BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES
Senator McGuire, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular
Bill No: SB 23
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|Author: |Mitchell |
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|Version: |December 1, 2014 |Hearing |March 24, 2015 |
| | |Date: | |
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|Urgency: |No |Fiscal: |Yes |
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|Consultant|Mareva Brown |
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Subject: CalWORKs: eligibility
SUMMARY
This bill would repeal the state's Maximum Family Grant rule,
which prohibits aid to a child born into a family receiving
CalWORKs benefits if the child was conceived after the family
began receiving aid. It would prohibit the denial of aid for
that child, and would expressly prohibit the state from
requiring an applicant or recipient to disclose whether they
were a victim of incest or rape, their method of contraception
or whether a family used contraception, as specified.
ABSTRACT
Existing law:
1) Establishes the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families (TANF) program, which permits states to implement
the program under a state plan. (42 USC § 601 et seq.)
2) Establishes in state law the CalWORKs program to provide
cash assistance and other social services for low-income
families through the TANF program. Under CalWORKs, each
county provides assistance through a combination of state,
county and federal TANF funds. (WIC 10530)
3) Establishes guidelines for determining a family's maximum
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aid payment, including all eligible family members, as well
as the level of aid to be paid, as specified. (WIC 11450)
4) Prohibits an increase in aid based on an increase in the
number of needy persons in a family due to the birth of an
additional child, if the family has received aid
continuously for the 10 months prior to the birth of the
child, as specified. (WIC 11450.04 (a))
5) Exempts this prohibition in the following circumstances:
a. Any child who was conceived as a result of an act
of rape, as defined in Sections 261 and 262 of the
Penal Code, if the rape was reported to a law
enforcement agency, medical or mental health
professional or social services agency prior to, or
within three months after, the birth of the child.
b. Any child who was conceived as a result of an
incestuous relationship if the relationship was
reported to a medical or mental health professional or
a law enforcement agency or social services agency
prior to, or within three months after, the birth of
the child or if paternity has been established.
c. Any child who was conceived as a result of
contraceptive failure if the parent was using an
intrauterine device, a Norplant, or the sterilization
of either parent.
d. If the family does not receive aid for two
consecutive months during the 10-months prior to the
child's birth.
e. Children born on or before November 1, 1995.
f. Any child who would qualify for the maximum
family grant cap if the family did not receive aid for
24 consecutive months while the child was living with
the family.
g. Any child conceived when either parent was a
non-needy caretaker relative.
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h. Any child who is no longer living in the same
home with either parent. (WIC 11450.04 (b) et seq.)
6) Requires 100 percent of any child support payment received
for a child who is born under the maximum family grant
(MFG) cap - and therefore is not the recipient of aid - to
be paid to the family. Additionally, prohibits any such
child support payment from being counted as income in
calculating CalWORKs benefits. (WIC 11450.04 (e))
7) Requires each county welfare department to notify
recipients of the MFG provisions in writing at the time of
application and recertification, as specified. (WIC
11450.04 (f))
8) Requires the state Department of Social Services (CDSS) to
seek appropriate federal waivers to implement the MFG limit
and associated conditions, as specified, and directs DSS to
implement the rule on the date the waiver is received by
declaration of the department's director. (WIC 11450.04
(g))
This bill:
1) Makes legislative findings and declarations that:
a. Scientific research has demonstrated that
young children living in deep poverty experience
lifelong cognitive impairments limiting their ability
to be prepared for and succeed in school.
b. Academic research has documented an increase
in missed days of school and in visits to hospital
emergency rooms by children who live in deep poverty.
c. The Maximum Family Grant (MFG) rule was
adopted to limit the amount of time a family could
receive assistance and to limit the amount of
assistance received. The rule was passed before
implementation of welfare reform. At the time the rule
was adopted, there was no limit on the length of time
a family could receive aid, no work requirements and
the benefits provided were approximately 80 percent of
the federal poverty level (FPL).
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d. Since the rule's implementation, lifetime
limits on aid and work requirements have been enacted
in order to receive a maximum benefit of approximately
40 percent of the FPL.
e. The Maximum Family Grant rule makes poor
children poorer, reducing the income of families with
infants to less than 30 percent of the FPL.
f. This legislation is necessary to protect
infants born to families receiving CalWORKs from
experiencing lifelong cognitive impairments due to the
toxic stress of deep poverty and to ready those
children for participation in California's public
school system.
g. This legislation is necessary to protect the
reproductive and privacy rights of all applicants for,
and recipients of, aid under the CalWORKs program.
