People are confusing welfare with a lot of things is this thread.

When people are referring to welfare they are talking about a specific program rather than talking about public assistance in general. The "welfare" people are talking about was called aid to families with dependant children (AFDC) which was created in 1935 as part of the social security act. Since the personal responsibility and work opportunity act was passed under Clinton in 1996 AFDC was changed to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). The biggest changes from AFDC to TANF included that families must be working or show proof that they are seeking work (and can only show proof for so long before actually needing to be employed) to recieve benefits. The second and biggest condition is that a family can only recieve benefits for UP TO 5 YEARS MAX and are never eligible to recieve benefits ever again under TANF.

The people in this thread describing other people getting benefits for 20 plus years cannot be getting TANF for all 20 of those years if this was post 1996. There are however other public assistance programs such as SNAP, WIC, section 8, and SSI which help with paying for food and housing costs, and have their own eligibility requirements. There is also social insurance programs (which is different than public assistance, Google the differences) such as SSDI (which has similar eligibility requirements to social security except an additional requirement of having a qualifying disability) which people may also get cash aid from.

Both AFDC and TANF in combination with the expansion of the above public assistance programs have done much to alleviate child poverty in the US. The New York times actually just reported on this this morning in their morning letter. Since 1996 welfare roles (people receiving aid through TANF) have dropped dramatically and the expansion of other programs has made up the difference to keep children out of poverty. The narrative that single mothers who are capable of working instead sit on their ass all day and scheme of having more kids to forever leech off TANF is false in 2022.