Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 What We Know, What We Don't Know, and What We Need to Know about Welfare Reform
- 2 Welfare Reform and the Level and Composition of Income
- 3 How Have Expansions in the Earned Income Tax Credit Affected Family Expenditures?
- 4 How Families Are Doing Nine Years after Welfare Reform: 2005 Evidence from the Three-City Study
- 5 The Impact of Welfare Reform on Leaver Characteristics, Employment, and Recidivism
- 6 A Reexamination of the Impact of Welfare Reform on Health Insurance Among Less-Skilled Women
- 7 How Welfare Policies Affect Child and Adolescent School Performance: Investigating Pathways of Influence with Experimental Data
- 8 The Effects of Welfare and Child Support Policies on the Incidence of Marriage Following a Nonmarital Birth
- 9 Welfare Reform and Health among the Children of Immigrants
- 10 Mismatches and Unmet Need: Access to Social Services in Urban and Rural America
- Index
10 - Mismatches and Unmet Need: Access to Social Services in Urban and Rural America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 What We Know, What We Don't Know, and What We Need to Know about Welfare Reform
- 2 Welfare Reform and the Level and Composition of Income
- 3 How Have Expansions in the Earned Income Tax Credit Affected Family Expenditures?
- 4 How Families Are Doing Nine Years after Welfare Reform: 2005 Evidence from the Three-City Study
- 5 The Impact of Welfare Reform on Leaver Characteristics, Employment, and Recidivism
- 6 A Reexamination of the Impact of Welfare Reform on Health Insurance Among Less-Skilled Women
- 7 How Welfare Policies Affect Child and Adolescent School Performance: Investigating Pathways of Influence with Experimental Data
- 8 The Effects of Welfare and Child Support Policies on the Incidence of Marriage Following a Nonmarital Birth
- 9 Welfare Reform and Health among the Children of Immigrants
- 10 Mismatches and Unmet Need: Access to Social Services in Urban and Rural America
- Index
Summary
Introduction
How do society and our communities assist low-income populations? Typically, welfare cash assistance, food stamps, Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are identified as primary sources of support for poor populations. These prominent antipoverty programs, however, are only a part of how society and communities help low-income populations. Social services that promote work activity and greater personal well-being (e.g., job training, adult education, child care, substance abuse or mental health services, temporary emergency assistance) have become primary methods for assisting low-income families. Whereas annual governmental spending on welfare cash assistance totals about $11 billion, government expenditures for just a limited number of job training and social service programs are about $34 billion each year (in $2006). If we include a host of mental health, substance abuse, emergency assistance, and housing programs, social service programs receive more than $100 billion in public funding each year—a far greater share of governmental safety net expenditures than many scholars and policymakers recognize (Allard 2009; Congressional Research Services 2003).
Social service programs have steadily expanded in the past several decades to address low-income workers' struggles with persistent human capital, physical health, mental health, child care, or transportation barriers to employment. For example, about 40 percent of the women receiving welfare in 2002 experienced multiple barriers to employment including low educational attainment, physical health problems, a child with a disability, and mental health problems (Zedlewski 2003).
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- Chapter
- Information
- Welfare Reform and its Long-Term Consequences for America's Poor , pp. 337 - 368Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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