What comes to mind when you hear the word welfare? If you’re like some Americans, the word carries negative connotations for you. People often think of words like poverty, entitlement, handout, or free money when they think of welfare. While these terms have an association with poverty to many Americans, what the word actually means is far less contentious and divisive.

Put simply, welfare means well-being. The reason many of us think of specific public assistance programs when we hear the word welfare is because those programs are part of the social welfare system, programs meant to help provide for the well-being of individuals in need. The social welfare system includes all those organizations, programs, agencies, and other entities meant to help people meet their educational, financial, social, and health needs. If it seems to you like that is a really broad definition, well, you’re right! Among the social welfare institutions you come across in your everyday lives are:

• Schools
• Police and fire departments
• Libraries
• Hospitals
• Houses of worship
• City/State departments that determine funding for parks, roadways, bike lanes, and sidewalks
• Human services and social work agencies
• Counseling centers, and many others.

Some people speak negatively of those who are “on welfare,” but considering the actual meaning of the term, all of us are on welfare. We all benefit from the programs that exist to provide for the well-being of all members of our society. In 2012, President Barack Obama got considerable negative press, especially from conservative pundits and media outlets, when he stated the following during a campaign speech:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. (Obama, 2012)

Opponents of President Obama particularly seized upon the phrase “you didn’t build that” as an indication that he believed entrepreneurs didn’t earn their success, or at least, that success was not possible without government assistance. The President’s supporters countered, saying the remark was taken out of context, noting that it was in fact true that everyone benefited from government programs in some way. Weall pay taxes, so we are in effect (to borrow a term from online fundraising) crowdfunding many social welfare programs in a tangible way.

In essence, President Obama was correct—we are all “on welfare,” not just those who are receiving public assistance. For example, it can be argued that all homeowners receive public assistance, in the form of tax benefits (deductions) for all interest that is paid on mortgages and home repairs. In contrast, people who rent their home do not receive tax benefits for their payments and expenses. In that light, we should be able to have more empathy for people who receive public assistance benefits, since the only difference between all of us is a matter of how much or what kind of social welfare assistance we receive. Another example of a way we receive public assistance is through the roads we drive on (figure 4.1). Although we may not think of roads, bike paths, and sidewalks as part of social welfare, they contribute to our well-being and are funded by societal institutions.

Figure 4.1. Places to walk, skateboard, bike, and drive contribute to the well-being of individuals, families, and communities.

Human services, as you may have deduced, is part of social welfare. The services provided by human services workers in a variety of positions and roles have the common thread of working toward the well-being of individuals, families, and society. The preamble of the Ethical Standards for Human Services Professionals states that, “Human service professionals and those who educate them promote and encourage the unique values and characteristics of human services. In so doing, human service professionals uphold the integrity and ethics of the profession, promote client and community well-being, and enhance their own professional growth”(NOHS, 2015). In other words, human services professionals are responsible for paying attention to all aspects of client and community well-being.

There are two major views of social welfare in the United States, and a third which we will also discuss. These are known as the residual, institutional (or structural), and developmental views. The residual view tends to align itself with conservative ideology (i.e., the Republican Party) while the institutional view is more liberal in nature (i.e., aligning with the Democratic Party). The final view, the developmental view, provides some hope for a compromise between the two major opposing views.

4.3.1 The Residual View of Social Welfare

Those who agree with the residual view of social welfare see our nation’s safety net of social welfare programs (particularly public assistance programs) as temporary programs meant to provide help to people for as little time as necessary. According to the residual view, these programs should exist only in times of particular need to avoid becoming crutches that people rely on, making them dependent upon the government for support. This view argues that poverty is an escapable situation if one has the proper will and motivation.

Adherents to the residual view see many of the components of the social welfare system as gifts—their view is based on the argument that people are not entitled to benefits like medical care or housing assistance. Instead, they argue that people should work hard and earn their own way. In the residual way of thinking, if benefits are easy to get, people will be less likely to work hard to get out of a situation where they no longer need to get assistance from the government. If people are discouraged from overusing the programs, then money that would have been spent on supporting the poor can be redirected to other areas, or taxes can be lowered.

4.3.2 The Institutional View of Social Welfare

According to the institutional, or structural, view of social welfare, inequalities are built into our nation’s structure, and people generally end up in dire economic circumstances due to forces beyond their control: getting laid off, significant medical problems, death of a breadwinner, the COVID-19 pandemic,or economic recession, for example. It is the role of the government, therefore, to provide for these individuals that have fallen on hard times. The institutional view of social welfare  is a view often held by social workers, human services professionals, and political progressives.

This view sees social welfare programs as rights. Adherents to this view say that as members of a society, it is our responsibility to use our resources to help those who are currently in great need, especially since we may end up in a similar situation ourselves someday (or may have emerged from such a situation in the past). The institutional view argues that these programs are legitimate and necessary for the overall healthy functioning of a society where people depend upon one another.

