Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 22, No. 3,1994 (530-533)

Social Science Versus Ideology: A Reflection onthe Work of Christopher Jencks

Paul Gardner

Christopher Jencks, r/ze//ome/es5. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.Christopher Jencks, Rethinking Social Policy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1992.

To study poverty is to be reminded of how difficult it is to solve social problems.Almost 30 years after Lyndon Johnson declared a "War on Poverty," America's poor sUllnumber in tbe tens of millions. Tbe 1991 poverty rate of 14.2% was the highest in tenyears. Furthermore, despite controversy over the number of bomeless, most scholarsagree there are more today than in 1970.

Arguments about poverty and the bomeless tend to be dominated by liberalsblaming society and conservatives blaming the govemment or the poor. Thus it isrefreshing to read tbe work of Christopher Jencks, an author who brings clarity,coherence, and a reliance on facts to issues that rarely are enlightened by ideologues ofeither the left or Uie right.

Rethinking Social Policy contoins essays on welfare, affirmaUve action, crime,urban gbettos, and the underclass. Most essays contoin a critique of a major work ofsocial policy, such as Charles Murray's Losing Ground ("The S^ety Net") and WilliamJulius Wilson's The Truly Disadvantaged ("Is the American Underclass Growing?").Similarly, The Homeless is an extensive critique of major works on this topic.

But Jencks is not just reviewing what others have done. He is interested inbringing the best social science available to each topic, which makes his work valuablefor two reasons. His first message is that facts, properly understood, are better guides tosocial policy than is ideology. Secondly, because he is right about tbe superiority of factsover ideology, Jencks has useful things to say to President Clinton and others who wantto reform welfare.

Facts, not Ideology

Ideology is a poor guide to social policy because it subsUtutes general principles(which may be right some of the Ume) for fact-based analyses. Take the conservativeprinciple that govemment programs have harmed the poor. This notion was expressedbest by President Reagan when be said: "There is no quesUon tbat many well-intentioned... programs contributed to family breakups, welfare dependency, and a large increase inout-of-wedlock births" (Moynihan, 1986, p. 69). The most compelling scholarlyevidence for this assertion is found in Charles Murray's Losing Ground. Murray'sargument is not only Uiat govemment doesn't know what it is doing when it tries to helpthe poor, but that it knows so little it does exacUy the opposite of what it intends to do.

In a chapter enliUed "The Safety Net," in Rethinking Social Policy^ Jencks tells amore complicated story. His dato show improvements in poor people's income, healUicare, infant mortality, and life expectoncy rates since 1965. Moreover, without belp fromthe government, poverty would have gotten worse during the 1970s—since America'seconomy began to decline, inflation and unemployment rose, and real income andproducUvity fell. As the economy worsened, legislators began to direct more money totbe "deserving," and less to the "undeserving," poor.

The deserving poor were the elderly and disabled—those not capable ofworking. During tbe 1970s, poverty declined among these groups because we spent more

ReviewslEssays: Gardner

money on them. On the other hand, govemments, especially stote govemments, tightenedthe reigns on programs for the undeserving poor—the poor whom many thought shouldwork but were not working: single mothers and marginally employable men.

Jencks successfully refutes Reagan's and Murray's depicUon of govemment as apitiless giant that hurts Uiose it tries to help. Materially, Uie poor are better off today thanthey were in 1965. And, during the 1970s and 1980s, the poor who did better—theelderly and disabled—were exactly the groups govemment intended to help.

Liberals rely too much on ideology as well. While conservatives blamegovernment for doing too mucb, liberals see government doing too little. A commonliberal complaint during the 1980s was that the increase in the number of homeless wasdue to cutbacks in low-income bousing proposed by the Reagan AdminislraUon. In"Budget Cuts and Rent Control," in The Homeless, Jencks' dato show that this was notso. Vacancy rates in low-income bousing changed very litlle during Ihe 1980s. Further, ahigher percentoge of low-income tenants received some kind of govemment bousingsubsidy in 1989 (32%), compared to 1979 (21%). Finally, Jencks looks at actual outlaysfor low-income housing during the 1980s, and finds that "they rose [in constont dollars]from $9 billion in 1980 to $18 billion in 1992" (p. 97).

According to Jencks, liberals are right to blame govemment cutbacks for someof the increase in the homeless. But tbe cutbacks that hurt the most were in cashassistonce, and not bousing subsidies. ConservaUves are right to point out tbedeficiencies in govemment efforts lo help the poor. On the matter of the harmful effectsof public policies, Jencks is parUcularly hard on the deinsUtuUonalizaUon of the mentallyill.

Liberal policies that made il harder to instituUonalize even mentolly ill paUentswith a history of violent behavior surely accounted for a significant portion of theincrease in the number of homeless throughout the 1980s. But conservaUve policies thatled lo stote govemment cutbacks in support for Uie mentally ill made tbe problem worse.

NeiUier Uie liberal fidelity to personal liberty nor the conservative emphasis onsmaller govemment provides a pmdent guide to helping Uie homeless, because each is anabstraction that says nolhing about policy consequences or the advantoge of one course ofacUon over another. Is affirmaUve aclion good policy? Is Uie underclass growing? Whyare long-term welfare recipients dependent on welfare? What is the relaUonsbip betweencrime and genes? Why are there more homeless in 1994 than Uiere were in 1970? Noneof Uiese queslions can be answered by ideology. They can be answered only by a carefulassessment of the best dato available. Jencks does this throughout boUi books, and henceprovides useful insights into solutions to many problems, especially the vexing problemof welfare dependence.

