01:00 AM EST on Sunday, January 30, 2005

THE STATE of Rhode Island spends much of its general-revenue budget on helping the needy -- more, in fact, than the federal government mandates.

For fiscal 2006, the governor's proposed budget for human services is $1.2 billion. This covers spending by the departments of Children, Youth and Families; Elderly Affairs; Health; Human Services; and Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals. An analysis by the Barrington School Department estimated that in fiscal 2003, Rhode Island school systems spent an additional $362 million on special education. We thus appear to be spending roughly $1.6 billion a year to help Rhode Island's neediest.

Logically, this raises two questions: How much is Rhode Island spending in comparison with other states, and how effective is this spending?

According to data from the National Association of State Budget Officers and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 2003 Rhode Island's general-revenue spending on Temporary Aid for Needy Families and other assistance programs was the third-highest in America per $1,000 of personal income.

Two not-unrelated factors cause this high ranking. First, according to the 2000 Census, Rhode Island has the nation's second-highest percentage of households receiving Temporary Aid for Needy Families. Second, Rhode Island's programs to support the poor are among the most generous in the country.

For example, one study found that in 2003 the combined income of a worker earning Rhode Island's minimum wage plus earned-income tax credits, Temporary Aid for Needy Families, and Food Stamps was 122.5 percent of the federal poverty limit -- the fifth-highest percentage in the country (and that doesn't include RIte Start, the nation's only subsidized day-care entitlement program).

Let's move on to Rhode Island's Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Programs. According to www.statehealthfacts.com, in 2002 Rhode Island's combined spending on these two programs per $1,000 in personal income was the fourth-highest in America.

Two factors were responsible for this high ranking. First, we have a lot of people enrolled in these programs. As of June 2003, 16.2 percent of Rhode Island's population was receiving Medicaid or State Children's Health Insurance Programs benefits -- the 13th-highest rate in the nation.

Second, we spend a lot per enrollee. In fiscal year 2002, average annual spending per Medicaid enrollee was $5,828 in Rhode Island, the fifth-highest in the country. Could this be due to higher health-care costs in the Northeast? To some extent. However, Massachusetts's cost per enrollee was only $4,862, suggesting that other factors were driving Rhode Island's high spending.

In special education, in the 2000-01 school year, state programs operated under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act served 19.5 percent of Rhode Islanders under 21 years old. This was the highest percentage of any state (the national average was only 13.3 percent). In 2000, we also spent $15,608 per special-education student, versus a national average of $12,474.

Clearly, Rhode Island is spending more than most other states to help its neediest citizens. So, is all this money producing equally impressive results?

Between January 1993 and December 2001, Rhode Island ranked last in the nation for reducing its Temporary Aid for Needy Families caseload. In terms of getting people back to work, the most recent TANF data ranked Rhode Island 41st. A recent study also found that our subsidized day-care program increased the probability that a TANF recipient would find a job by only 5 percent. There is, however, one bright spot: In terms of job retention, once a TANF recipient has found work, Rhode Island ranked 9th.

In terms of health indicators, our review of recent Kids Count data suggests that municipalities with high levels of RIte Care enrollment still have higher-than-Rhode Island average levels of adverse health outcomes -- including women with delayed prenatal care, teenage births, and children hospitalized with asthma. In sum, the data indicate that providing free insurance to poor people doesn't automatically produce good health-care outcomes. On the other hand, our spending on disabled Medicaid enrollees seems to be producing outcomes that are better than the national average.

With respect to our special-education performance, the key metric we want to use -- the performance of our special-education students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, compared with special-education students in other states -- won't be available until September.

Finally, one would hope that our extensive spending on the social safety net would produce a society with strengthened families. But this isn't the case.

In 2003, Rhode Island ranked 35th in percentage of children living in single-parent families. And in 2001-02, 35.7 percent of Rhode Island births were to unmarried women, ranking us 36th (coincidentally, the percentage of Medicaid-financed births was also 35 percent).

Contrary to what some have asserted, these high birthrates for unmarried women appear unaffected by the fact that Rhode Island is the most heavily Catholic state. If this were the case, then presumably our abortion rate wouldn't rank fifth-highest (four states didn't report such data, but even if they were all higher than Rhode Island, we'd still rank 9th).

We live in a world of global competition, frequent layoffs, and high divorce rates. An efficient social safety net is more important than ever. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have one yet in Rhode Island.

Tom Coyne, of North Kingstown, is a co-founder of www.ripolicyanalysis.org