Not surprisingly, holders of the institutional view argue that social welfare services should be as accessible as possible. People who hold the institutional view recognize that, in many cases, people have come to seek public assistance only after exhausting every other possible avenue. Many of them have encountered significant negative reactions and judgment from others before resorting to applying for assistance. Therefore, those who are employed in such programs should be as supportive and caring as possible in their approach to applicants for aid, rather than adding to their already considerable stress and negative judgment.

Finally, the institutional view argues these programs should be permanent, not temporary. In an ideal world, the problem of inequality would be solved, but for now, these programs should always be available to those who need them. Supporters of this view also support well-established funding sources for these programs.

4.3.3 The Developmental View of Social Welfare

The US government has experienced a remarkable amount of partisan gridlock over the last several years. In 2021, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said, “The era of bipartisanship is over” (Carney, 2021). With so little cooperation between differing views, it is clear that we need some sort of middle ground to appease both sides if we ever want anything to be accomplished in providing for the social welfare of our citizens. With this in mind, the developmental view provides some hope.

The developmental view of social welfare comes down to one basic idea: social welfare programs can exist provided they are economically justifiable. Of course, this is more complicated than it sounds. When it comes to businesses, it is often straightforward to determine profitability. Subtract expenses from revenue and what remains is profit. (Your economics professor may disagree with the simplicity of that definition, but you get the idea.) However, when it comes to social welfare programs, the same determination can be tricky. Many social welfare programs do not bring in revenue in the way that businesses typically do. Even those that do may not be looking to offset all of their expenses with the fees charged for their services—for instance, counseling received through a county health department may have a fee determined by a sliding scale (based on what the client can afford to pay), even though in reality the cost of providing that counseling session is the same for the agency regardless of the client’s income.

However, social welfare programs provide a lot of benefits to the economy that are not easily put into hard numbers. For instance, the benefit of an in-prison drug abuse rehabilitation program is that it decreases the chance that inmates who complete it will be recidivists—that is, prisoners who complete such a program have a lower chance of returning to prison than inmates who either don’t complete or never start one. Estimates of the annual cost of imprisoning a single inmate often hover in the $30,000-$60,000 range—for instance, Illinois estimates their yearly cost per inmate at about $33,400, while California leads the nation with a cost of over $64,000 annually per prisoner (Vera, 2017).

If an in-prison drug abuse rehabilitation program could stop just 32 inmates a year from becoming recidivists, that would mean (using California’s numbers) a savings of over $2 million for each year those 32 inmates stayed out of prison. That wouldn’t even be the full savings; the economy would also theoretically benefit from those former inmates being out and working in society, contributing to the tax base rather than draining taxpayer dollars used to imprison them. Even if those former inmates were on public assistance programs that paid them $17,500 in benefits a year in order to help them get back on their feet, the savings to the economy would still be around $1.5 million each year.

Another important way to determine the economic benefit of a given social welfare program is to look at the costs society would incur without it (figure 4.2). What costs would there be to society if we didn’t have public schools? What if we didn’t have child protective services and foster care programs, or Medicaid? What would happen? Would there be more crime, ballooning the expensive prison population? Greater expenses incurred by hospitals as poor people came in for treatment they could never pay for, but which legally had to be provided? More homeless children? How would society counteract these costs?

Figure 4.2. Some social welfare programs are very expensive to maintain, but the cost of not having them could be even greater. What would occur if we had no resources to assist people in getting housing, or to help abused children get out of dangerous homes?

The developmental view, therefore, supports investments in “education, nutrition, and health care” as well as “infrastructure” like transportation, highways, and utilities (Midgley & Livermore, 1997). It looks to find ways to help people become self-sufficient rather than depending upon the public assistance system (and therefore costing taxpayers more money). This view provides hope for agreement between liberals and conservatives because it both recognizes the importance of providing basic services and a standard of living for everyone while also keeping the social welfare system fiscally accountable.

4.3.4 References

Carney, J. (2021, June 10). ‘The era of bipartisanship is over:’ Senate hits rough patch. The Hill. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/557690-the-era-of-bipartisanship-is-over-senate-hits-rough-patch.

Midgley, J., & Livermore, M. (1997). The developmental perspective in social work: Educational implications for a new century. Journal of Social Work Education, 33(3), 573-586.National Organization for Human Services, 2015. Ethical Standards for HS Professionals. https://www.nationalhumanservices.org/ethical-standards-for-hs-professionals

Obama, B. (2012). Remarks by the president at a campaign event in Roanoke, VA. www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/13/remarks-president-campaign-event roanoke-virginia.

Vera Institute of Justice (2017). The price of prisons. https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends-prison-spending.