Gordon Berlin, head of the MDRC, has written a short piece for Roll Call asking an important and often neglected question. Given that welfare reform was premised on the notion that work supports, i.e., benefits conditional on and designed to facilitate labor force participation, are preferable to unconditional transfers — because, among other things, this approach has greater potential to interrupt the cycle of worklessness and intergenerational poverty — how are we to respond to an economic moment in which all less-skilled workers are having an extremely hard time finding market work of any kind?

The Great Recession –and the lingering jobless recovery –has been an unprecedented test of antipoverty programs like welfare. While the rolls of other safety net programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) and unemployment insurance, have risen to meet growing needs, the welfare program has been largely unresponsive to the crisis. In fact, at the depths of the recession in 2008-2009, welfare caseloads rose less than 10 percent in 16 states and actually fell in six others. Restructured as a fixed block grant to states, welfare no longer played the historic countercyclical role it had in past recessions, as cash strapped states proved reluctant to let welfare rolls grow, a failure that likely had both human and economic consequences.

As you can tell, Berlin does not register as much concern about the human and economic consequences of long-term welfare dependency.

A more responsive welfare program would promote work and self-sufficiency in good times while expanding to provide support for the nation’s poorest citizens in difficult economic times. Creating a permanent emergency fund that would only be triggered by high poverty and unemployment indicators would enable states to support families when jobs are scarce.

One might argue that the expansion of SNAP and unemployment insurance addresses the most pressing needs, and that state governments should rise to the challenge of addressing entrenched poverty. This isn’t exactly my view, but it will have to be addressed.

[I]f we prefer work over welfare, public job creation may be necessary during severe downturns.

I was surprised that Berlin didn’t address this possibility at greater length, as the details are crucial. Would we, per William Julius Wilson’s suggestion, creating public jobs that pay less than the minimum wage, to create an automatic incentive for participants to find private sector work? This proposal has been resisted by traditional public employees, yet it makes a good deal of sense.

If we are no longer awash in jobs, how do we enforce the work-focused quid pro quo that was at the heart of welfare reform’s historic compromise?
Should we continue placing limits on participation in education and training? Americans believe that economic downturns are exactly the right time to make investments in human capital; the record college enrollment numbers during the last two years attest to that. And research demonstrates that the most effective welfare-to-work programs mix a work-first focus with skill-building for those who aren’t ready for jobs.

There is also considerable research, surveyed by Heckman and Carneiro, that most job training programs produce very little value.

Regardless, I share many of Berlin’s concerns, and this is an issue that merits closer study.