Talk:Aid to Families with Dependent Children

Article provides incorrect information
There are a number of incorrect claims in this article. Data show that non-White children were eligible at much higher rates and enrolled at higher rates than White children. The claims about White vs Black female labor force participation are also incorrect. From 1940-1960 the labor force participation rate of Black single mothers was lower than that of White single mothers. Most recent economic research shows significant benefits to the health of beneficiants, along with increased labor market participation rates. In my opinion, all of the cited work is outdated in terms of methodology and consequently its conclusions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.11.28.238 (talk) 04:48, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Untitled
Someone put that it used to be called "I hate the world's pie" i dont think that is correct, but maybe im stupid- OJ Buyer

Pros and cons section
Why is there a pros and cons section with such heavy bias and opinion? This section should be removed.

All the highly partisan parts beginning with "Welfare reform is no longer controversial..." should be axed or seriously edited. Just because TNR says it don't make it so. Also other errors: "culture of poverty" is a highly controversial set of THEORIES put forward by conservative social scientists in the 1960s and 1970s, then adopted by Reagan-era conservatives. Also e.g., misleading to say someone could get benefits for "his whole life": since recipients had to be single parents of young children, no "lifetime" benefits were in the offing, and virtually all these single parents were women. It is OK to include partisan perspectives about welfare, but to simply quote the most conservative interpretation of the programs as if it were true and there were no debate is teribly misleading.
 * If any editor has a reliable source that gives a different interpretation, it sould be provided so users can see the debate. Rjensen 19:41, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with the person who complained about the pov. I've added a pov tag. I've also added a cleanup tag, since so much of the article is ungrammatical.--24.52.254.62 00:07, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello, I am doing some research on AFDC. I would note that first, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (authors of the book "The Bell Curve" which argues that intelligence and educational/economic success is related to genetics) are frequently critiqued by scholars. For example, see the book "The bell curve debate" by Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman. Hernstein and Murray are drawing outwardly racist conclusions that are essentially social darwinism.

Secondly, there are many organizations that criticize the implementation of welfare reform and TANF. For example: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Urban Institute...

This is not to say that AFDC was great and should not have been reformed, but it is absurd to credit it with "success." What does that mean?

Edited for grammar and POV
Attempted to remove POV issues. Changed heading "pros & Cons" to "Critisisms"

Identified New Republic as a conservative periodical and suggested subjectivity in their assessment
 * Glad to see that such ID was removed, as TNR is generally agreed to be a liberal magazine. Smontg2 (talk) 02:33, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Criticisms
Well, for starters, we need sources for those criticisms. Who said it was "relatively lax", etc.

Next, I've removed this: "It has been suggested that this had a dysgenic effect on the US population." Like the rest of the section, it's unsourced. However, it is also a meta-meta-criticism. The claim is as follows: 1) AFDC recipients were genetically inferior to the rest of the population 2) AFDC encouraged more births. 3) (conclusion) AFDC had a dysgenic effect.

For this claim, we need sources for each of these. Since their are no sources given for the foundation (1 & 2), claim #3 is a castle in the sky. Mdbrownmsw 16:37, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I added a source for claim 3, which probably backs 1 & 2.--Zero g 17:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The source does not say AFDC had a dysgenic effect. The ONLY mention of AFDC is that unwanted births was a cause of dependance on AFDC. Before this turns into a full on edit war, I will throw a Fact tag on it for now, refer you to WP:OR and give it a few days to find a source. Mdbrownmsw 04:54, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The title of the article is 'Unwanted Births And Dysgenic Reproduction In The United States'. So the mention of AFDC falls under the general scope of the article. The particular section also mentions that this prevention (in theory) would have eugenic benefits, and dysgenic (in practice) is commonly used as the reverse of eugenic. Besides, you can't expect authors to use "dysgenic" in every paragraph just in case some people might be arguing about the exact interpretation of a rather obvious article one day. So I'd say the source does implicate that AFDC is considered to have a dysgenic effect. --Zero g 09:32, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The article does not say AFDC had a dysgenic effect. It said unwanted births caused dependance on AFDC. You are crafting a new interpretation of the material in the article.
 * First, you are reversing the statement in the article to say that unwanted births were caused by AFDC (this qualifies as original research (and it's a logical falicy to boot)). Next you extend this to say that all unwanted births are disgenic (not stated in the article). Then you string them together (which is original research) as follows AFDC causes unwanted births + all unwanted births are dysgenic : AFDC had a dysgenic effect.
 * To cap this all off, before my edit, it said that this has been "suggested". The only place it was "suggested" was the wikipedia article. Mdbrownmsw 17:40, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


 * My mistake, the article in question indeed doesn't make any kind of claim to go on. There's some evidence that unwanted births are related to a dysgenic decline in intelligence, but that falls outside the scope of this article.


