State Stix                                                        

Welfare portrait

Republicans in the General Assembly and in Congress are moving quickly to push through measures to reform and revamp welfare. Illinois legislators have voted to eliminate the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the largest source of income assistance for the indigent, by 1999. Other popular ideas include limiting welfare benefits to two years, restricting aid for teen mothers under 18 and curtailing grants for women who have more children while receiving public aid.

A look at the statistics of welfare in Illinois shows a picture somewhat at odds with the stereotype of welfare families.

Each June, the Department of Public Aid publishes a statistical breakdown of welfare recipients in Illinois, the source of the charts that appear on this page. According to the department's analysis, the typical welfare family in Illinois has one adult and two children. The adult is a 26-year-old woman who has attended, but not graduated from high school. She has work experience in the service occupations (such as a waitress, domestic, housekeeper, cosmetician), and she has been receiving public aid benefits for 28 months.

According to this statistical snapshot, the majority of recipients in June 1994 had been receiving benefits for two years or less (Figure 2). Also, the peak ages for receiving benefits are not when recipients are in their teens, but when they are between 21 and 34 years of age (Figure 3). Similarly, the vast majority of cases involve families with two or fewer children (Figure 4).