March 16, 2009
Michigan modified the way it distributes public assistance in 1996, making the task of searching for and securing work a requirement to receive benefits. What has been the impact of the welfare reforms?
One significant result is that there are many more single mothers in the workforce, often performing low-wage jobs, than before the reforms were enacted, says Kristin Seefeldt, a research investigator with the University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and assistant director of the National Poverty Center.
In her new book, Working after Welfare: How Women Balance Jobs and Family in the Wake of Welfare Reform, Seefeldt aims to bring to light the challenges these women face. As it turns out, they are not much different than the concerns of other working parents.
“A lot of what the women we studied needed was more time to tend to their families and more help easing the work-life strains that many working people, in general, experience,” explained Seefeldt. “What I hope people take away from the book is that working single mothers do face so many of the same challenges that well-educated, middle-class working moms do, but low-income moms have not been a part of that discourse.”
Working after Welfare was an outgrowth of a research project, the Women’s Employment Study, conducted by Seefeldt and colleagues at the University of Michigan. About 750 women from an urban Michigan county (unnamed due to privacy policy) who had left the welfare rolls for work were surveyed and interviewed periodically over a seven-year period, from 1997 to 2004.
“A lot of interesting findings were coming up,” said Seefeldt. “As substantial proportions of women got jobs, people started to worry that many were stuck in low-wage positions and weren’t moving up. I wanted to learn more about how these women understood their roles as workers — how they thought about their own prospects for moving up in their jobs.
“In doing more in-depth, in-person interviews, we found there was a bigger story to tell; hence the book.”
One key finding was that a high percentage of the women — many single moms — chose not to take higher-paying jobs or return to school because of the disruptions these changes would cause in their children’s lives.
Seefeldt also thought it was important to dismiss stereotypes about this group of employees.
“While it was true that some women wanted to be around their kids to monitor their behavior because they were worried about things like delinquency and teenage pregnancy, for the majority of women we studied it was really about having enough time to actively participate in their kids’ lives — attend parent-teacher conferences, help with homework and take their kids to band practice. These are concerns that are very typical and happen across the income spectrum, but that are not ones we always associate with lower-income working moms.”
Seefeldt hopes that state and federal policymakers will read the book, published in December 2008 by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, and consider some of the policy recommendations she advocates based on the research findings.
One reform she believes could make a significant impact in low-income, working parents’ lives is implementing a shorter work week. This would give people more time for their caregiving responsibilities. Seefeldt’s view is that given the evidence that part-time workers are penalized financially for the decision not to work full-time, a shorter work week would eliminate some of that wage and earnings penalty.
She also advocates for lengthening the school year and the school day, since the typical schedule of summers off and dismissal at 3:00 in the afternoon doesn’t fit working parents’ lives any longer.
Education financial assistance could also use some attention, says Seefeldt.
Kristin Seefeldt“A lot of financial aid is tied to your enrollment status; you have to be taking a certain number of credits to get financial aid. Rolling back some of those restrictions to allow people to go back to school on a very part-time basis, maybe even one class at a time, but still be eligible for financial aid would go a long way in improving these women’s employment prospects.
“I think we need to recognize that some people are not going to be able to complete a degree in the two- or four-year time period that we think that they should — that it will be more of a process.”
When asked what role employers have in easing low-income mothers’ work-life strains, Seefeldt is cautious.
“There are definitely movements afoot to get employers to be more ‘family friendly’ by allowing more flexible scheduling. To the extent that employers can do that, I think there should be encouragement for them to do so. But it’s unclear to me how policy would operationalize some of those incentives.”
Seefeldt thinks tax breaks for firms that do allow for flexible scheduling or job sharing could work, but that change would come too slowly.
“More federal initiatives, like making changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act to shorten the work week, certainly would be helpful more quickly,” she said.
Universal healthcare is another reform that could make a big difference, according to Seefeldt.
“If we had a universal healthcare system it would take a lot of the financial burden, either perceived or real, off employers and encourage them to be more flexible and innovative.”
Seefeldt is concerned for the women she interviewed, and others in their situation, given Michigan’s escalating unemployment rate.
“The problem working, low-income women have been facing thus far has been underemployment,” she explained. “A lot of people have not lost their jobs entirely, but I expect that that will change in the coming months.”
Seefeldt also sees evidence of the increasing difficulty in getting public assistance as a way to bridge the gap between low earnings and what low-income families need to survive.
“However, some of the women we’ve studied are very savvy about how to make ends meet as best they can. They know about the other nonprofit agencies that are available to help them in ways that maybe families that are on the downward slope from losing a manufacturing job, for instance, wouldn’t necessarily know about.
“I do expect, regardless, a lot of increased hardships — a lot of people losing housing and a lot of increased debt among this group,” she said.
More reason, Seefeldt would argue, to consider meaningful policy reforms sooner, rather than later.
Bookworm Jean B. Eggemeyer owns communications and marketing firm Carillon Communications LLC, serving the business and association communities.
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