Aid to Families with Dependent Children - Essay Example

Aid to Families with Dependent Children Question one The federal government funds quite a large sector of subsidy programs for low income Americans, from food stamps to Medicaid. Before the 1996 welfare reform in the United States, the federal government was to some extent an open ended entitlement that encouraged long-term dependency. This was agreed across all stakeholders that it was a total failure. However, the 1996 reforms came with it a fair constant federal spending on TANF. On the other hand, Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) was the first federal welfare program started by President Roosevelt in 1935. By the time President Clinton took over power in 1993, there was a national consensus that traditional open-ended welfare had failed (Neckerman, 89). This prompted the state government to undertake experimentations of welfare within the constraints that the federal government allowed them. There are differences between the new welfare scheme Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) programs. First, TANF changed the funding structure (Bourdieu, 51). The old welfare program (AFDC) had entitlement funding system. That is, an increase in the caseload resulted to more state funding from the federal funds. The new program utilizes a fixed funding system. This means the state governments were forced to bear the extra cost incase of an increase in caseloads and a decline in the caseloads will see the state governments continue receiving their fixed amount of federal funds. The surplus could be used for other state projects. The problem with AFDC was never with the welfare system; or rather it was something to do with low-wage work. AFDC increased poverty, put people form welfare into homeless shelters, lowered income and children for single mothers and left states free to entirely eliminate welfare (Bourdieu, 88). These problems arose because the affected did not show up for an appointment or because they never received notification for the meeting (Zastrow and Karen, 11). However, under the 1996 welfare reforms, TANF main aim was to help move recipients into work and turn welfare into a program of temporary assistance. For this reason, the needy families did not have to depend on the program entirely hence no appointments. With TANF, the federal eligibility and most payment rules were abolished. This ensured that the states had much greater flexibility to design their own programs including who to include in the welfare program (Bourdieu, 147). This was not the case with AFDC program. It is worth noting that the welfare being used in the American Dream cannot give the much needed support for women like Angie, Opal and Jewell to enable them uplift their families from poverty. This is because, to some extent, the programs were characterized by socioeconomic inequality. In a nutshell, neither AFDC nor TANF could help empower Jewel, Angie and Opal because the programs assumed that the beneficiaries had the much needed credentials to obtain jobs (Gaines at.al, 190). Corruptions and discrimination are some of the factors characterizing the two programs hence limiting the ultimate assistance they could render to Angie, Jewell and Opal. It is true that women employment has increased since early 70s, but women are still likely than men to spend some time not employed or employed part-time. This stigma could arise during the implementation of the two programs thereby reducing the amount of help they could give to Angie, Jewell and Opal. The story of welfare is painfully conjoined in the story of race. Jason DeParle gives a much needed and informed explanation of the complexities, challenges, failures and success involved in fixing U.S ailing welfare system. Through a trace of the lives of three women and their children as legislative changes are pushed in various American states, DeParle stamps an extraordinarily human face on a subject that is mostly subjected to ideological oversimplification. In addition, DeParle few solutions for breaking the poverty cycle and dependency rate among USA citizens. According to DeParle (171), moving poor women into the workforce contributed to reduction in teen pregnancy, crimes and crack use. Question two Recently, the Legislature and Governor of California have considered and enacted several laws responding to the public’s outcry on crime and the criminal justice in the state. One of the enacted laws aimed at curbing crimes and criminal justice is California proposition 36. Proposition 36 modifies elements of California’s “Three Strikes” Law which was approved by the state’s voters in 1994 (Gaines at.al, 29). This law has not only been implemented in the State of California but in other states or countries have adopted or considering adoption various sections within the law. Among those interested in the sections of California 36 are some countries found in the West. Going by the current research, there is a lot of confusion when defining the relationship between incarceration and crime. However, well detailed analysis generally ascertains that increased incarceration rates have some effect on reducing crime, but the impact is limited. The early 1970s witnessed the USA engage in expanded use of incarceration to help attain greater public safety. By 2005, over 1.5 million individuals were incarcerated in the USA prisons on one single day, and additional 750,000 were incarcerated