Family Caps in Welfare Reform: Their Coercive Effects and Damaging Consequences

“Welfare reform” is a political force that has held American family policy in its grip for the past decade. A particularly problematic component of such reform efforts is the policy of establishing “family caps” or “child exclusions.” Family caps end the traditional system of welfare beneats that increase with family size and instead freeze the amount of a family’s welfare grant at a level correlated to the number of children in the family at the time that the family began receiving assistance. Since 1992, twenty-four states have implemented variations of such policies. Part I of this Article reviews the relatively recent emergence of family caps and places them in the context of the last decade’s rush for reform. Part II explores how the code language of caps relates to the goal of deterring poor women from having children, premised on condemnation of presumedly immoral behavior. It also highlights social science data that contradicts the assumptions upon which caps are based, including the ideas that welfare recipients have larger-than-average families, do not want to work, and are motivated to have children by a desire to obtain welfare beneats. This Part also considers the way in which the sexist, racist, and classist history of welfare law has contributed to the popularity of family cap provisions. Part III of the Article examines the varied components of family cap policies in different states and considers the surprising lack of coordination between state cap policies and family planning services. Part IV compiles all available data on the impacts of caps on children, poverty, and rates of childbirth and explores how individuals receive social messages about family caps. Although data on the increase in child poverty from caps is remarkably scant, it is clear that caps affect increas-