Welfare Reform

In several essays in Rethinking and in a concluding chapter in The Homeless,Jencks carefully lays oul the dilemma of single mothers on welfare. Consider tbequesUon of work versus welfare. In most stotes a combinaUon of Aid to Families wiUiDependent Children (AFDC) benefits and food stomps are not enough to bring poorfamilies up to the poverty line. Because welfare just doesn't pay very much, wouldn'twork seem a better choice than welfare?

In "Reforming Welfare," in Rethinking, Jencks writes about Uie average welfarerecipient with two children in Pennsylvania in 1987 (the median welfare stole). If shewas on welfare, her income from AFDC and food stomps would be about $6,500 and shewould be covered by Medicaid. On the other hand, if she works at a job that pays her$8,000 ($4.90/hr) "... she would have lost all her AFDC benefits and Medicaid coveragewiUiin a year, but she would have kept most of her food stomps" (p. 223). Her salary and

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food stomp allotment seem to make her substontially better off working than onwelfare—about $3,000 better off!

But is she really? When she loses Medicaid, she will have to pay for herfamily's health insurance. Once clothing, transportoUon, and health care costs are added,she is no better off working than on welfare.

There is a lot of tolk about the welfare trap. According to Jencks, welfare trapsmany people, not because they are lazy, but because low-wage jobs pay so poorly. Thereason so many low-skilled mothers spend so much Ume on welfare is Uiat it is tberational thing to do. Who among us would work if work paid less than welfare?

How do we get more welfare recipients into the workforce? One soluUon is tomake welfare less appealing. This strategy has been pushed by conservatives Ihe past 15years. Between 1976 and 1988, the purchasing power of the average welfare recipientdeclined by 16% (p. 227). In addiUon, many stotes tigbtened eligibility requirements forAFDC. As a consequence, the percentoge of single mothers receiving AFDC decreasedfrom 60% in 1975 to 45% in 1988 (p. 227).

An example of a current form of Uiis "stick" approach is New Jersey's decisionto reduce addiUonal AFDC payments after the birth of the second child. This principle isalso built into President Clinton's welfare reform proposal. As Jencks demonstrates, suchpolicies are not likely to work because the rate of illegitimacy is not eorrelated with thesize of welfare benefits.'

Liberals, on the other hand, want to increase welfare benefits. Assuming thatmany single mothers wiUi children cannot make enough to support their families or toafford decent housing, then one soluUon is to allow all single mothers lo receive AFDCand keep all their eamings. We could provide all single mothers with enough income sothat with a job and perhaps some child support, their income would break above thepoverty line. There are at least two advantoges to this strategy: single mothers would beencouraged lo work and those who did would be better off Uian those tbat did not.^

Jencks understonds that any attempt to raise welfare benefits is fraught withpoliUcal difficulUes. Cost is a problem, but more serious is the fact that Americans do notlike welfare and that they especially do not like AFDC. But that fact doesn't mean thatwe as a nation are nol willing to help the poor. In a recent CBS poll, respondents wereasked whether we are spending too much on welfare. Forty-four percent said we were.Yet when the respondents were asked whether we are spending too much on the poor, tberate of agreement dropped to 13%. In fact, almost two-thirds believed that we arespending too litlle on the poor (Toner, 1992). People dislike welfare, not tbe poor.

Jencks rejects the conservative soluUon of less govemment, because it hasn'tworked to reduce oul-of-wedlock birihs and because he believes government has aresponsibility to help tbe poor. He rejects the liberal soluUon of higher AFDC payments,because it is impracUcal poliUcally and asks too litUe of Ihe poor.

Where does this leave us? Jencks advises an approach that makes work areasonable choice for those now on welfare. But he cauUons tbat this will cost moremoney, at least in the short term, than welfare now costs. Why is this?

Research done with Kathryn Edin on how much welfare mothers actually spendin a month (as opposed to how much they receive from govemment and reported work)has convinced Jencks that "urban welfare mothers typically need about twice as muchcash as they get from welfare" {The Homeless, p. 111). And, for the reasons describedabove, ihey need even more money if they work. This means that they need a job payingat least $7 an hour—an unrealistic goal given how poorly educated and unskilled manywelfare molhers are.

Jencks suggests that we find ways to supplement the income of poor familiesthrough Eamed Income Tax Credits and by providing more money for noncash ilems,like food stomps, housing subsidies, medical insurance, and child care. President Clinton

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and Congress have done some of this, with an expansion of the Eamed Income TaxCredit, and they may do more in Uie area of health insurance and child care. But Jencksis skepUcal of the (Tlinton proposal to limit welfare recipients to two years on AFDC.Without more income supplements than we currently provide and significantly moremoney for job training, most recipients will not be able to make enough to live decenUy.

Jencks' scientific analysis of poverty and the bomeless complicates matters forthose comfortoble with slogans that blame society, govemment, or Uie poor. His messageof the cosUiness of preparing welfare recipients for work also makes the job of welfarereformers more difficult. But Jencks gives us the best of wbat social science has to offerthe world: objecUve, fact-based analyses. Liberals and conservaUves will find mucb inboth books with which to disagree. Perhaps thai is the best recommendaUon of all!

Paul Gardner is an associate professor of political science at Luther College inDecorah, Iowa. His teaching and research interests include American politicalinsUtuUons and welfare policy.

Notes

' For an altemative view see Murray (1984, 1994),In Rethinking Social Policy, Jeneks writes Ihat we upset the moral order if we allow welfare

recipients to make more than those who work (p, 89),

References

Moynihan, D, (1986), Family and nation. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovieh,Murray, C, (1984), Losing ground. New York, NY: Basic Books,Murray, C, (1994), Does welfare bring more babies? The Public Interest, 115, 17-30.Toner, R, (1992, July 5), Politics of welfare: Foeusing on the problems. The NewYorkTimes,pp. \, \3.Wilson, W, (1987), The truly disadvantaged. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

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