The pressures of war and the new and intensified human needs stemming from those pressures naturally dominated the public social services of the Federal, state, and local governments during the year. In general, the war-related social problems which arose, unevenly and with varying intensity, throughout the nation, included rising living costs, housing shortages, day care of children of working mothers, juvenile delinquency, dwindling medical-care facilities and personnel, assistance to persons affected by enemy action, evacuation, over-burdened community facilities in war production, and military centers, farm labor, food supply, and similar conditions.
These problems and others were dealt with through a wide variety of methods — changing, emphasizing, or creating new public welfare services and programs in direct relation to the nature and extent of wartime pressures in the nation, the states, and the localities. Two basic methods of approach were employed, one through the existing public welfare structure, and the other through wartime organization.
New Public-Aid Programs.
The wartime trends in new public-aid programs operated through the basic public welfare organizations of the country are best characterized, perhaps, by the President's designation on February 6 of Federal Security Administrator Paul V. McNutt to provide civilian war assistance, pending the development of adequate Federal legislation for this purpose. Through allocation of $5,000,000 by the President, the Federal Security Agency's Social Security Board set up, in its Bureau of Public Assistance, programs of assistance and services to the following: (a) Persons who may be injured or deprived of their livelihood or homes or otherwise affected by enemy action; (b) persons who may be evacuated because of enemy action or the threat of enemy action; (c) persons repatriated from enemy lands to the United States, and evacuees from Hawaii, Alaska and other United States territory; (d) officially-appointed volunteer workers engaged in civilian protection activities who are injured while on official duty; (e) seamen injured and the dependents of seamen injured, missing, or killed as result of enemy action.
This assistance is administered through state and local welfare agencies, and the Federal Government reimburses 100 per cent on all expenditures made in accordance with its rules.
Aid was given to needy persons repatriated to this country on the diplomatic exchange ships Drottningholm and Gripsholm.
An allocation of $500,000 was also made from the President's fund to the U. S. Public Health Service for temporary provision for hospitalization and medical care of civilians affected by enemy action.
Through direct administration of the Social Security Board's Bureau of Old Age and Survivors' Insurance, persons disabled or the dependents of persons killed, detained, or missing as a result of enemy action, are covered by a program of civilian war-relief benefits. This program also includes benefits to officially-functioning volunteer civilians who are injured as a result of enemy action or as a result of preparing against such possible action and the dependents of such beneficiaries who are killed or injured. Initial civilian war benefits were paid in March. Payments are related to the monthly earnings of the person affected by enemy action. Benefits vary from $20 a month for one child to a maximum of $85 for a family unit, and are available to wives, widows, children, and parents who were mainly dependent on the individual affected by enemy action.
Thus the Federal Government has assumed responsibility for necessary assistance and services to persons and their dependents who are killed, disabled, injured, deprived of livelihood or home, or otherwise in need because of enemy attack.
In addition, a program of public services and financial assistance was provided for enemy aliens and other persons (American-born Japanese) and their dependents who had been removed from prohibited West Coast areas designated by the Department of Justice and the Army, and for the dependents of enemy aliens interned or otherwise affected by restrictive action of the Federal Government.
War-Welfare Organization.
The second basic method of approaching social problems stemming from the war is through such war-welfare organization as is represented by the Federal Office of Defense Health and Welfare, of which the FSA Administrator is Coordinator. The ODHW serves as the center of coordination of all health and welfare services available through Federal and other agencies, both public and private, to meet the needs of localities arising from the war and for the coordination of such services for the nation as a whole. It coordinates and directs national activities for defense in fields of health, welfare, education, nutrition, recreation, family security, social protection, and community organization. In developing the substantive programs for community action in these fields, the ODHW calls upon the Federal Office of Civilian Defense for necessary volunteer participants, deals with the state and local war councils through the OCD and cooperates in fitting its health and welfare services into a general plan of civilian defense. The OCD, in turn, works through the ODHW — rather than with individual Federal or national private agencies — in carrying on its relationships in the fields of health and welfare services, and it recommends representation on state and local war councils of official state and local agencies responsible for operating health and welfare programs. Through this organization and coordination, all Federal, state, and local health and welfare agencies can be integrated for the war effort.
Some illustrations of how this pattern was translated into performance during the year follow. The OCD groups all of the broad social welfare operations under a division of civilian war services. Public health and welfare agencies on all levels of government with their facilities and personnel are used to implement the community's efforts to recognize, evaluate, and alleviate the social pressures of war. Included in such representation in civilian war services divisions are public welfare, health, child welfare, mental hygiene, nutrition, housing, education, labor, agriculture and other agencies.
The problem of providing for the day care of children whose mothers are engaged in war industries is met through the OCD Office of Civilian Mobilization's civilian war services and the ODHW. By Presidential allocation, $400,000 was made available through ODHW for the employment of supplementary Federal and state supervisory personnel to assist local communities with day care programs. The State Departments of Education and Social Welfare may apply for these funds to hire one or more additional persons whom they may allocate to the localities for aid in developing a day-care program.
The responsibility for planning, operating, and financing pre-school and school-age day care programs for children of working mothers, however, is primarily a local problem. Through the Federal Works Agency, local communities may make applications for Community Facilities Act funds, and WPA funds. The Act funds for day-care facilities may be available to communities only when acute shortage of such facilities, due to war, exists or impends, and the community proves that it cannot pay for such programs nor obtain necessary operating funds from other sources. Applications for such Federal funds by child care committees must be first approved by the local War Council, then by the State Committee on Child Care, Development, and Protection, and finally by the State War Council. WPA funds are also available for nursery schools and school age child protection programs.
