Alabama Earns an ‘F’ on 2015 Welfare Reform Report Card

CHICAGO  – Alabama is among seven states that earned an “F” for its welfare reform policies on the 2015 Welfare Reform Report Card, a comprehensive piece of scholarship produced by four public policy researchers at The Heartland Institute.

Alabama was among states with the worst welfare reform policies, finishing No. 45 of the 50 states. Missouri, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont also earned F grades on the report card.

Read the executive summary and full report titled 2015 Welfare Reform Report Card: A State-by-State Analysis of Anti-Poverty Performance and Welfare Reform Policies.

Nearly two decades ago, in 1996, Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed a reform measure ending the national entitlement to welfare for families with dependent children. Each state implemented welfare reform differently and a natural experiment began, allowing researchers to discover welfare policies that help people become financially independent and escape poverty.

“One of the main points here is, it doesn’t take a lot of governors’ time or legislators’ time to do something that really makes a difference,” said lead author Gary MacDougal, a policy advisor at The Heartland Institute. “We’ve got the richest nation in the world. We’ve got an obligation to people less fortunate than ourselves – people that have these barriers to help them get into the system that we know is the greatest in the world.”

“Its something that’s very fixable and Heartland stands ready to help,” MacDougal said.

The 2015 Welfare Reform Report Card grades five policies key to the goal of welfare: raising the standard of living of the nation’s poor by moving them to work and self-sufficiency. Those five policies are work requirements, cash diversion, service integration, time limits, and sanctions. Alabama’s grades:

There is hope for Alabama’s poor, according to the report’s authors: Effective welfare reform can save lives and produce positive effects on multiple generations. It can save taxpayers billions of dollars and help address such serious social maladies as crime, alcoholism, and teenage pregnancy.

To read the welfare reform report card – and compare Alabama to every other state in the union using an interactive map – visit heartland.org/welfare-reform.

MEDIA RELEASE/JIM LAKELY/HARTLAND INSTITUTE