in local jails (Gaines at.al, 81). Therefore, it is without reasonable doubt that incarceration have been on the rise in the USA. The USA penal population has been on the rise for the past six years. The rate of imprisonment in the USA is now 4 times its historical average and 7 times higher than in Western Europe. In the Western nations, unemployment, education, wages, policing strategies and other factors associated with low crime rate accounts for more significant increase (Pattillo et.al, 19). Informed by comprehensive research, it is clear that effective public safety strategies should move away from an exclusive focus on incarceration to embrace factors linked with low crime rates through developing of policy framework for safeguarding citizens. This is what has been taking place in most developed nations and specifically in most Western states (Neckerman, 60). California’s social policy of mass incarceration has been tied to a number of negative life consequences that are differently distributed among socioeconomic and racial groups. In recent studies, imprisonment has been majorly seen to reflect inequality (Neckerman, 71). For instance, incarceration of a parent may cause a child and the other family member: social stigmatization, individual and family trauma, diminished financial resources and risk of divorce (Neckerman, 121). While prisons in California have remained unsustainably overcrowded, and the legal machinery that has kept filing prisons remains in place, it is arguably true that no California governor after Schwarzenegger will be able to treat building and filling prisons a place to offer solutions to the ubiquitous social problems facing California such as teen pregnancy and urban blight. With more than two million Americans in prisons, it is impossible to contain the impact of mass incarceration. The fate of the prisoners affects everybody including taxpayers who support them, the guards, their families and the entire communities. For some education and racial groups, incarceration has turnout to be a regular experience and prison culture and influence pervade their communities. Bruce Western reveals many of the underlying myths about relationship among crime, imprisonment and inequality. Despite incarceration receiving many support from people because it is able to reduce crime, Western shows that the decrease in the rate of crime in the early 1990s was mainly determined by growth in the city police forces and the pacification of the drug trade. According to the book punishment and Inequality in America, there is strong relationship between incarceration and severely dampened economic conditions for former prisoners. Western ascertains that former prisoners have much lower wages and employment rates as compared to those without criminal records. Americans are experiencing heavy costs because of the recent explosion of imprisonment. In addition, the recent explosion has also resulted to exacerbating inequality. In earlier times, military or colleges were considered formative institutions for young men, prison has in the recent times usurped that role in many societies. Question three Poverty affects children’s development and educational outcomes beginning in the earliest years of life. Apart from food, water and shelter; education in most countries in the world has emerged as a key aspect in the development of an individual. And therefore, it is increasingly becoming one of the basic needs in the world (Pattillo et.al, 42). Eradicating poverty and improving education are vitally connected. In all countries, poverty presents a chronic stress for families and children that may interfere with successful adjustments to developments tasks, which comprise achieving in school (Lindsey, 76). Several studies have indicated that children in developing economies are at greater risk of not attending schools as compared to those from wealthier families. Poverty directly hampers children’s education and development by increasing risk factors and limiting protective factors and opportunities for enrichment and stimulation. For instance, children from poor backgrounds are always characterized by under-nutrition and overweight and this is because of food insecurity (Lindsey, 119). The influence of poverty in education development is something that cannot be assumed. It therefore in order that additional social services and enrichment programs be improvised to reduce educational disparities for poor children (Zastrow and Karen, 30). The need for additional social services and enrichment programs for reducing additional disparities for poor children is underscored by the fact that in dispensing educational services as a public good to the public, the government assumes the presence of parity, yet disparity abounds in the provision of educational services in the entire educational services. It is not the developing nations alone that poverty hampers educational development among children. Over the past 70 years, there has been an increase in income gap between the rich and the poor; whereby top 1% of U.S families has more income than the bottom 40%. Despite the trend of an overall stabilization of nationwide poverty, numerous states and communities in the USA have witnessed increase (Zastrow and Karen, 94). Education defines the job in most countries today (Zastrow and Karen, 71). The learned are employed to good jobs than those who are not educated. This disparity is nonetheless subtle, so