The Culture of Welfare Dependency
The issue of welfare dependency has been the topic of debate for manyyears. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the culture of welfaredependency and to present the available evidence on the issue. Thediscussion will also focus on how this topic is sociologically relevant.Finally we will state that the conclusions that we have drawn from the The Social Security Act of 1935 created a program known as Aid toDependent Children. (Smith-Brandon, and Tang) Originally this program wasdesigned to shield children from the full effects of poverty. However, inthe years that followed the program has become an alternative to findingemployment. (Smith-Brandon, and Tang) The article explains that "for manydecades, some welfare recipients have received AFDC benefits for severalgenerations, and they do not have to "work" for their "money" (welfarechecks/benefits). Many critics have argued that the antipoverty program hascreated a more intractable social problem by promoting unstable, single-parent families; encouraging illegitimacy and the abandonment of familiesby fathers" (Smith-Brandon, and Tang) In his book Losing Ground, Charles Murray points ou
" (Murray) The authoralso asserts that the progress that America made to improve poverty hasbeen impeded by the welfare system. (Furstenberg and Harris)Thebook also asserts that welfare dependency is more likely to occur amongstpeople who have had prior welfare experiences. Conclusion The purpose of this discussion was to discuss the culture of welfaredependency. (Smith-Brandon andTang) This new welfare bill sets limits on the amount of welfare peoplecould receive and was designed to encourage people to work. Studies with information on annual income have shown, for instance, that in the year that women exit welfare, more than half report family incomes below the poverty level, and among those who exit through work, 67 percent are poor at the time of exit ( Harris 1996). The fact that many of them don't pay any support and arenot involved in the lives of their children. " (Furstenberg and Harris) As you can see the issue of dependency is almost always associatedwith poor teenage mothers with little education. During the 1980s, however, attention shifted toward curbing the incidence of teenage parenting by eliminating economic support as an incentive for non marital childbearing and by enforcing work among welfare mothers. It places aburden on tax payers and the government. " (Smith-Brandon and Tang) All of these issues impactupon an individual's ability to work. Welfare dependency is also sociologically relevant because children raisedin low income neighborhoods by single mothers are more likely to commitcrimes. The authors also insistthat work programs are usually unsuccessful because they do not result inhigher levels of income. In addition, this program wouldn'tbe beneficial to most welfare recipients because the amount of money thatthey would receive from working a minimum wage job is well below thepoverty level for a family of four. We can also see that thenature of the system creates a culture of dependency because it provideswomen and their children with more benefits than they would receiveotherwise. The cycle of welfare dependency seems to be so strong that theeasiest way to stop this dependence is to stop it from occurring.
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