Job security, income (short-term and long-term) and family health are all improved with work-first programs.
The year 2001 is important because it represented the “doomsday” predicted when federal five-year limits implemented in 1996 would throw women and children into the streets. But what we saw was an unprecedented growth in employment for that population. From 1996 to 2003, 59.5 percent of recipients left the welfare rolls across the country. Rhode Island ranked 43rd in the nation, with a reduction of only 36.9 percent.
Also in 2001, the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University reported that 48 percent of welfare recipients in Rhode Island had been on assistance for five years or more and one-third had been on assistance for eight years or more. The latest census reports that 11 percent of Rhode Island adults and 16 percent of children were living in homes with incomes less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL).
Rhode Island still uses an education-first welfare model and we see things haven’t changed much. The Journal reported in November that “(nearly half . . . had been on welfare rolls for more than five years. . . . And nearly one quarter of the families had been on cash assistance for more than 10 years.” Eleven percent of adults and 15 percent of children in Rhode Island live under the FPL.
We spend a lot of time teaching people to fish in Rhode Island — but there isn’t a lot of fishing or self-sufficiency. According to the Heritage Foundation, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 16 hours of work per week. Just to put that in perspective: If all families in poverty in Rhode Island had someone working 40 hours per week, we could reduce childhood poverty by 75 percent.
Creating a system that encourages personal responsibility by requiring an investment of sweat equity in exchange for the benefits received improves self-sufficiency and has led to a reduction of costs in other states. Far from undercutting services to those in poverty, the focus is on improving those services, thus reducing the number of people who will need them.
House Finance Committee Chairman Steven Costantino recently announced an effort to streamline social-service administration, certainly a commendable effort. But we urge him not to ignore this underlying problem. We spend a total of $2.8 billion supporting those who can’t support themselves. Putting every able-bodied person in a job building toward self-sufficiency is a shift in the philosophy of welfare that can change the culture and have a positive impact on our citizens and our checkbook for generations.
We have given the “education-first” model a decade-long trial. It is time we look to success in the other laboratories of democracy and concede that our experiments with “better intentions” have produced poorer results.
“Work” is an empowering, enlightening, and uplifting activity but it takes, well, work. No one will deny support to those working to get off welfare and we are confident the governor’s budget will provide amply for this purpose.
William Felkner is the president of the Ocean State Policy Research Institute. |
