Today I heard someone quoting Pope John Paul II, saying that public welfare deepens and entrenches material poverty. He said that it is a “disincentive to intact families”, encouraging fathers to leave their families.
Here are a few paragraphs from a report from the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty, entitled “Transforming the Culture of Fatherlessness“:
John Paul II warned in Centesimus Annus about problems associated with the welfare state, also termed the social assistance state: “the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending” (48). In the U.S. alone, spending on means-tested welfare programs in the past thirty years has exceeded 5.4 trillion dollars. In a large and vibrant economy, such expenditures might be warranted if they succeeded in eliminating poverty. The problem is, as the pope so keenly appreciates, public welfare programs are typified by ways of thinking that instead deepen and entrench material poverty. Moreover, these “bureaucratic ways of thinking” cannot address profounder needs of human persons, often adding moral and spiritual deprivations to the poverty suffered. In the U.S., welfare programs have fostered the development of an “underclass” characterized by multi-generational poverty and social dysfunction. This phenomenon in the U.S. is multiracial and both urban and rural.
Among communities dominated by the welfare system, fatherlessness is rampant. Today, fully 90 percent of U.S. families receiving cash welfare from government are without a father in the home.
The very sociology of public welfare entails disincentives to intact families. Welfare programs address primarily or exclusively the material needs of people, most often of women and their children. When women and children are provided for by the state, a traditional and natural role for a father is usurped, undermining a man’s sense of place in the family. Women, too, may judge the state to be a more reliable supporter than a husband, and opt out of marriage altogether. Both of these possibilities are indeed actualized under a regime of public welfare. In addition, welfare policies undermine two-parent families and encourage out-of-wedlock births in a host of other ways. To take but two examples: per-child benefit adjustments alter the mix of variables affecting an unmarried woman’s decision to conceive additional children, and low-income men are given incentives to leave their families when benefits packages favor single-parent households.
How would you respond to that? What would be your arguments for and against this? Would there be a difference between welfare provided by the State vs welfare provided by an organization (e.g. the Salvation Army / Sydney City Mission / some other non-government organization)?
