More than 4.5 million working families can't make ends meet. At the same time, these families are raising more than 10 million of America's children. As Washington policy-makers debate welfare reauthorization, they should examine this question: What does it take for low-income workers to get and keep jobs that adequately support their families? They might be surprised at the answers gleaned from people in Milwaukee and Seattle, who shared their successes and challenges as part of our recent study for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private, national philanthropy that focuses on disadvantaged families.
Here are three accounts from our study: A Latina immigrant who did not finish high school, catapulted from earning $8,000 a year as a cashier to earning $24,000 a year as a data-entry worker at an insurance company. She was able to triple her salary because she enrolled in a program that offered skills training, post-employment supports and partnerships with employers.
Another person, a former felon, obtained a $13-an-hour manufacturing job through a customized skills-training program. He gained custody of his teen-age son, moving him from a Chicago neighborhood with a "daily worry about gunshots" to a Milwaukee school that will give him a chance to go to college.
And finally, after receiving office-skills training, a Seattle resident overcame a history of physical and drug abuse, residential treatment and cycles of welfare-and-work programs to become a customer-service representative at a high-tech company, earning $11 an hour. Once in the new job, she was able to reclaim her 4-year-old son from foster care.
These success stories make economic progress seem easy, but our study shows how hard it is to achieve family self-sufficiency, even with "good" entry-level jobs. It is even harder for the average person who leaves welfare for a job that pays $7.15 an hour, a wage that barely reaches the poverty line for a family of three. Many low-income working families also grapple with debt, language problems, insufficient education, childhood trauma, former drug abuse or incarceration, lost wages due to children's illnesses, hazardous work conditions and inadequate housing and childcare subsidies. Such obstacles, in addition to low wages, keep millions of men and women in or near poverty, even though they work full time. Parents don't have the time, energy or resources they would like to devote to their children or to advance themselves through education and enhanced skills.
Much of the current debate about welfare reauthorization fails to recognize that these families need affordable childcare, transportation, "family-friendly" workplaces and more education before they can move ahead. They also need sustained wage supports, such as food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit and subsidies for childcare, housing and health care that don't run out when salaries inch up. The stories from our study, and similar ones across America, underscore the need to increase supports for new workers leaving welfare. At the same time, states should be given flexibility to run programs in ways that invest in families and their futures. Welfare reform will help families only if the 2002 reauthorization plan is based on the premise that moving up the economic ladder, not just off welfare, is the true measure of success.
Roberta Rehner Iversen is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work. Annie Laurie Armstrong is president of Business Government Community Connections in Seattle. The study, "Moving Up Is a Steep Climb," can be found at www.aecf.org/jobsinitiative. This column was produced for the Progressive Media Project, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by the Tribune News Service.