{
  "id": "1999-julyaugust-dads-pay-little-welfare-fails",
  "slug": "1999-julyaugust-dads-pay-little-welfare-fails",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-julyaugust-dads-pay-little-welfare-fails.html",
  "year": 1999,
  "month": "July/August",
  "monthNum": 7,
  "headline": "DADS PAY LITTLE: Welfare fails",
  "kicker": "",
  "author_name": "Jim Hopkins",
  "author_title": "Reporter",
  "affiliation": "The Courier-Journal",
  "summary": "Investigation into welfare reform in Kentucky reveals challenges faced by former welfare recipients, focusing on issues like unemployment and unpaid child support.",
  "keywords": [
    "welfare",
    "child support",
    "Kentucky"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Government & Politics",
    "Data & Databases",
    "Investigative Methods"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "AutoTrack"
  ],
  "full_text": "For the first time since welfare reform began in Kentucky, a growing body of evidence shows that former welfare recipients in the state's chronically poor Appalachian region are failing to achieve one of reform's most important goals: finding jobs that pay a living wage. Welfare recipients in Kentucky's mountain counties also are more burdened by lax enforcement of child-support laws. Although welfare reform requires mothers to find work, many fathers who owe child support pay nothing, The Courier-Journal found in a six-month investigation. Our inquiry came down to people like Sheila Stone, a former welfare recipient trying to support four children on a $5.50-an-hour bank job. Her ex-husband hid from the law because he owed more than $40,000 in child support. Stone and the authorities didn't know where her ex-husband was. As part of our investigation, we tracked him down and eventually reported his return to jail. Reaching our conclusions was anything but simple, however. We fought for electronic databases from the state welfare agency responsible for reform. We relied extensively on data from the Census Bureau, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and Auto Trak, a for-pay service that locates people. And we used paper records from the welfare agency and the state's employment services division to build databases of our own. From the beginning, we suspected the biggest challenge for Kentucky's welfare reform efforts would be the tens of thousands of women and children in the state's 49 Appalachian counties, home to some of the nation's poorest residents. Indeed, although Appalachia has 30 percent of the state's population, it has nearly half of all Kentucky's welfare cases. One of our chief sources of data was a statewide telephone survey of 522 former welfare recipients conducted by the University of Louisville. We persuaded Kentucky welfare officials to give us the raw data from the survey, which the university conducted under a state contract. The survey asked a host of questions, from the reasons recipients left welfare to whether life was better without government assistance.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "pre-v2",
    "extracted_at": "",
    "verified": true
  },
  "similar": [
    {
      "slug": "1994-april-deciphering-welfare-fraud",
      "score": 0.453
    },
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  ],
  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-julyaugust-dads-pay-little-welfare-fails.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-julyaugust-dads-pay-little-welfare-fails.json"
}