 * While at it, the following reference might be of interest:
 * Bogue, D.J., 1975, Longterm solution to AFDC problem- prevention of unwanted pregnancy, Social Science Review 49(4): 539-552 --Zero g 17:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Still no reliable source for the dysgenic claim. Mdbrownmsw 19:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Murray isn't the only source of Criticism. Walter Williams, a black author and economist, (1982) was a critic at the time for the same reasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqMuLNWL_Qo&feature=player_embedded#at=392. Perhaps someone can include him as a critic in the article with a better source.Aaronchall (talk) 06:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Blank and Blum are also critics:
 * One set of questions has centered on whether the system encourages

family dissolution and out-of-wedlock births (which themselves can pose risks to children). A second set of questions, more central to the topic of this paper, asks whether the support undermines parents’ work ethic. 

Maybe we could work this into the article. --Uncle Ed (talk) 21:48, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

POV edit 1/30/07
I just removed this:

"Evidence for this claim can be found in the work of Charles Murray, who suggested that welfare causes dependency. He argued that as welfare benefits increased, the number of recipients also increased; this behavior, he said, was totally rational, because why work if one can receive benefits for a long period of time without having to? While this ideology drove policy, the data, is not entirely clear. States with the most generous welfare policies have the fewest recipients and vice versa. For instance, Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama have relatively restricted welfare policies; these states have higher rates of welfare recipients than Minnesota, Wisconsin, and other states with more liberal welfare policies. However, welfare policy is only part of these liberal states' diverse social programs, and the southern states face very different demographics and economic challenges.

In the 1960s through 1980s William Shockley argued with some support that AFDC and other similar programs tended to encourage childbirth, especially among less productive members of society, causing a reverse evolution (dysgenic effect), founded on the premises that: (A) there is a correlation between financial success and intelligence, and (B) that intelligence is hereditary. Shockley, whose initial fame came from his electronics designs, was abrasive and not a credible spokesman; however, he and others were influential in bringing recognition to their hypothesis among the public and Congress. The later work of Charles Murray, Richard J. Herrnstein, and others suggested possible merit to the theory of a dysgenic effect, however, without definitive proof. In the end, this argument, right or wrong, was among the stepping stones leading to the modification of AFDC toward TANF.

Part of the reason that welfare reform became so popular was because of changing views and demographics of welfare and poverty. In 1935, when the legislation was first enacted, the dominant view was that women should stay home for the benefit of their children; by the late 20th century (and probably due to the Women's Rights Movement of the 1970s), staying home with children was seen as a privilege and most mothers should have the obligation to work. Furthermore, in 1935, most of the single-mother beneficiaries of welfare were widows; by 1988, most of these women with children were either unmarried or divorced."

Names of writers or "the work of..." are not sources. This section makes numerous specific claims that need sources. Mdbrownmsw 19:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Am replacing the text removed without forming a concensus --Kevin Murray 07:27, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I've provided footnotes for the text that I added a while back. Some of the other text that I returned today was from other editors and I would be inclined to remove with agreement, especially the discussion about the various state's experiences, which seems intuitive, but I have no idea where that info came from. The site referenced in note 1 seems to have a grerat deal of information which could be added here --Kevin Murray 08:48, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Suggested to be referenced or removed
"States with the most generous welfare policies have the fewest recipients and vice versa. For instance, Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama have relatively restricted welfare policies; these states have higher rates of welfare recipients than Minnesota, Wisconsin, and other states with more liberal welfare policies. However, welfare policy is only part of these liberal states' diverse social programs, and the southern states face very different demographics and economic challenges." --Kevin Murray 09:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC) T'Leya —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.172.129.139 (talk) 23:22, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

"In light of the results, by 2006 the welfare reforms appeared to be less controversial. The New Republic suggested, A broad consensus now holds that welfare reform was certainly not a disaster--and that it may, in fact, have worked much as its designers had hoped.[11] More recent results, notably taking into account the effects of the Financial crisis of 2007-2010 and taking place after the lifetime limits imposed by TANF may have been reached by many recipients, suggest instead that the reforms have not been as successful as originally believed.[12]" This paragraph needs to be expanded to include a definition for "success" as no definition nor explanation of the intent of the bill is given or implied in the entire article. 69.241.126.114 (talk) 22:56, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Broken Link
The link to outside source: Aid to Families with Dependent Children at HHS is no longer working. Thi smay be a valuable resource which should be fixed. Italic text

