Welfare is a Jealous Polygamist

Nearly ten years ago, I wrote what I thought was a provocative essay about polygamy and the state. Specifically, I claimed that the state acts like a polygamist, enforcing a cruel and explicitly patriarchal regime on single mothers. Perversely, the justification for this repressive regime is compassion, even “social justice.”  

One of the most corrosive aspects of patriarchy is that it treats women as objects, rather than active moral agents in their own right. It is certainly true that, given the weak bargaining position women are often placed in, in traditional societies, women appear to accept inferior roles. But as Gerry Mackie famously argued, even the worst institutions — footbinding and infibulation, for example — have a “rational element” from the perspective of women trapped in these systems. Lisa Tessman has a theory of contingency and virtue, about the struggle of women to preserve a space for virtue in lives circumscribed by sexist rules.

In the years since I wrote the first version, the performance and repression of our welfare system has, if anything, gotten worse. The “privilege” of being raised in a two-parent household is being denied to more and more children. We can’t ignore the truth: the state is a small-minded polygamist, outlawing marriage to anyone except the welfare system and — worse — insisting that the women stay at home rather than finding jobs.

About eight million US families are headed by single mothers, and of those nearly three million live below the poverty line defined by the government. Many sustain this tenuous existence with “assistance,” ranging from subsidies on housing and food to childcare and education grants. The state is no Puritan, and does not enforce a rule of exclusivity on the sex lives of these women. But it has an iron-clad rule that if a woman gets married, or gets a job, she loses her benefits. 

This so-called “benefits trap” has been commented on by both the left and right as an odd policy. Brittany Birken, director of community and economic development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, testified before a joint oversight committee here in North Carolina about a proposed consolidation of welfare programs known as the “One Door” policy.

Birken used an anecdote to illustrate the problem: she had talked to a single mother in Florida who had been offered a 10-cent per hour raise, and more hours, in her part-time job. The woman said (according to her calculations) if she accepted the promotion she would lose her benefits through the childcare subsidy program.

“We confirmed her math. For that $200 a year increase, she was going to lose access to $9,000 in childcare subsidies,” Birken said. “The real dilemma that families can face is advancing in their career or making financial ends meet.”  Women who find themselves in this no-win situation are not lazy; they are rational, because they have to accept the situation as it is.

Of course, that’s not how the architects of the welfare system think about it. These program heads no doubt see the system protecting women who are otherwise defenseless, with no other means of raising their children. The problem is that these “benefits” are contingent, and the contingencies — no jobs, no marriage — are detrimental to women long term, and disturbingly similar to the restrictions a polygamist would impose.

Some people in the US are poor. They aren’t poor by world standards, perhaps — a minimum wage job in the US puts you in the top 30 percent of the world income distribution — but by US standards, they are poor. Welfare state logic insists that if you are a good person, you care about people who are (especially through no fault of their own) poor. Therefore, we (the state) should do something. 

Passing those programs requires some political compromises, and intentionally creating obstacles to access, or means testing. Contingencies and guard rails are erected to limit fraud, and direct money only to those “who really need it.”  But those conditions trap recipients in a cycle of poverty from which escape is very difficult. Get a job, lose your benefits. Get married, lose your benefits. 

Astonishingly, the effective marginal tax rates for poor people with children can approach, or in some cases exceed, 100 percent. As the Center for Hunger Free Communities put it: “Families that successfully increase their earnings should not find themselves worse off due to the consequent loss of benefits…. While a higher income can be an important step in a family’s progress towards self-sufficiency, the increased child food insecurity in this group suggests they may be experiencing the ‘cliff effect.’ This occurs when an increase in income causes an overall reduction in total resources due to a loss of benefits or increased tax liability.”

Welfare policies are, for the most part, well-intentioned. But their perverse effect is real. Our welfare system traps women in hopeless lives, depending on a state that — like a small-minded polygamist — doesn’t really want them, but is too jealous to let them go.