Four-point-eight percent of Maine households last year received some form of cash public assistance - defined by the survey as including general assistance income for individuals, and temporary assistance for needy families, known as TANIF. It excludes medical payments and any non-cash benefits like food stamps.
Only Alaska had a higher number, with six percent of households receiving welfare. But warns Economist Thomas Merrill from the Maine State Planning Office, numbers can be misleading. True enough, the number of households receiving benefits may be growing, "But the aggregate income, which is the sum of the public assistance income of every household for the whole state, has actually been in decline for the last four years," Merrill says. "So while the rank is maintaining, compared to the rest of the country, Maine's actual per household income is going down."
Families in Maine also earn less than any other New England state, with a median household income of less than $47,000 a year. And this, says Merrill, means they're more likely to need some form of assistane during the year.
For Barbara Van Burgel, the numbers reflect the struggle experienced by many working Maine families to survive in a state where the cost of living is high. "Our heating costs and our housing costs - we have an old housing stock - all play into the determination of benefits, so I think all those things combined gives a clearer picture of why those numbers are high."
Burgel directs the Office of Integrated Access and Support at Maine's Department of Health and Human Services. It's her job to make sure the state's benefits get to the right people. She stresses the numbers do not reflect a culture of dependency in Maine, but rather
the state's willingness to invest in Mainers through programs designed to lift families out of poverty, a fact bourne out by the TANIF programs' high turnover rate. Eighty to 85 percent of recipients, she says, do not return to welfare after leaving the program.
Ana Hicks is senior policy analyst with Maine Equal Justice, a non-profit which lobbies on behalf of low-income earners. "In terms of offering assistance to folks to be able to access the training they need to build the skills that they need, Maine is really a leader," Hicks says.
She says the state's 'Parents as Scholars Program' is held up as a national model in helping parents pull their families out of poverty by accessing post-secondary education. "It's not just about providing assistance to people and having folks coming on and off the program, but it's over time helping people to actually help their families leave poverty."
"We believe the best way to help folks is to give them a good paying job so they can help themselves," says Scott Moody, an economist with the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative think tank. He blames the state's shrinking private sector for the high number of households having to tap into welfare.
"Unfortunately with our high tax burden we're driving the private sector out of the state and thereby eliminating the best route out of poverty, which finding a good job," he says.
The cost of Maine's welfare system however, is not a significant burden on state finances, says Barbara Van Burgel from the Maine DHHS. "Most of TANIF is provided through Federal Block Grant funding, so that's not a tax burden on the state of Maine."
And the general assistance program, she says, now costs only around $6 million a year - about a quarter of what it did in the early 90s.