Seaton Essay Contest 3rd Place Essay
The Evolution of Social Welfare &
Government Assistance in Ohio
Ashley Miravalle
Poverty and need have long been a part of mankind’s history, and efforts to combat them trailed their existence. Over the last four hundred years the attempt to end poverty by means of social welfare and government assistance has been ever present. The key to understanding the evolution of social welfare and government assistance in Ohio is to understand its evolution on a greater scale; the idea of those in need was in place long before Ohio. The evolution of social welfare programs and government resources in Ohio is largely influenced by the history of social assistance policy making, inside and outside of the United States.
In England in 1601 the Elizabethan Poor Law was ratified, placing the responsibility of the needy on society as a whole. This one law brought together all previously existing laws concerning the poor and consolidated them into one policy. The Elizabethan Poor Law is especially important because social welfare programs in the United States are influenced greatly by this law—which came into the twenty-first century largely unaltered. Understanding the Elizabethan Poor Law is paramount to understanding social welfare today in the United States and Ohio. For the first time in history mandatory taxes were placed on people “of ability” to provide relief to the poor; some wealthy who refused to comply with the law were threatened with the loss of their personal property. Originally, British citizens were only responsible for their “own poor” and were taxed within their own parish.
The Elizabethan Poor Law was designed to help only certain types of people known as the “worthy poor.” This included people who were unable to work (orphans, or people who were too old or too sick), and people who came to be known as the “laboring poor.” These people were willing and able to work, but for various reasons were not able to financially support themselves with the jobs available to them. The type of assistance available to the “worthy poor” included cash assistance (in the form of weekly pensions), tangible goods, (clothing and fuel, for example), and various services (medical care) thanks to the funds collected from taxes.
The “unworthy poor,” who were not allowed access to this aid, consisted of unwed mothers, drifters, and those who were capable of working but unwilling to do so. This type of discrimination of the poor has withstood the test of time, and still today government assistance and social welfare programs in the United States are limited to certain groups of people.
Throughout history attitudes toward the needy fluctuate between sympathy and empathy to a sort of prejudice. This could possibly be the result of economic changes. When times are tough, like during the great Depression, the inclination to give charity rises and more people are willing to contribute. When need becomes great among all levels of society, and all types of people are negatively affected by circumstances beyond individual control, it becomes more socially acceptable to provide and receive assistance. On the contrary, in times of economic boom and prosperity, attitudes shift in the opposite direction. If most people are economically prosperous and there are still percentages that are not, it seems to be that the people who are getting ahead look down upon those who cannot. The assumption among the better off might be that those not well off are simply not doing enough to get ahead. Therefore, the desire to give to charity decreases because the successful feel like they are aiding those people who can, but refuse to, help themselves. This attitude reflects the Elizabethan Poor Law and its classifications of “worthy poor” and “unworthy poor.” Over four hundred years have gone by since the Elizabethan Poor Law went into effect, but it seems in many ways time has not changed. Helping the poor has rarely been viewed by all as a noble cause.
The influence of the Elizabethan Poor Law reached the New World in the 1600s as colonists brought with them ideas from England. By the mid-17th century the idea that “self-discipline, frugality, and hard work” were “characteristics of the deserving” shaped social policy. Unemployed people and those who were dependent on society were frowned upon. Calvinist and Lutheran teaching had a stronghold in present day Ohio. Religious beliefs often shaped social policies, due to the fact that the morals of the people who made those social policies reflected their respective religion. Helping the poor was one of the ways man could redeem himself in the eyes of God. Living an unselfish life by way of charity could make man worthy in God’s eyes.
During the 1700s, social welfare in Ohio lands took a backseat to other issues. As settlers moved into Ohio territory, discrepancies arose between the settlers and Indians. Land speculation was also a primary focus. Survival was the mindset. There was no true government at the time, much less mandated governmental assistance programs. It was not until 1776 that the United States declared itself independent from Britain. For many years after that the United States was fragile. The new government remained fairly weak until the Constitution of 1789 promised to do things like “promote the general welfare.” At this point, the people of the United States (and future Ohioans) are primarily concerned with exploration and development.
It was not until the 1800s that social welfare and government assistance to the poor began implementation in Ohio and the rest of the United States. The first social welfare agencies began to arrive in urban areas in the early 1800s, where the plight of the poor was the worst. Not coincidentally, this is the time when social work began to develop as a profession. Before this time the responsibility of the poor was often left in the hands of the church. Formal education in social work also arose.
In 1875 The Ohio State University offered its first course in Social Work, and in 1919 an accredited Social Work program was developed. The Ohio State University has the self-proclaimed “oldest continuously accredited public Social Work Program.” The development of programs like these springing up in universities and places of higher education displays the attitude of the society. The issue of social welfare was obviously important enough to develop an educational curriculum in order to train students in the specific subject.
During the economic slump of the Great Depression, Ohio and the rest of the country found itself in trouble. Suddenly “need” was not only the vocabulary of the poor. Many people from all walks of life lost ev-erything they had—homes, jobs, and life savings. By 1933 the unemployment rate in Ohio rose to 37.3 percent. A sort of panic rose as people began to wonder how a country was to pull itself out of such a mess.