2) Prohibits an applicant for, or recipient of, CalWORKs
aid from being required as a condition of eligibility to do
any of the following:
a. Divulge that any member of the assistance unit
is a victim of rape or incest.
b. Share confidential medical records related to
any member of the assistance unit's rape or incest.
c. Use contraception, choose a particular method
of contraception, or divulge the method of
contraception that any member of the assistance unit
uses.
3) Prohibits an applicant for or recipient of CalWORKs
benefits from being denied aid, or denied an increase in
the maximum aid payment, for a child born into the family
during a period in which the family is receiving aid.
4) Specifies that no increased benefit will be paid for any
month prior to January 1, 2016, as a result of repealing
the prior statute.
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5) Repeals WIC 11450.04 which establishes and defines the
MFG rule, including exclusions for families in which a
mother reports she is a victim of rape or incest or in
instances where specified methods of contraception fail.
6) Prohibits appropriation pursuant to WIC 15200 be made
for the purposes of this act.
FISCAL IMPACT
This bill has not been analyzed by a fiscal committee, however a
Senate Appropriation Committee analysis of SB 899 in 2014, which
had identical language, estimated there would be major first
year increase in CalWORKs grant costs of about $205 million
(General Fund) based on data from county consortia indicating
13.33 percent of all children in CalWORKs households (131,400
children) were impacted by the MFG rule. The analysis noted that
future costs for existing cases could increase by five percent
per year ($10 million increase after the first year). It also
estimated potential future costs of $3.9 million to $7.8 million
(General Fund) for every 2,500 to 5,000 children born into
CalWORKs families each year who otherwise would have been
subject to the MFG rule, with annual costs cumulatively
increasing in subsequent years as well as other relatively minor
costs for automation and offsets for child support payment
increases and averted administrative hearings.
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
Purpose of the bill:
The author states that as a result of California's MFG policy,
women are forced to make decisions about the types of birth
control they can use if they are receiving public benefits.
Women who are raped are required to report that sensitive and
highly personal fact to their welfare caseworker in order for
their babies to receive aid. Some families chose to refuse
assistance (and become very poor) for the last three months of a
pregnancy rather than lose the grant for the new baby - which is
less than $200 a month - but will help pay for diapers and
wipes, according to the author. According to the author, in some
extreme cases, women will refuse a doctor's advice about when
she should deliver her baby in order to stay off aid for a full
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two months during her pregnancy, which would allow her to avoid
the grant cap. The author states that this kind of desperation
is unconscionable to force upon poor women - especially
considering the fact that the maximum grant is just enough to
put a family at about 40 percent of the federal poverty line.
Poverty and CalWORKs
California has the highest poverty rate in the nation - just
under one-quarter of residents are living at or below the
federal poverty level (FPL), meaning they earn no more than
$20,090 per year for a family of three. During and after the
Great Recession, California saw growing rates of deep childhood
poverty - those living below 50 percent of the federal poverty
line.
One of California's most essential anti-poverty strategies is
the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids
program (CalWORKs), which provides cash assistance to
approximately 540,000 families - including more than 1 million
children, according to 2014 federal data. Federal funding for
CalWORKs comes from the TANF block grant.
Currently, a grant to a family of three in a high-cost
California county is $670 per month but that will increase to
$704 per month in April 2015. The current grant level is 40
percent of the federal poverty threshold (FPL), compared with 81
percent of FPL in 1989 and 55 percent in 1997. In the past five
years, California's CalWORKs benefit has undergone significant
grant cuts, the elimination of a Cost of Living Adjustment, and
a radical restructuring of the Welfare to Work activities,
requirements and time limits. Adults in the program have gone
from a 60-month lifetime limit on CalWORKs aid to a 48-month
limit, with strict requirements on work participation to remain
in the program after 24 months.
Maximum Family Grant rule
In 1992, against the backdrop of a debate about whether
"intergenerational welfare" was encouraging women to avoid work
and have additional children, New Jersey passed the nation's
first statewide family cap policy. The policy prohibited
additional benefits from being provided to a family for children
born after the family began receiving welfare benefits. The
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policy, which was soon copied by other states, came amid a
national conversation that would become the basis for the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act
of 1996 (PRWORA), which established a 60-month time-limit on
benefits in most cases, and emphasized integrating parents into
the workforce as part of the program.
