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- Title
Welfare Reform: Serving America's Children.
- Authors
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick
- Abstract
The article presents information on child and family welfare reform in the United States. The U.S. birthrate dropped below the replacement level in 1975. As a result, the number of young adults--age eighteen to twenty-four--as a percentage of the population will decline 23 percent by the year 2000. As this age group shrinks, there will be fewer adolescent mothers, fewer such mothers seeking public assistance and work training, and fewer young adults entering the labor force. The plain fact is that America has no children to waste. Yet, twenty percent of the children suffer from the impoverishment. The conditions that have developed over a generation will not change overnight. It is possible, however, to change direction. There must be a new trend in place by creating a new system of child support that, without abandoning ultimate security, puts its first emphasis on earned income, and that, without giving up on the problems of deeply dependent families, extends coverage to all needful ones. Welfare reform must become the art of the possible, or it will become a diversion of the essentially unserious.
- Subjects
UNITED States; PUBLIC welfare; CHILD support; POPULATION; AGE groups; INCOME
- Publication
Teachers College Record, 1989, Vol 90, Issue 3, p337
- ISSN
0161-4681
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/016146818909000316