Is California the welfare capital?
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jul/28/welfare-capital-of-the-us/
When Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature overhauled the state’s welfare program last month, some people learned a jarring fact for the first time: California has one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients.
That California has a lot of people on welfare was not a secret. In addition to its size, the state has a long history of heavy focus on social services, in part because of years of Democratic dominance in Sacramento.
But the size of California’s welfare rolls is disproportionate when you consider the state has only 12 percent of the nation’s population. Some of it has to do with the benefits being more generous than in many other states, but experts also point to various economic and social factors.
There’s more to support the notion that this is the welfare state.
California:
• Pays out one of the highest maximum monthly cash grants to the average family on welfare, $638.
• Continues aid for children even when the parents lose eligibility.
• Provides benefits even to some who find a job and helps with child care and transportation while attending school or training.
On the flip side, California is not the land of endless “Cadillac” benefits:
• The actual average cash grant for the typical family of three is $463.
• Welfare payments have been cut twice since 2009 while 18 states have provided nominal increases.
• The high cost of housing eats up more of the aid than in other states with smaller grants.
The figures for the states do not include other support, such as food stamps, known as CalFresh in California, or Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California.
The amount California spends and the level of its benefits have been central to the long-running debate over why so many people here are on welfare.
It’s notable that California proportionately spends more on direct cash aid than noncash assistance than most other states. Nationally, 31 percent of benefits are direct cash while 69 percent are noncash services. California is somewhat the reverse: 56 percent cash, 44 percent noncash. Noncash aid includes such programs as child care, job training and transportation.
California, with Democrats in the legislative majority, held fast in shielding recipients from deep cuts for years. But lawmakers reluctantly started to turn to welfare for savings as the state began to sink deeper into the Great Recession and its deficits forced economies in spending on schools, parks and public safety.
California’s family of three in 2008-09 could draw as much as $723 a month in direct cash aid. Today, that same family gets a maximum of $638.
Take Texas for example. For every 100 families below the poverty line there, only six receive assistance, she said. In California, 66 of those below the poverty line are helped.
“I don’t call that ‘Texas doing better than California.’ In Texas there are still 94 poor families who need assistance,” Schott said.
Overall, when state and federal commitments are combined, California’s $6.67 billion is far and away the most spent by any state.
No other state breaks the $2 billion mark and only six others top $1 billion.
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