Prior to the passage of PRWORA, states needed waivers to
implement family cap policies, which required rigorous
evaluations of whether the policies achieved their intended
goals. AB 473 (Brulte, Chapter 196, Statutes of 1994) created
California's maximum family grant (MFG) rule as part of budget
trailer bill, and required California to obtain a federal waiver
to be able to implement the new MFG rule, as the rule was
inconsistent with existing federal regulations. California's
waiver application was approved in August of 1996, however
waiver approval coincided with the passage of PRWORA, which
granted states flexibility to implement their own policies
without need for a waiver, and California proceeded with the MFG
policy without implementing the waiver. California's MFG policy
has not been amended since its original enactment.
The MFG legislation was based on the belief that increasing
welfare grants for children born into AFDC families may
incentivize families to have additional children for the
explicit purpose of increasing their monthly grant. By limiting
the grant amount, policymakers argued that families would be
dissuaded from having additional children. In a heated floor
debate in July 1994, in which the bill's author argued that the
MFG would "encourage the transition to self-sufficiency,"
then-Assemblyman John Burton questioned whether this move would
achieve the intended goal. "Welfare reform is getting people off
of welfare and into a productive role in society with a job, not
starving some kid who happens to be born into a family that is
on AFDC," Burton argued.
Today, CDSS estimates about 134,900 children per month are
subject to the MFG rule. According to a 2013 CDSS sampling of
cases, approximately 58 percent of MFG children are under age 6.
For a family with an MFG child, the loss in grant in 2015 is
between $116 and $136 per month, according to CDSS data.
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How the MFG rule works
California's MFG rule prohibits CalWORKs aid payments, with
certain exceptions, for a child that is born into a family that
has been receiving aid for 10 or more continuous months, or for
longer than the gestational period of the new baby.
If the family is not receiving aid for two or more months during
the 10-month period preceding the birth of the child, the new
child becomes eligible for aid in the CalWORKs benefit
calculation. Additionally, the MFG rule does not apply if a
family returns to aid after a break of two or more years during
which the family did not receive any aid, provided that the
family still meets eligibility requirements and aided children
are still under 18 years old.
Exceptions to the MFG rule
California's statute permits exceptions to the MFG rule for
incidents in which a child was born as a result of rape or
incest, as long as the mother of the child can document that she
reported the crime to law enforcement or a mental health
professional or social services agency. The report must have
been made prior to the child's birth or within three months
after the child was born.
Similarly, state law permits an exception to the MFG rule if the
child is born as a result of the failure of one of three types
of contraceptives specified in statute:
An intrauterine device,
Norplant (which was discontinued for use in the United
States in 2002 amid questions about its effectiveness and
lawsuits over its side-effects),
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Sterilization of either parent.
Other states
Beginning in the early 1990s, 24 states implemented family cap
rules. Today, just 16 states still have family cap rules in
place, including California. In 2002 and 2003, Maryland and
Illinois repealed their policies and were followed by Wyoming,
Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas and Maryland.<1>
Effect on fertility rates
A number of research studies on the effects of the family cap
across the country have concluded that the cap had little to no
effect on fertility rates.<2> However, the U.S. General
Accounting Office noted in its 2001 examination of the issue
that most states implemented family caps as part of their
welfare reforms designed to provide incentives for women to
reduce the number of out-of-wedlock births and to encourage
self-sufficiency. Specifically, the study noted that "Due to
limitations of the existing research, we cannot conclude that
family cap policies reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock
births, affect the number of abortions, or change the size of
the TANF caseload." It cited a number of methodological
limitations. It did note, however, that the family cap was
effective in reducing the amount that states were paying to
families who qualified for benefits.<3>
Effects of deep poverty on children
Numerous studies have correlated the effects of deep childhood
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<1> Welfare Rules Database, Urban Institute and "Bringing
Families out of Cap'tivity: The Need to Repeal the CalWORKs
Maximum Family Grant Rule," UC Berkeley School of Law, April
2013
<2> Dyer, Wendy and Robert W. Fairlie, "Do Family Caps Reduce
Out-of-Wedlock Births?" Economic Growth Center, Yale University,
December 2003.
<3> U.S. General Accounting Office, "More Research Needed on
TANF Family Caps and Other Policies for Reducing Out-of-Wedlock
Births," September 2001, p 2-3.
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poverty with poor health and outcomes including low birth
weight, lead poisoning, child mortality and hospitalization.
Other studies have drawn correlations between deep poverty and
repeating a grade, being a high school dropout and having a
learning disability.