The answer to the Great Depression of the 1930s was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, and more specifically the Social Security Act of 1935. The Social Security Act lies became the blue print for the federal government’s social service system. Many of the programs that exist today, like Aid to Families with Dependent Children (which was replaced in 1996 by the Temporary Assistance to Families or TANF ) are based off of programs initiated at the dawn of the Social Security Act. Since its inception, the Social Security Act has been amended to include health benefits (Medicaid and Medicare in the 1960s), cash assistance, and services for families, children, seniors, the blind, and the disabled.
The effects of the New Deal Programs were felt immediately. A study done in Cincinnati, Ohio in the late 1930s by the U.S. Children’s Bureau found that 478 families were “receiving aid to dependent children and 2,153 families were receiving emergency aid.” As useful as the Social Security Act was in the 1930s, it did not go without expansion. In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson added Medicaid benefits and food stamps to the list of government assistance available. An attitude shift also took place in the 1960s and public aid and social services came to be seen not so much as a charity but as something citizens of the United States were entitled to. The Economic Opportunity Act, as this was known, was part of Johnson’s greater War on Poverty.
The expansion of social security programs and government assistance came to a halt in the 1980s under the Reagan administration. Although President Ronald Reagan’s true feelings concerning Social Security and government assistance to the needy are thought to have been negative, he did not altogether halt programs. Reagan did tighten eligibility requirements by forcing states to set eligibility and income verification standards, and today is credited with “saving” Social Security, although that topic is up for debate. Reagan might have tightened the budget, but it had devastating effects on people who relied on government assistance. Reagan had three main goals for government assistance to the needy: first, to implement changes in entitlement programs which would help to lessen short-term spending; second, to give more welfare responsibility to individual states, and third, to reduce reliance on government benefits by encouraging individuals to rely more on their own resources.
Although Roosevelt made social welfare a federal priority in the 1930s, Reagan’s goal in the 1980s was to make social welfare programs a state and local concern. Under Reagan only the very poor, the “poorest of the poor,” were able to receive benefits, and this was oftentimes not enough, denying the “unworthy poor” benefits, like the Elizabethan Poor Law did in England in the 1600s.
There were new developments in the 1990s as President Bill Clinton vowed to “end welfare as we know it.” In 1996 the United States Congress passed the personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which put an end to the national welfare program. Instead of the government dispersing money for social welfare benefits, states were given grants by the federal government to do with as each individual state deemed necessary. The benefit to this might be that individual states understand their own needs and may allocate funds better than the federal government. The only conditions set to the states for receiving the grants are that welfare recipients can only collect monetary benefits (cash assistance) for up to five years, and that they also must be working and/or participating in job-training programs.
The affect the new policy has on Ohio was great. Ohioans are currently living under this welfare policy. On July 2, 1997 Governor George Voinovich signed the bill into law, and by October 1, 1997 the law went into effect. Ohio was one of thirteen states allowing individual counties to design their own welfare reform plans. As mentioned before, there were only a few rules mandated by the federal government for receiving aid. How programs were going to be developed and implemented was entirely up to Ohio’s individual counties. By January 1, 2000 all counties were required to have plans of action.
The Ohio Works First program, as it is known, is portrayed as being effective in lowering the amount in welfare checks being cut monthly—but that can be deceiving. The number of recipients receiving cash assistance in Ohio dropped, but reliance on other forms of welfare increased. The trend is now a mix of benefits being used—combining food stamps with a medical card and childcare, for example. Also, food pantries are being visited now more than ever. And recipients are now required to work at least thirty hours per week, if not more, or participate in approved work or educational programs. The difficulty, of course, is that the type jobs being offered to people on welfare are often low-paying and the work unskilled. The goal of Ohio Works First was to motivate people into the workforce by giving them a sense of self-accomplishment, but this may be low in a retail or service environment. Another downside is that Ohio actually became more restrictive with the federal grant money in order to better allocate the funds and guarantee that individual counties are following the rules. This is an odd idea, considering that Ohio Works First was supposed to allow the counties more freedom to develop plans to fit individual needs, and it actually gave less freedom.
The status of federal welfare assistance is such that the government is no longer responsible for social welfare and has passed off responsibility to the states. The benefits of doing this seem great—Ohio is allowed to design its own plan to fit its own needs, so long as the guidelines of federal regulations are followed. The downside is what has happened already. In order to establish better control among counties, Ohio has tightened the leash on everything. Ohio probably would have been better off if counties had not been able to develop individual plans. Ohio has 88 counties and 88 different ways of combating the same problem. It becomes nearly impossible to effectively track what is going on with these programs. If Ohio was not interested in developing one statewide plan, it would have been interesting to see what might have happened if the state had been divided into larger districts. In theory individual areas could get the required attention, but the state would not have to keep track of 88 plans.
The influence of the Elizabethan Poor Law is undeniable. England truly set the stage for social welfare and government assistance in the United States, although the success in developing effective programs to eliminate poverty is questionable. Now in the twenty-first century, states are left to themselves to combat their own poverty. It is truly similar to the Elizabethan era and how society was divided up by parish, so that citizens were only responsible for their “own poor.” Right now Ohio is making its own history in terms of social welfare policies. The present policy has been in effect for just under ten years, so the long term results have yet to be seen.