Governmental welfare services during 1940 have been characterized by efforts to assimilate the legislation of the previous year rather than by enactment of much new legislation. The Federal Congress, especially, was reluctant to act on social measures until the whole pattern of national defense should become more clearly defined.
Introduction of the Wagner Social Security Extension Bill.
The introduction in the Senate of the Wagner bill to widen the application of the Social Security Act is important as constituting the basis for discussion of problems which await action at the 1941 session. In relation to eligibility for old age assistance, this bill would reduce the residence requirement to one year in a given state during the two years preceding application for aid. A highly controversial provision, designed to increase allowances to the aged in states with less financial capacity, would substitute for the present uniform percentage of Federal reimbursement a flexible scale whereby the grant-in-aid to any state would be based upon the relation of the per capita income in the state to the per capita income in the United States.
For old age and survivors' insurance, the bill would extend coverage to some 10,000,000 additional persons, including agricultural and domestic workers; state and municipal employees; non-civil service Federal employees; employees of non-profit, charitable, and educational institutions; and lay employees of religious organizations. Unemployment compensation coverage would be extended to about 5,000,000 more workers through the inclusion of enterprises employing less than eight persons, employees of non-profit institutions, and Federal employees not in civil service. Agricultural and domestic labor would remain excluded, however, because of the administrative difficulty of determining unemployment in these occupations.
Special Federal Aid for Child Refugees.
Public concern for the plight of children in war-stricken Europe found expression in a dramatic extension of the principles of foster care to the field of international relations. The Neutrality Act has been amended to enable unarmed American ships to enter combat zones to remove from any countries children under sixteen who are fleeing the war, but United States immigration laws remain unchanged, such children being allowed to enter the country for the duration of the war on visitors' permits to which quota restrictions do not apply. The Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor fixes general policies and standards of care, leaving arrangements for transportation and reception of children, and coordination of the work of participating agencies, to the United States Committee for the Care of European Children. This committee, a private organization, assumes legal responsibility for the children, acting as the instrumentality of both the Children's Bureau and the British Government. Placement in foster homes is made by agencies designated by state public welfare departments and registered with the Federal Children's Bureau. The British Government, however, has postponed further evacuation overseas because of the present danger of submarine warfare. (See also CHILD WELFARE.)
State and Local Welfare Legislation.
Legislation regarding general relief was confined largely to details of state and local financing. In the other public assistance programs — the special categories of old age assistance, aid to dependent children, and aid to the blind, in which the Federal Government participates financially — legislation showed a tendency toward liberalization of eligibility requirements and provision of more adequate aid. Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio and Virginia have enacted laws making possible larger monthly payments of old age assistance: Illinois and Ohio raised the maximum to $40 to take full advantage of the 1939 amendment to the Federal Social Security Act, while Kentucky and Mississippi increased the maximum from $15 to $30. Virginia has eliminated a requirement that all income of the recipient be deducted from the $20 maximum grant. Besides paving the way for more aid to the aged, Ohio increased the limit for blind assistance from $400 annually to $40 monthly. California, Kentucky, Mississippi and Nebraska have abolished or eased the lien requirements as to property of old age assistance recipients.
In line with Federal legislation of the previous year, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia have extended the eligible age for aid to dependent children from sixteen to eighteen for children attending school. In Kentucky and Mississippi, aid to dependent children is a new program this year, and Kentucky has also initiated a program of aid to the blind.
As a result of the pressure of relief needs during recent years, states have attempted in many instances to raise barriers in the path of applicants by increasing the time required to gain legal settlement. It is encouraging, therefore, to find in the current legislation some evidence of a reversal of this trend. Mississippi, for example, lowered the residence requirement for old age assistance from five years within the nine preceding application to one year immediately preceding application, and Rhode Island reduced required residence to one year for old age assistance, blind assistance and unemployment compensation. State legislation regarding unemployment compensation was generally of a minor character, designed to adjust state provisions to the 1939 Federal amendments.
Significant changes in public welfare organization have been very few during 1940. Mississippi changed county welfare boards to departments and effected a separation of administrative and advisory powers. Rhode Island created in the Department of Social Welfare an advisory council to promote the interests of the blind, and transferred the Bureau for the Blind from the Department of Education to the Department of Social Welfare. New Jersey, the only other state to make an important change in administrative organization, appears to have moved in the direction of greater complexity and confusion rather than simplification. In that state, the Financial Assistance Commission was replaced by a Municipal Aid Administration under a single head appointed by the Legislature. Under the new setup, all municipalities able to provide up to thirty per cent of their relief costs will be free of state control. As most municipalities come within this classification, 'enforcement of uniform standards and procedures by the state becomes limited to a small minority of places,' according to the New Jersey Welfare Council.
