For mothers with a limited education, with little or no work experience, with young children, it can be an almost impossible task. At present, the only alternative is welfare which is not a very attractive option. Not one single state pays enough in welfare and food stamps to keep a family out of poverty. Adjusting for inflation, benefits are vastly lower than they were fifteen years ago. .

             The welfare system frustrates, isolates, humiliates, and stigmatizes. Even worse is the way welfare treats people who attempt to work their way off of welfare. Welfare benefits are reduced dollars for dollar with earnings. A parent working full time at the minimum wage would have only $2,400 more in disposable income than if they did not work and collected welfare. The equivalent would be working for $1.20 per hour. Half of the $2,400 comes from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) which the parent would only collect at the end of the year if they bother to submit a tax return. On a daily basis, the parent seems to be working for $.60 cents an hour. Even if they worked full time at $5.00 an hour, their disposable income is only $3,400 higher and they would lose their Medicaid benefits, which is worth several thousand dollars. .

             Welfare administrators around the country find that unless a parent is placed in a full-time job paying $6.00 an hour or more, with full medical benefits, and low day care costs, they are likely to come right back onto welfare. It should come as no surprise that only a small fraction (20 to 25 percent) of the people (mostly women) leaving welfare actually "earn" their way off. Also, most of them are the better-educated and more experienced people who can command a relatively high wage. States and Welfare Reform States are experimenting with a variety of performance requirements under the loose and somewhat misleading term of workfare. .

             Workfare, in fact, refers to three distinct types of required activity:.