A 2011 article in the journal Developmental Psychology<4>
estimated that a $1,000 increase in annual income - less than
$100 per month -- increases young children's achievement by 5 to
6 percent of a standard deviation. In 2000, researchers noted in
the journal Child Development that family caps and sanctions
appear to disproportionately affect families with very young
children who are most susceptible to adverse effects of deep
poverty and recommended policy considerations focus on avoiding
fiscal sanctions to those families.
"Recent research suggests that economic deprivation is most
harmful to a child's chances
for achievement when it occurs early in the child's life.
Economic logic suggests that policies aimed at preventing
either economic deprivation itself or its effects are
likely to constitute profitable social investments in the
twenty-first century." <5>
Related legislation
SB 899 (Mitchel 2014) was identical to this bill. It was held in
the Senate Appropriations committee.
AB 271 (Mitchell, 2013) was substantially similar to this bill.
It was held in the Senate Appropriations committee.
AB 22 (Lieber, 2007) was substantially similar to this bill. It
was held in the Assembly Appropriations committee.
AB 473 (Brulte, Chapter 196, Statutes of 1994) created
California's maximum family grant (MFG) rule and required
California to obtain a federal waiver to implement it.
---------------------------
<4> Duncan, Greg, et al, "Does Money Really Matter? Estimating
Impacts of Family Income on Young Children's Achievement With
Data From Random-Assignment Experiments," Developmental
Psychology, 2011, Vol. 47, No. 5, 1263-1279
<5> Ibid
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POSITIONS
Support:
CWDA (Co-Sponsor)
UDW/AFSCME Local 3930 (Co-Sponsor
Western Center on Law and Poverty (Co-Sponsor)
ACT for Women and Girls
ACCESS Women's Health Justice
Alameda County Board of Supervisors
Alameda County Food Bank
Alliance for Community Transformations
American Association of University Women
American Civil Liberties Union of California
Asian Law Alliance
Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council
Association of California Commissions for Women (ACCW)
Bay Area Legal Aid
Black Women for Wellness
Business and Professional Women of Nevada County
California Association of Food Banks
California Black Health Network
California Catholic Conference
California Communities United Institute
California Community College CalWORKs Association
California Family Health Council
California Food Policy Advocates
California Hunger Action Coalition
California Immigrant Policy Center
California Labor Federation
California Latinas for Reproductive Justice
California National Organization for Women
California Nurse - Midwives Association
California Pan-Ethnic Health Network
California Partnership
California Reinvestment Coalition
Californians United for a Responsible Budget
California WIC Association
California Women's Law Center
Cal-Islanders Humanitarian Association
Casa de Esperanza
Center for Law and Social Policy
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Center for Reproductive Rights and Justice at the
University of California, Berkeley School of Law
Child Care Law Center
Children Now
Children's Defense Fund - California
Chinese Progressive Association
Citizens for Choice
County of Los Angeles
Courage Campaign
Department on the Status of Women
East Bay Community Law Center
Feminist Democrats of Sacramento County
Forward Together
Friends Committee on Legislation of California
Guam Communications Network
Having Our Say
Help a Mother Out
Housing California
Interface Children & Family Services
Jewish Family Service of San Diego
John Burton Foundation
Korean Community Center of the East Bay
Law Students for Reproductive Justice
League of Women Voters of California
Legal Aid Society - Employment Law Center
Libreria Del Pueblo, Inc.
LIUNA Locals 777 & 792
Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
Lutheran Office of Public Policy
March of Dimes Foundation, California Chapter
Monterey County
NARAL Pro-Choice California
National Center for Youth Law
National Council of Jewish Women California
National Health Law Program
National Women's Political Caucus of California
9 to 5 California
Parent Voices'
Partnership to End Domestic Violence
Pacific Islander Cancer Survivors Network
Peace Over Violence
Physicians for Reproductive Health
Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California
Public Counsel's Children's Right Project and Homelessness
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Prevention Law Projects
Public Interest Law Project
Rainbow Services, Ltd.
San Francisco Living Wage Coalition
SAVE
SEIU Local 721
Sonoma County Human Services Department
Special Needs Network, Inc.
Starting Over, Inc.
Strong Hearted Native Women's Coalition
Tehama County Department of Social Services
United Ways of California
Ventura County Board of Supervisors
Western Regional Advocacy Project
Women's Health Specialist of California
YWCA of Glendale
(Two individuals)
Oppose:
None.
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