Let’s say you’re a woman living in the City of Richmond. Let’s say you have two children, ages three and seven, but no husband. Let’s say you work 40 hours a week earning the minimum wage, or $15,080 per year. How much can you potentially receive in public benefits?
Sean Gorman, the Richmond Times-Dispatch PolitiFact reporter, added up the numbers based on a report by the Virginia Department of Social Services:
- Welfare — $3,840
- Food stamps — $2,268
- Women, Infants and Children food basket — $600
- Child care assistance — $12,468
- School lunch — $1,296
- Housing voucher –$10,692
- Family Access to Medical Insurance Security Plan — estimated $9,807 (based on comparison to Medicaid)
- Total — $40,971
Add that $40,971 to the wages the woman earns, and we’re talking $56,000 a year. Then consider that the $40,971 in benefits are not taxable income. To earn the same amount in take-home pay– accounting for social security, Medicare, federal income taxes and state income taxes — the same woman would have to earn $5,000 to $10,000 more, depending on what assumptions you make. (That is a back-of-the-envelope calculation derived from running numbers through a federal tax calculator.)
Thus, under the Virginia welfare state, a woman with two young children working for minimum wage enjoys roughly the same standard of living as a woman with two young children earning $60,000 to $65,000 a year. Then consider that the 2015 median household income in Richmond was $60,700, and consider the fact that the median household income includes many two-income families.
Discussion questions:
- Income inequality. What do these numbers imply for the debate over income inequality in the United States? Does it make any sense to decry the disparity in income without taking into account benefits that low-income households receive from the welfare state?
- Upward mobility. What do these numbers imply for social mobility? If a woman cannot better her material condition by working diligently and acquiring the skills needed to earn more pay, do welfare benefits act as a deterrent to self-improvement?
- Poverty and marriage. Given the incentives of the welfare state, what reason do poor women have to get married and to raise their children in a stable partnership with their father? To what extent do welfare benefits render low- and working-class men economically peripheral and irrelevant for any role other than as sexual partners?
- The nature of poverty. To what extent is the scourge of poverty in Virginia — substance abuse, domestic violence, child neglect, ill disciplined behavior, crime, dropping out of high school, out-of-wedlock births, and associated dysfunctional behaviors — the result of material deprivation or the consequence of welfare-induced family breakdown?
I would guess that the $40,000 tally of welfare benefits is a high number — not all similarly situated women apply for and receive the full gamut of benefits. Even so, the number is extraordinary. It is a testimony to the upward-striving nature of American society that anyone makes an effort to improve themselves at all.
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