Experts' Evaluation of Welfare Mixed

Though significant gains have been made in the war on poverty, the battle is nowhere near over, experts on poverty--including several Harvard professors--concluded after two and-a-half days of paper presentations and discussions at a national conference.

"There was widespread consensus among the participants that, while the present welfare programs are serving an important purpose, they shouldn't be expanded," said Sheldon Danziger, Director of the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Research on Poverty.

The institute and the federal Department of Health and Human Services jointly sponsored the gathering of government officials and professors, which took place last week in William sburg. Va.

Most of the conference's 150 participants agreed that their immediate goal is to prevent additional cuts in federal aid programs, Danziger added.

Harvard professors authored five of the thirteen papers presented at the conference, addressing topics that ranged from the progress of public education to the future of the welfare state.

Pulitzer prize-winning sociologist Paul E. Starr, currently on leave as a visiting professor at Princeton University, wrote that advances in health care for the poor have come at great cost. He said that infant mortality has been cut in half since 1968 and that the average life expectancy has gone up by four years.

Despite these advances, 10 percent of Americans remain without medical coverage, Starr told the gathering.

But he added that additional health-care advances could be achieved without increased federal expenditures.

"There is considerable room for economy in the health care system. An increased budget is not necessary," he said.

Professor of Education and Social Structure Nathan Glazer said, that remedial education programs for an derprivileged children have achieved limited gains.

"Now, ten years after the introduction of compensatory education, we see modest effects in education. We are closing the gap between the blacks and the whites," he said in an interview yesterday.

But some experts questioned the potential of government efforts to overcome poverty.

"The single most important factor for the well-being of the poor is a healthy economy, though anti-poverty policy does also make a difference," said Assistant Professor of Public Policy David T. Ellwood '75. Ellwood co-authored a report on federal welfare programs with Professor of Economics Lawrence H. Summers.

Ellwood disputed conservative claims that welfare programs have contributed to social problems such as the increase in single-parent families.

Professor of Government Hugh Heclo and Associate Professor of Public Policy Mary-Jo Bane rounded out the Harvard contingent, addressing the politics of anti-poverty policy and family trends, respectively.

A similar conference was held ten years ago, when many of the current welf-are programs were in their early stages

"Ten years ago we were more optimistic about the ability of the social sciences to find answers to world problems. Now we're more cautious, less optimistic, and less native," said Danziger