Ohio welfare highest in a decade

Long-term unemployment and loss of jobless benefits have more residents seeking aid.

Dayton Daily News

By Cornelius Frolik, Staff 

December 24, 2010

Ohio’s welfare rolls this year swelled to almost 100,000 families, the highest level in decade, as more people joined the ranks of the unemployed and some of the unemployed lost their jobless benefits.

Through September in the Miami Valley, the average number of families receiving monthly cash assistance was 10,768, an increase of 7.4 percent from 2009 and 34 percent from 2007, according to the most recent data available from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Ohio, the seventh most populous U.S. state, has the third largest number of welfare recipients in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Only California and New York have more.

Enduring unemployment and changes in eligibility requirements have caused the expansion of the cash-assistance program, said Deb Downing, Montgomery County Job and Family Services’ assistant director of social services and income support.

“We have a lot of new people who are coming in and seeing us,” Downing said. “The biggest thing has been the economy.”

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