Here are some intersting writings the contributors here might read and we can bolster the WP: article. --Kevin Murray (talk) 18:03, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Univ. Wisconsin criticism of Murray's work
 * Packard Foundation overview

Which of the policies of AFDC still survive?
Have any aid programs been instituted that fill the role of AFDC policies? For example, are there aid programs that provided more income to women who have more children? Are there any that require that a man or father not be present in the home? Are there programs that re-institute the policies for which AFDC was criticized? Maybe the article would be improved by a section showing the legacy or ongoing context of AFDC.CountMacula (talk) 13:30, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

This article still seems extremely racist
Criticism section: Should be removed or re-labeled. Charles Murray and these various theorists of "dependency" are highly ideological and not grounded in fact. Put bluntly, Murray is a right-wing race scientist. Moreover, why should criticism of welfare reflect conservative criticism, versus the views of welfare mothers, who often criticized the program for not going far enough.

Reform section: The New Republic declares welfare reform a success. So what? They are a neoliberal magazine, very supportive of Bill Clinton's various austerity measures. Of course they would say that. TNR has a long history of racism, including helping stir fervor about crack babies. The article certainly should not give them the last word--ending with a quote from them seems unprofessional. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.6.92.43 (talk) 18:39, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Libertarian Infantilism
As some have already argued. The Criticism section should be removed for its use of blatantly ideologues with openly dishonest agendas. The data section seems to accept that the criticism has some merit without actually providing data. Though all arguments for everything has unclear data until proven, like the existence of fairies. Though the entire premise is so childishly wrong from a real world economics standpoint that it shows great dishonesty on the part of the editors(or great delusion) to include it. Welfare is provided because all members of society cant always provide labour market income. This is matematically impossible in an economy, especially a labour market one with inbuilt unemployment as a mechanism. As serious welfare economists have to point out to those with zero knowledge on the topics, like Right-Wing Economists. Welfare income is provided to those with a low attatchment to the labour market. Ie disabled, children, elderly and unemployed, etc. These groups have low labour income because they are not a part of the labour market. These factors might be interesting to note to anyone that want to understand basic economics. Is the fact that most groups often outside the labour market, exept children(which Murray wanted back into the work force)and the elderly, can't work(disability, unemployment). Or are not expected to work(children, exept in Libertarian ideology). Ie most people who can work and is not putting it of for studying or are of independent means already work. Or don't because the labour markets can not provide work. Or to put it bluntly, most people who can(and should) work already work, or have other life commitments. So the obious case of the reform was to force groups into the workplace that had other commitments, and to increase the poverty of those outside of the labour market altogheter, which had been a long time goal of almost all Right Wing politicians in the US by their own word. Any discussion need to be understood in that context. There is mostly the matter of perspective one can bring up. That it is historically significant and therefore valuble to have. But as someone else have mentioned, only blatantly Right Wing Ideologues with pseudo-psychological assertions are treated as relevant. Instead of criticism from serious people invested in the utility of the program, and of course the end users of the program. Which one could easily compared to only allowing anti-vaxxers to comment on a critique of a medicine survey and not the professionals and end users themself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Akiosn (talk • contribs) 17:46, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Man in the house rule - effects on families and promotion of single parent households
The "Man in the house rule" part needs to say that AFDC encouraged single mothers, fatherless homes and negatively affected families.

From. "The rules sought to ensure only women with children, who at the time were expected not to work, benefitted from welfare. Households with an adult male were viewed as undeserving of assistance because adult males were expected to provide for their families through work. “Man in the house” rules, enforced through highly invasive inspections, forced many families to choose between maintaining welfare supports and keeping their families intact."

Paraphrasing the quote: The "Man in the house rule" promoted single parent mother headed families, mothers not to work and children to grow up without a father in the household." 2600:1700:D591:5F10:8D4A:449A:88E:A161 (talk) 22:58, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Most recent edit
By unreliable source, I miswrote. I just removed a widely discredited source that has been extensively documented for it's connections to white supremacists. GrandPeople44 (talk) 03:00, 3 January 2024 (UTC)