The housing-shortage problem facing war workers is similarly being alleviated through funds made available by the Community Facilities Act, as are other conditions which arise in over-burdened war production areas. Hospitals and other places for the care of sick, sanitation and other community facilities are made possible through Federal funds where the communities are unable to provide needed facilities themselves. The same pattern of local, state and Federal cooperative action is followed, local and state agencies evaluating such needs and passing on their recommendations to the proper national authorities.
Other War-Related Programs.
The Agricultural Marketing Administration programs for school lunches, food-stamp distribution, and milk for children were used and extended to meet the problems of rising food prices which threatened millions of families in the low-income brackets. The food-stamp plan, for instance, was extended from 398 areas at the end of 1941 to over 1,500 by July of last year. Commodities distributed free through food stamps and through direct distribution are no longer designated 'surplus' foods. The AMA sees its program as a necessary provision of more food and better nutrition for low-income groups 'who are more poorly fed in wartime than ever before because of the higher cost of living.'
Through the War Manpower Commission, the U. S. Employment Services operates a farm labor recruitment program in cooperation with Federal and state welfare and other agencies, sets up farm labor camps in labor-scarce areas of the country, and arranges for transportation, maintenance, and mobility of the harvesting squads, and their return to their home localities.
Public Assistance During War.
Employment has tended to reduce need both among families receiving public aid and among families potentially eligible for such aid. Statistics for the fiscal year 1941-42 are used; they indicate a trend that continued through the end of 1942.
Expenditures for public assistance and for earnings under the Federal WPA programs in the continental United States totaled $135,000,000 last June; in June 1941 they were $188,000,000. For the entire fiscal year 1941-42, total expenditures were $1,885,000,000, 25 per cent less than the amount expended for the preceding fiscal year. The number of persons estimated to have benefited from all types of public aid decreased from 12,400,000 in 4,700,000 households in June 1941 to 8,800,000 persons in 3,700,000 households in June 1942.
Earnings of persons employed on projects operated by the WPA declined from $1,143,000 in 1940-41 to $714,000,000 in 1941-42, a decline of nearly 38 per cent. General relief payments declined by 35 per cent, from $339,000,000 in 1940-41 to $219,000,000 in the following year. The decreases in the number of persons receiving earnings under WPA and general relief payments reflect the favorable employment opportunities created by the war. Rates of pay on the WPA program were increased during 1941-42 to meet increased cost of living; in most states increases in individual payments of general relief occurred for the same reason. The decrease in the number of persons receiving WPA earnings and general relief was therefore relatively greater than the decrease in earnings and payments.
Total payments for the three special types of public assistance, on the other hand, rose from a total of $674,000,000 in 1940-41 to $751,000,000 in 1941-42. The 11 per cent increase resulted from the continuing growth of these programs and from increases in payments to compensate in some measure for increased living costs. During the fiscal year, total payments to recipients of the three special types of public assistance amounted to $570,000,000 for old age assistance, $157,000,000 for aid to dependent children, and $23,800,000 for aid to the blind.
In June there were 2,253,309 old age assistance recipients, against 2,170,489 in June 1941; there were 392,182 aid to dependent children families with 943,080 children, against 379,605 families and 916,789 children in June 1941; there were 54,378 blind assistance recipients, against 49,817 in June 1941. Beginning with the last half of 1942 decline in the number of old age recipients and aid to dependent children recipients began to occur.
It is possible to discern definite, if less obvious, effects of war on the special types of public assistance in spite of the fact that together they accounted for 48 per cent of the total payments in June 1942 as contrasted with 32 per cent in June 1941. A marked slowing down in the rate of increase in the number of recipients occurred. Aid to dependent children showed greater decrease in the number of applications and greater increase in the number of closings than did old age assistance or aid to the blind, but even aged and blind persons have not remained entirely outside the main current. Subletting of war contracts to sheltered workshops for the blind, and increased contributions from employed relatives, caused an actual decrease in recipients and in the amount of payments of aid to the blind in some states.
Social Insurance in War.
The old-age and survivors insurance program during 1941-42 continued to reflect both the increased volume of employment covered by the program and the increased employment opportunities open to older workers. Benefits certified during the fiscal year totaled $116,000,000, of which $102,000,000 represented monthly payments to retired wage earners, their dependents, and survivors; and the balance constituted lump-sum payments under the 1939 amendments and the 1935 act. The monthly amount of benefits in current-payment status in June 1941 was $6,100,000, payable to 336,000 individuals; and in June 1942 the monthly amount of benefits was over $9,500,000, payable to almost 530,000 individuals.
Federal insurance contributions totaled $896,000,000 in 1941-42, $205,000,000 or 30 per cent above the $691,000,000 collected in the previous fiscal year. Collections of $3,700,000 in June brought the cumulative total to $3,430,000,000. Total assets of the trust fund at the end of June were $3,227,000,000, 35 per cent above assets at the end of June 1941.
Other Welfare Trends.
The Servicemen's Dependents Allowance Act of 1942 is administered by the War and Navy Departments. Military induction for the most part now brings to the public-welfare rolls only those cases in which families require supplementary assistance or temporary assistance pending receipt of allowances.
On July 2, the Civilian Conservation Corps was abolished, with the requirement that the 'liquidation shall be completed as quickly as possible but in no event later than June 30, 1943.'
By Presidential order the WPA was to be dissolved as of February 1, 1943, in most states, as soon as possible thereafter in other states.
No comments:
Post a Comment