Loss of Popularity of Old Age Pension Movements.
The movement for old age pensions unrelated to individual need lost considerable momentum during the year, with most Congressional and gubernatorial candidates refusing even lip-service to the Townsend or the General Welfare plans, the leading pension fantasies at the present time. In Massachusetts, Missouri, and Ohio moreover, where pensions were a prominent feature of campaigns for the governorship, the pension proponents were defeated, and many Congressional supporters of the pension schemes failed of re-election. Arkansas voters refused approval of a proposed amendment to the state constitution which promised Utopian pensions at the age of sixty and provided for separate administrative machinery not responsible to the state executive. In the State of Washington, however, an initiative measure was approved which raised pensions from $30 to $40 for persons over sixty-five and applied only a loose definition of need. Colorado voters failed to adopt an amendment reducing the monthly pension and designed to repair the damage done to state finances and other welfare services by the present $45 monthly allowance fixed in the state's constitution.
Importance of Social Services in National Defense.
National defense and public welfare impinge upon each other at many points. There is, on the one hand, increasing public realization of the place of adequate social services as an essential element in total defense. A country-wide checkup by the American Public Welfare Association reveals that the most imminent social problems confronting those who are giving direction to national defense concern housing, health, sanitation, control of social disease, facilities for education and recreation, and the matter of transiency. The whole concept of an impregnable national structure focuses attention upon the necessity of holding those social gains which have been won through the years and pressing forward toward a more complete program of social conservation. It is significant that the Council of National Defense has designated the Federal Security Administrator as coordinator of all health, medical, welfare, nutrition, recreation, and other related fields of activity. It is also noteworthy that the selective service regulations instruct local draft boards, when classifying registrants, to consult with local and state public welfare agencies for such information as may assist the boards in rendering sound social judgments.
There is danger, on the other hand, that the great cost of arming and equipping the military machine may be used as an argument for curtailing welfare services, and also that the public may expect national defense expenditures to cure unemployment and eliminate the need of relief. Examination of the composition of the entire group of public dependents makes it apparent, however, that many classes are unaffected by the ebb and flow of industrial activity. They are either too old or too young, too ill or too long unemployed, to be utilized by industry. Recipients of old age assistance, aid to dependent children and aid to the blind are for the most part unemployable, and a large proportion of general relief recipients is also unemployable in those states which have soundly administered programs. Although accurate figures are available for only a few states, it is found, for example, that more than two-fifths of the general relief cases in New York State contain no employable person, and that in Pennsylvania approximately thirty percent of general relief cases, as of March 1940, contained no employable. Even those persons who have been able to keep work habits alive through employment on work relief projects are often incapable of retraining in the particular skills needed by the defense industries. Such labor shortage as there is occurs only in the most highly skilled occupations.
Current Volume of Public Relief.
Although publicly supported social work includes many services beyond the scope of relief, the social, administrative and fiscal problems connected with relief have assumed paramount importance because of the great expansion of this phase of public welfare in the past decade. The total relief burden has been substantially reduced in 1940, however, as economic conditions have improved. The greatest reduction occurred in the Work Projects Administration, the major Federal work program, where a monthly average of 1,956,000 employees for the first nine months of 1940 compares with 2,552,000 in the corresponding period of 1939. The average of 272,000 boys in the Civilian Conservation Corps during January-September 1940 was 9,000 below the previous year's figure. Projects of the National Youth Administration were expanded, however, to employ an average of 578,000 boys and girls in 1940 as against 474,000 a year earlier. The four direct relief programs collectively known as public assistance, where the amount of aid is determined by individual need, showed a net decline of some 46,000 cases; general relief cases decreased by 213,000 to an average of 1,475,000 — families and single persons — in January-September 1940, but the three special categories registered increases. The largest, old age assistance, provided for an average of 1,961,000 persons aged 65 and over in 1940, or 126,000 more than in 1939; aid to dependent children was currently granted to 341,000 families, a rise of 38,000; and 71,000 persons received blind assistance, a gain of 3,000 over the preceding year. In addition, 74,000 rural families received subsistence grants through the Federal Farm Security Administration, some 16,000 less than in 1939. The decline in the number of cases needing public relief has naturally been reflected in lower costs.
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