After Welfare, Low Wages Remain a Stubborn Fact

Much has improved for Anne, a 37-year-old mother of four, since she made the leap from the welfare rolls to the work force in June. She has swapped idle days for a busy office job and turned self-doubt into surging hope.

First, there’s the money. Anne’s $8-an-hour clerical job at a firm in the San Gabriel Valley has freed her from having to shop for day-old bread and canned beans at a food bank. In place of her clunker is a smart-looking, if used, sedan. The three years she endured living in a roach-ridden motel are now but a sour memory.

And there are less tangible gains: the satisfaction of putting her once-sharp secretarial skills to use again, the simple respectability that comes with a job.

“I do feel better,” Anne said after work recently. “I can go to the market and write a check and buy a chicken--or a steak once in a while.”

Like others who have made the transition from welfare to work, she is better off financially. Although it would be tempting to paint her experience as a full turnabout, one fact remains stubbornly at the core of her life.

Despite the good feelings a job has brought her, and earnings that she figures add up to an extra $300 or so each month, she is still poor. Continued poverty, experts say, is likely to be the fate of most welfare recipients who will find work in relatively low-paying jobs.

The anxieties that nagged Anne during the four years she was on welfare have changed form but have not disappeared. Fears that she would never survive on a skimpy aid check now have metamorphosed into worry that she settled for too little pay. Frustration with joblessness has given way to concern that her small apartment is too cramped for her and two sons--a 5-year-old and a teenager. The expense of day care for the youngest boy now rests with a relative who agreed to foot the $400-a-month tab.

“I feel like my head is above water, that all these people are depending on me,” she said. “We’re all on top of each other. And are we ever going to get out of there?”

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Income is likely to improve for most who find work, according to a Times analysis of census surveys in California from 1993 to 1997. The median income for a California single mother of two whose only income came from working was $12,909, compared to $7,859 for one relying solely on Aid to Families With Dependent Children.

The disparity grows for married couples. California working couples with two children who collected no welfare earned a median income of $16,411, contrasted with $9,870 for those relying on AFDC alone.

One reason for the gap: Welfare benefits are limited by government formula, while work income--even low pay--is not.

The question of which pays better--welfare or work--has fueled political debate over public assistance and figured into the thinking of poor people devising the best way to survive.

“There is the calculus that the mom is making. She’s saying, ‘I can either be better off today [on welfare], or this is going to put me on an escalator that will make me better off eventually, so I’ll take the job,’ ” said Michael Hout, sociology professor and director of the Survey Research Center at UC Berkeley.

That calculation will become moot under welfare reform because aid recipients will have to look for work. What they will encounter instead is a new problem: making sure work pays off.

For Anne, this means broaching with her new boss the ticklish question of a raise. As an experienced secretary, she thinks she deserves at least an extra $2 an hour, but is six months too soon to ask? She may end up hunting for a better job, but how can she look while working all day?

Her employer has no idea Anne arrived straight off the welfare rolls, and she has no intention of divulging her prior plight. She spoke for this story as long as her full name was not printed or her employer identified.

Such are the complications of moving welfare recipients into a labor force where co-workers may harbor stereotypes of them as lazy or as cheats. Several current and former recipients with new jobs said they have been tight-lipped for fear colleagues will resent them.

Anne stresses that, for her, welfare was a safety net--not a lifestyle.

Trained as an executive secretary, she was working temporary jobs when, on the heels of a marital breakup, an ill-starred relationship left her pregnant with her youngest son. The boy’s birth took Anne out of the job market and onto AFDC, which provided $535 a month, plus food stamps. She moved into a motel for $500 a month and got by--with no child support--by pinching pennies, she said.

“It’s not comfortable. It’s a struggle when you’re going to food banks and trying to pay your electric bill,” she said. “It’s not an easy way to make a living.”

Anne said she felt worthless and worried that she was squandering her talents, but stayed home with her son because she couldn’t find affordable day care. She set a few personal goals for 1997: update her computer skills, get a job and find child care. She took computer classes at a nonprofit career center and met all three aims.

The additional few hundred dollars a month cover car payments and other bills. “There’s not extra money, but the bills are paid and there’s extra food,” she said.

Anne considers herself overqualified and is determined to find a better job. She would like to enhance her computer knowledge and has thought about taking classes at a community college.

Meantime, she is managing her new set of strains now that she has rejoined society’s mainstream. “The stress now,” she said, “is a more positive stress of normal people trying to make ends meet.”

Data Sources

The demographic profiles in these articles were drawn from government surveys of more than 68,000 Californians. The data sample--constructed by Times director of computer analysis Richard O’Reilly and data analyst Sandra Poindexter--is based on 1993 through 1997 Current Population Surveys conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The overall margin of error is 2 percentage points.

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Work or Welfare?

The vast majority of low income families that work make more money than comparable families on welfare.

Types of household

Single mother, one child under 18

Median income of welfare families: $6,474

Median income of working poor families: $10,883

Working poor families who exceed median income of welfare families: 72%

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Single mother, two children

Median income of welfare families: 7,859

Median income of working poor families: 12,909

Working poor families who exceed median income of welfare families: 79

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Single mother, three children

Median income of welfare families: 8,919

Median income of working poor families: 12,000

Working poor families who exceed median income of welfare families: 68

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Husband and wife, two children

Median income of welfare families: 9,870

Median income of working poor families: 16,411

Working poor families who exceed median income of welfare families: 84

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Husband and wife, three children under 18

Median income of welfare families: 10,116

Median income of working poor families: 18,607

Working poor families who exceed median income of welfare families: 87

Source: Los Angeles Times data analysis by Richard O’Reilly and Sandra Poindexter, based on Census Bureau Current Population Surveys of California, 1993-97