Dissecting "Welfare" - Evolution, Stigma, and Why Helping People Got a Bad Rap

Yesterday, American Public Media's Marketplace did a fantastic feature story on the history of a word - a word that is currently getting a lot of attention in Pennsylvania.

That word is "welfare," and the stigmatization of that word has been at the core of our efforts to change the name of the Department of Public Welfare to the Department of Human Services.  But how did a word that simply means "faring well" or "wellbeing" come to have such a negative association in so many people's minds?  The Marketplace story features a pretty typical reaction: 

"It's for people who sit on their butt all day and don't do anything and then say 'give me your money,'" is how John Frazer, a car service driver from San Diego, put it.  

In response to this widespread but misguided idea, the Marketplace article and its author, Krissy Clark, trace the roots of the "welfare" program in the United States back to the Great Depression, and its subsequent shifts to "cash assistance" and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. 

It's a fascinating read, and we highly recommend that you take a look at the complete article here, but the big takeaway from all of this is clear.  We need to stop calling a department "Welfare" when more than 93% of what it does has nothing to do with cash assistance - the program people think of when they hear that word.  The Marketplace story  has another great quote that puts the "welfare" misnomer into strikingly clear perspective, from University of Michigan professor Luke Shafer: 

Since [the 1990s], Shafer says the program costs less and serves fewer families -- just 1.5 percent of the U.S. population. He has calculated that "there are actually more really active postage stamp collectors in the United States than there are cash assistance recipients." 

Sorta puts it all in perspective, doesn't it?