WASHINGTON — Many current and former welfare recipients in New Jersey are not aware that their welfare payments do not increase if they have more children, but they say that the rule would not affect their family planning decisions, Hannah Fortune-Greeley said at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.
New Jersey is 1 of 24 states that have a so-called “family cap” law, wherein women who have additional children while receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) benefits will not have their benefits raised. The law is designed to discourage TANF recipients from having more children at a time when they don't have the means to support them.
In a pilot study, Ms. Fortune-Greeley, a graduate student at Columbia University School of Public Health, New York, and her colleagues interviewed 32 female current and former TANF recipients in New Jersey. Of those, 9 were black, 12 were Latino, 9 were white, and 2 were biracial. Respondents' average age was 31, and they had an average of 2.4 children. Seven did not have a high school diploma, and 14 were married; 75% of recipients had some form of health insurance.
Slightly less than half the respondents reported that they were using contraception, and one-third of those said they were doing so primarily to prevent STDs.
More than half had had at least one abortion. The average number of abortions per recipient was 2.8; the highest was 6. Reasons given for having abortions included being in an abusive relationship, being an incest victim, and spacing children.
Only two respondents said they were aware of the family planning cap, and neither could describe it accurately, Ms. Fortune-Greeley said. When asked whether awareness of the cap would influence future decisions about childbearing, three-fourths said it wouldn't influence them at all. Most of the women said the policy wouldn't affect their use of contraception. As to what would happen if they became pregnant while on TANF, almost all respondents said they would keep the baby; two said they would give it up for adoption.
There's clearly a need for better communication of the policy from the social services' offices to clients, she said. “The policy doesn't appear to be impacting women's reproductive decision making. … They're having more children without receiving this incremental increase, and it is posing additional economic hardship on already poor families.”