that it is impossible to try to ascertain its presence by merely looking at distribution of public schools within the American states (Pattillo et.al., 12). One of the best ways to avoid adult poverty is to obtain good education. It is for these reasons that it is necessary to constitute social services and programs to ensure that education disparities are reduced among poor children. Poverty reduces the children’s moral and ability to attain good education hence affecting their ultimate life. Accountability reforms can foster positive changes in behavior by school administrators, teachers and students. It is therefore worth noting that the main risk associated with expanded choice opportunities is the possibility of exacerbating the segregation of poor or low performing students within schools. As a result, the changes in social policies outside the education context that reduce child poverty as desirable as they may seem, are not necessarily condition for enacting education reforms that help improve poor children’s outcomes by enough to justify the costs of the reforms (Lindsey, 37). Poor children are sometimes nucleated in neighborhoods that are segregated by social class and race. This could add to the challenge of implementing the social education policies especially when children have traditionally attended neighborhood schools. For that reason, proper social policies are essential in addressing educational disparities among poor children. Question four Massey and Denton, in American Apartheid links persistent poverty among blacks in the USA to the unparalleled degree of deliberate segregation they experience in many cities across America. The book shows how black ghetto like North Richmond was developed by whites during the first half of the 20th C so as to isolate growing urban black populations (Massey & Denton, 90). Today, segregation in most areas such as North Richmond is motivated through interlocking set of individuals’ actions, government policies and institutional practices (Massey & Denton, 90). In North Richmond, there was systematic segregation of blacks that inexorably lead to the creation of underclass communities during periods of economic downturn. An increase in segregation is characterized with an increase in the rate of black poverty yields a marked increase in then geographical concentration of indigence. Therefore, segregation was the key contributing factor to black isolation and poverty in North Richmond (Massey & Denton, 90). In the USA, the federal government, business community and other stakeholders have been on the frontline advocating for inclusion of immigrants in the labor market. According to Waldinger & Lichter (87), immigrants are employed at the bottom of America’s economy for a simple reason that most employers perceive them as different and more suited to demeaning work as compared to others. The social networks and formal hiring are the common practices that determine who gets jobs, and the way ethnic preferences and conflicts are revealed in the workplace. The fight against ghetto poverty is more than just overcoming economic deprivation. It entails improving safety and feelings of security and reducing any element of fear that might arise. In the book “Moving to Opportunity insightfully”, Briggs and Popkin argue persuasively for a major national commitment rental housing in safe and livable neighborhoods (Briggs et.al., 65). The book’s innovative methodology analyses the dynamic structures of regional opportunity and constraint that shaped the fortunes of those who “signed up.” The book reveals that though times and methods have changed, blacks are still forced to live apart from whites (Briggs et.al. 65). One of the major factors that segregate blacks from whites is the residential disparities. Whereby good residential houses are found in white dominated areas and ghettos are for the blacks. These are the factors that lead to the emergence of North Richmond. In a rather good note, the authors argue that to contain these problems and the emerging ghetto challenges, proper social policies and structures need to be put in place (Briggs et.al., 65). . Work cited Bourdieu, P.. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Print Briggs, Xavier S, Susan J. Popkin, and John M. Goering. Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Internet resource. Douglas S. Massey & Nancy A. American Apartheid. Denton New York: Harvard University Press, 1993. Print. Gaines, Larry K, and Roger L. R. Miller. Criminal Justice in Action. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub. Co, 2011. Print. Lindsey, Duncan. Child Poverty and Inequality: Securing a Better Future for America's Children. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Internet resource. Neckerman, Kathryn M. Social Inequality. New York, NY: Russell Sage, 2004. Print. Pattillo, Mary, David Weiman, and Bruce Western. Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004. Print. Zastrow, Charles, and Karen K. Kirst-Ashman. Understanding Human Behavior and the Social Environment. Belmont, Calif: Thomson, 2007. Print. Waldinger, R. & Lichter, M. How the other half works: Immigration and the social organization of labor. Berkeley, CA (2003): University of California Press Western, B. Punishment and inequality in America. New York (2006): Russell Sage Foundation DeParle, J. American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare. New York (2003): Penguin Read More