WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- In order to properly establish which steps to take in further reforming the nation's welfare program, scientific, ethnographic research should be used to collect, analyze and present the views and experiences of welfare recipients who actually make the move to work, according to policy experts at a recent think tank forum in Washington, D.C.
"The underlying goal of ethnographic research is to make sure the people who are the subjects -- the people who actually live through the social conditions that public policies are supposed to affect -- are a vital part of the record," said Lisa Dodson, a research professor of public policy at Boston College, at Thursday's Brookings Institution Forum, "Living on and off welfare: Family experiences and ethnographic research."
Since the enactment of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, formally called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, there is plenty of data showing large decreases in welfare caseloads, increased employment, and higher incomes among single mothers formerly on welfare. Declines in child poverty, a steady decline in teen pregnancy, and a leveling off in out-of-wedlock births have also been shown.
Critics, however, believe that this data do not reflect the total impact that these policy changes have had on the families and communities involved. They say this is where ethnographic research can be valuable.
"The people who are actually going to live through the policies that we are reforming and changing, those people need to be a central presence in the development of those national policies," said Dodson. "Otherwise, we tend to get it wrong, and we have gotten it wrong before."
Ethnography is the branch of anthropology that seeks to describe human cultures in scientific terms. Rather than simply amassing data and figures, ethnographers, the scientists who conduct such work, seek to collect data that encompasses people's feelings in an attempt to develop information outside of quantitative categories such as those created by multiple choice surveys.
The main techniques of ethnography include researchers participating with and also observing the people being studied, as well as asking questions designed to elicit subjects' individual viewpoints. Through these techniques, ethnographic researchers attempt to provide detailed descriptions of social phenomena, combined with direct quotations from the subjects involved, about their own attitudes, experiences and beliefs.
There are limits and dangers to this approach, however. The stories, especially if they are compelling, can lead to an overstatement of findings, or can overshadow actual data. In addition, individual results are hard to duplicate, given the nature of the research.
In the case of welfare reform, some ethnographic researchers are attempting to determine whether the families who have moved off welfare and into work are truly earning more income and have actually improved their quality of life. Other questions they sought to answer involve the that face barriers parents trying to get stable work, the ability of parents to handle the challenges of balancing work with child care needs, and the overall effect on children of parents moving from welfare to work.
Dodson said that in her recent research into the progress of welfare recipients moving into mainstream jobs, she solicited responses from not only those making the move into work but also from their bosses, their children's teachers and others who have regular contact with these families.
As one example of her findings she cited a mother who walked out of a job that she liked, because she was unable to find adequate childcare during her working hours. Dodson said this was a common problem for the primarily single mothers in the survey.
"We interviewed almost no one in the course of this study who didn't want to have a job," said Dodson. "But we also hear about these kinds of barriers that make the work difficult for them."
Ellen K. Scott, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, conducted her research in highly disadvantaged neighborhoods in Cleveland, Ohio. The results showed some success in moving people off welfare, but not without significant costs to their families and children.
She says that on average, the incomes of those surveyed increased from $1,000 to $1,500 per month, with 60 percent of those making the transition from welfare to work.
But she believes these numbers are deceiving, because few of those people found good jobs with benefits, and were forced to juggle two or more jobs to barely make ends meet.
Also, she says she found that families who improve their situation beyond what it was on welfare can accomplish that only "when everything comes together (perfectly)."
Scott says that care for their children was a particular problem for the single mothers who dominate this segment of the population. Many of them were found to be dependent upon sometimes unreliable networks of family members to help care for children. Often, younger children were left home alone under the care of an older child.
"We are very concerned that adolescents may be at serious risk in this situation," said Scott. "For all the women, the care of their children was a central concern, and they worried about the negative aspects of their absence from the home."
In terms of the ongoing debate about promoting marriage for welfare recipients, some believe that the plans of the administration of President George W. Bush, to tie welfare assistance to marriage, may be unrealistic. They say that fundamental shifts in how people view marriage and childbearing make marriage-centered reforms an inappropriate response to the problem.
Christina M. Gibson, assistant professor of public policy studies at Duke University, said that her ethnographic research shows that although the vast majority of unmarried couples who had recently had children were decidedly pro-marriage, they were unlikely to take the step.
Her research is based upon interviews with 25 unmarried couples in Chicago, Milwaukee and New York who recently had a child, and upon a nationwide survey of 5,000 low-to-moderate income couples conducted following the birth of their first child.
Gibson says data from that survey show that one year following the birth of a child, only two-thirds of unwed couples actually walk down the aisle.
She noted that the unmarried parents she interviewed felt that before they could get married they had to meet certain financial and job-related goals typically associated with middle-income suburban lifestyles. These included steady jobs for both parents that would produce an income that could provide for a decent house, car and other features associated with middle-class life. She said they wanted to be able not just to pay the bills and live paycheck to paycheck, but also to "transcend (their) class."
"Just having a child (together) wasn't sufficient reason to marry someone," she said.
Ronald B. Mincy, a professor of social policy and social work practice at Columbia University, believes that by placing so much emphasis on marriage, public policy could inhibit efforts to make unmarried fathers more integral to the lives of their children. He says a more flexible approach that acknowledges demographic realities is needed, otherwise single-parent African American families could be further marginalized.
Gibson noted that 45 percent of black children in the United States are born into households where the parents are involved in a "visiting" relationship, not a live-in relationship.
Because of this, Mincy believes it would be a mistake to institute an inflexible, one-size-fits-all approach to welfare policy that ties benefits to marriage. He says such a policy would ignore the generalized shift in the black population away from marriage -- which is reflected in the U.S. population as whole -- and also ignore the need for paternal involvement.
He said research has also shown that for an African-American family on welfare, the father's employment increases the likelihood that he will not have children by another woman, along with the likelihood that the family will move up the economic ladder. An increase in the stability of a mother's employment actually has the effect of keeping a family at a lower economic standing, because she is able to become more self-sufficient (and less dependent on the father's steady employment), he says.
Nevertheless, Mincy says the Bush administration has all but halted Clinton-era welfare programs aimed at improving parents' involvement with their children. Mincy believes this is a mistake: If public policy is intended to encourage marriage, it should encourage fathers to be more supportive by helping them get jobs.
"It just boggles my mind that we have conversations about family formation but not about employing fathers and giving them the ability to pay for their kids," said Mincy.
