The Ending of the Black Underclass, Part XVIII
According to tabulations obtained exclusively by kausfiles from
sources deep within the federal government, the percentage of the
African-American population on welfare is at its lowest level in at least 15
years, and probably its lowest level since the early 1970s. This "dependency
rate" (or "recipiency rate," for the PC-inclined) was calculated by comparing
the number of welfare cases with the number of adults (age 15-49) in the
population. Here are the numbers for non-Hispanic blacks:
Year Dependency rate*
1983
9.7
1984
9.3
1985
10.4
1986
10.2
1987
9.7
1988
9.7
1989
10.2
1990
11.0
1991
11.5
1992
11.3
1993
11.1
1994
10.9
1995
10.6
1996
9.7
1997
8.4
1998
7.0
You get the picture. Welfare dependency among blacks remained at a high
level until 1995, the year before the welfare system was radically reformed
(when there was already a lot of talk of reform in the air). Since then, the
African-American dependency rate has plummeted 34 percent. There's no reason to
think the drop stopped in 1999.
Is the black dependency rate the lowest ever? Probably not, for the simple
reason that before the "welfare explosion" of the late 1960s, many poor blacks
were blocked or discouraged from receiving welfare. It's hard to know for
sure--due to a change in record-keeping practices, there aren't strictly
comparable numbers from before 1983. But a very crude back-of-envelope
calculation suggests that the black dependency rate in 1967 was somewhere
around 5 percent, and that it then more than doubled, to around 12 percent, by
1973, when the welfare caseload stabilized. That would make the current rate
the lowest since the early '70s or even the late '60s.
Politically sensitive officials, including those in the Clinton
administration, may not want to publicize these encouraging statistics, because
they also show that the black dependency rate, even at 7 percent, remains far
higher than the white rate (which is 1.1 percent). But so what? The black
dependency rate has always been much higher than the white rate, at least since
the welfare explosion. This is one reason why the "underclass," as measured by
scholars such as William Julius Wilson, Isabel Sawhill, and Ron Mincy, has been
a majority-black problem.
And that's the point. The existence of a largely black, welfare-dependent
"underclass"--and the way it reinforces stereotypes about all blacks and
poisons race relations--has been America's greatest social problem. What the
plunging dependency rate suggests is that this problem may be on its way to
being radically ameliorated, if not solved. A smaller portion of blacks on
welfare means not only a smaller underclass; it means more working and
middle-class role models. It means there is a much greater chance that the
latter two groups will eventually swamp and assimilate the former. (Might the
drop in black dependency just record people who are being pushed off welfare
into poverty? It could, but it almost certainly doesn't. Black poverty and
black child poverty have been falling. Click here for more on this
issue.)
Can a favorable "tipping point" be far away? Things seem to be finally
getting better very fast.
[* Methodological fine print: "Welfare" means Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC) or its successor program, Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families (TANF). For various technical reasons, it is difficult to
exactly compare the number of people (including children) on welfare with the
total African-American population (including children) over time. As noted, the
table above instead compares the number of African-American welfare "cases"
with the adult population. Typically there is only one adult per welfare
"case," but not always--for example, under some conditions, two-parent families
qualify for welfare. There may be also be one, or two, or more children in a
single "case." The "case" numbers also include cases in which technically only
a child receives welfare--although typically there is also an adult in the
household. ]
