Saving The Inner Cities -- From Welfare To Bridefare: Pioneer Experiments Focus On Incentives -- Wisconsin Is Innovator In National Reform Plans

The closest thing to a national strategy toward welfare is the experiments in Wisconsin and California - with Republican governors but legislatures controlled by Democrats.

In Wisconsin, which many consider the pioneer in innovative ways out of welfare, few people deny the system needs to be changed. There are disincentives for single mothers to work because they lose benefits and health care. And there are disincentives for fathers to marry single mothers because mothers usually can't get AFDC if they're married.

Wisconsin has tried three major reforms to deal with these problems:

-- "Learnfare" cuts paychecks to welfare mothers if their teenage children don't attend school.

-- "Workfare" requires most AFDC applicants to enroll in job training or education programs.

-- "Bridefare" is the latest package, a series of reforms that are supposed to "promote families." It offers financial incentives for teenagers to marry, such as allowing teenage families to keep more money from jobs before their welfare incomes are cut. It also requires parenting classes for the mother and forces an unmarried teenage mother to live with her parents or suitable adults.

Those provisions are widely praised in the social-service community.

But pregnant teenagers such as Tanya Newson, 18, say the decision to marry is based on factors far more complex than just welfare benefits.

Both she and her boyfriend are still in high school. She wants to go to college. He doesn't have a job. She doesn't want a baby, so she plans to have her mother or the father's family raise the child.

The boyfriend, meanwhile, wanted her to get pregnant but now "he's scared," she said.

The reform also reduces welfare benefits for mothers having a second child and offers no increase in benefits for a third. Child-welfare advocates say this only hurts the children. The Milwaukee archdiocese worries it could lead to abortions. But state officials say it's a good incentive not to have so many children.

Many young mothers support the notion of reducing and cutting AFDC benefits after two children. They say that a lot of men really do try to get their girlfriends pregnant just so they can keep getting more money from them.

But rewarding a couple for marrying is not necessarily going to reduce the welfare ranks, they said.

"What happens if the couple gets married and the guy still doesn't get a job?" asked one mother. "Does the mother get AFDC for three people instead of two? Doesn't that defeat the purpose? And to assume that just because you marry him some job is going to materialize doesn't make sense."

The experiment may well cost more than Wisconsin officials expected. The state will have to pay about $3.7 million in the first four years of the program before realizing a $321,380 savings in the final year, The Associated Press has reported.

Learnfare and Workfare have also been the subject of studies critical of their effectiveness and cost savings. But state officials remain undaunted. They often point to Wisconsin's shrinking welfare rolls as evidence that their programs are working.

"In 1990, we were the only state to see food-stamp use and AFDC caseloads drop," said Gerald Whitburn, the state secretary of social and health services.

Following Wisconsin's path, California Gov. Pete Wilson last year unveiled a proposal to cut welfare benefits by 10 percent across the board and an additional 15 percent in six months for families with an able-bodied adult. It would also end the practice of increasing AFDC grants each time a mother had a child, offer financial incentives for teenage mothers to stay in school and allow recipients to keep more job income without losing benefits.

California has twice the number of AFDC recipients of any other state, and its welfare caseload has been growing at triple the rate of its population increase since the recession hit there in late 1988. Its benefit levels - $663 a month for a mother and two children - are the fourth-highest in the nation; more than three times bigger, for example, than Texas's $184 per month.