were able to make it usually did because their parents helped them out either financially or with childcare. But she says of her friends and peers "I don't think they need it as much as if you qualify, why not sign up?"
             When I asked Sarah what she thought led to someone's remaining on welfare, she drew from what she had learned in her Economics classes. She says that the government actually provides more of an incentive to stay on welfare than to join the workforce, this includes encouraging recipients to have more children. She admits that the problem is neither with individuals nor with the system, rather with a combination of the two. It is a situation of learned helplessness, she says, that people lose self-esteem and with that goes the will it takes to get off. She thinks it takes twice the work to get off of welfare and then get a job than it does to go straight into the workforce. Personally, getting off welfare requires "strength and courage to make the effort." She says gathering one's strength would probably be ve
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