The provision that assistance shall be in the form of money payments is one of several provisions in the act designed to carry out the basic principle that assistance comes to needy persons as a right. The right carries with it the individual's freedom to manage his affairs; to decide what use of his assistance check will best serve his interests; and to make his purchases through the normal channels of exchange, enjoying the same rights and discharging the same responsibilities as do friends, neighbors, and other members of the community. The Social Security Administration's interpretation of "money payments" recognizes that a recipient of assistance does not, because he is in need, lose his capacity to select how, when, and whether each of his needs is to be met. While the State may, if it chooses, give goods or services to a recipient, no part of the cost thereof may be included in claims for Federal participation in assistance payments. If the State agency pays a recipient a certain sum of money on condition that it be expended for certain designated goods or services, the action is legally equivalent to actually furnishing such goods or services directly to the recipient and cannot be considered as a "money payment” within the meaning of the Social Security Act. In contrast with assistance provided through other methods (for example, congregate care; the provision of groceries or other goods and services; vouchers earmarked for specific items and payable to specific vendors; payments to vendors and cash payments, the expenditure of which is supervised), the money payment provides the recipient with a sum of money to be spent as he, not the agency, determines will best meet his need. This sum of money is not identified with any particular requirement or requirements considered in arriving at the amount of the payment; nor is it for any specific items or purposes. Money payments are supported in the administration of public assistance by the provision of services to the applicant and recipient designed to extend his field of choice by enabling him to make effective use of the resources available to him, including the public and private educational, health, employment, religious, recreational, and other facilities of the community. While the agency is responsible for making known to all recipients the availability of such resources, the decision as to the extent to which he wishes to use the services of the agency is the recipient's. In making services available to persons who are infirm, bedridden, or otherwise incapacitated, the agency staff may need to perform services that would be inappropriate if performed to help well persons secure the goods and services which they regularly need. If the recipient's money is spent in accordance with his choices and desires, no question arises about violation of the money payment provision. If the recipient is too ill to make decisions for himself and does not have relatives or friends or a guardian to act for him the agency should be prepared to do so. If it is necessary for the agency to con tinue to act for him the question arises as to whether the money payment best meets his needs. Senator GRUENING. The phrase I quoted appears in the Handbook of Public Assistance Administration. It has been in effect for more than 20 years. The handbook further stipulates that the money payment provides the recipient with a sum of money to be spent as he, not the agency, determines will meet his need. Further the handbook states: Money payments are supported in the administration of public assistance by the provision of services to the applicant and recipient designed to extend his field of choice by enabling him to make effective use of the resources available to him, including the public and private educational, health, employment, religious, recreational, and other facilities of the community. While the agency is responsible for making known to all recipients the availability of such resources, the decision as to the extent to which he wishes to use the services of the agency is the recipient's. It might be helpful to repeat the last sentence. While the agency is responsible for making known to all recipients the availability of such resources, the decision as to the extent to which he wishes to use the services of the agency is the recipient's. "I HAVE FAITH IN MAN ... As Thomas Jefferson said ONCE HE IS GIVEN THE FACTS" Giving information to the people is the most certain, and the most legitimate engine of government. No one I know insists that the information, once given, be used, but we do know that in a free society information and assistance of a technical, sociological, and medical nature must be available to all upon request to enable man to make a choice. I have remarkable faith in man and his ability to use his own good, comonsense, once he is given the facts. We will now proceed to our hearings. BIOGRAPHIC STATEMENT: JOHN BRADEMAS Congressman Brademas represents the Third Congressional District of Indiana which is composed of the counties of St. Joseph, Elkhart, LaPorte, and Marshall. The population of the Third district was 470,773 in the 1960 census. Congressman Brademas was first elected in 1958, and he has been a Member of the U.S. Congress since that time. He comes today to report on the first Pan-American Assembly on Population which was held August 11 through 14 in Cali, Colombia. Because Representative Brademas speaks fluent Spanish, he was in a better position fully to understand the proceedings at the Assembly and the subcommittee looks forward to his report. John Brademas has made many trips abroad for his Government. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the inauguration of Dr. Juan Bosch, as President of the Dominican Republic in February 1963. Two years earlier in 1961, Representative Brademas was a member of a two-man team commissioned to visit Argentina to study higher education. This was appropriate because he is a member of the House Education and Labor Committee where he serves on the General Education Subcommittee, and the Special Subcommittee on Education, and on the ad hoc Subcommittee on the Poverty Program. (He is also on the Committee on House Administration.) During his first term in Congress, Representative Brademas was a member of the U.S. congressional delegation to the first Interparliamentary Conference held in Lima, Peru, in 1959. Representative Brademas is a native of Indiana, born March 2, 1927, in Mishawaka. He graduated magna cum laude-some distinction from Harvard in 1949 and later was Indiana's Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, receiving a doctor of philosophy degree in 1954. He has been assistant professor of political science at St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, Ind. He was executive assistant to the late Adlai Stevenson in 1955-56, and prior to his election to the U.S. House of Representatives worked as legislative assistant to Senator Pat McNamara and as administrative assistant to Representative Thomas Ashley, of Ohio. Representative Brademas served in the U.S. Navy in 1945 and 1946. He is a member of the First Methodist Church of South Bend, Ind., and he was honored by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1963 as one of America's 10 outstanding young men of 1962. John Brademas, we are most happy to have you here. We appreciate very much your coming. You proceed in whatever way you see fit. STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BRADEMAS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE THIRD DISTRICT OF THE STATE OF INDIANA Mr. BRADEMUS. Thank you very much, sir, for that most gracious introduction. I must get you out in my district next year. Senator Gruening, I am pleased indeed to have this opportunity to testify before you this morning. I want to pay my own tribute to you for your pioneering efforts in this vitally important field. NOTRE DAME UNIVERSITY TEAM STUDIES POPULATION CHANGE IN LATIN AMERICA I appear here for two primary reasons, aside from the obvious one that every responsible citizen must be concerned with problems of population growth. I represent the congressional district in which there is located an outstanding American university, the University of Notre Dame, at which important studies in population problems in Latin America are now underway. The University of Notre Dame, under grants both from the U.S. AID agency and the Ford Foundation, is now embarked on research in the field of family and fertility changes in Latin America which can prove to be of great long-run importance. This work is being carried out under the direction of two distinguished scholars, Donald Barrett and Julian Samora. The research project at Notre Dame envisages 4 years of effort beginning this month. I am going to take the liberty of asking that there be placed in the record several documents concerning the role of the University of Notre Dame in the field of population studies. First, I would include the major part of Notre Dame's proposal to the Agency for International Development for support of the research investigation entitled, "Family and Fertility Changes in Latin America." This proposal, which has been approved by AID, contains a most useful summary of major population problems facing the countries of Latin America. That this research is being carried out by one of the great Roman Catholic centers of learning in the world should, I believe, invest the study with particular importance. CATHOLIC SCHOLARS SPEAK OUT Senator, I should also like to include in the hearings the texts of the addresses given by several distinguished scholars at the Third Conference on Population Problems held at the University of Notre Dame from March 17 to 21, 1965. Included among these scholars are Dr. George Shuster, assistant to the president of Notre Dame; the Reverend John L. Thomas, S.J., member of the Institute of Social Order, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Mo.; the Reverend Gustavo Pérez-Ramírez, director of the Colombian Institute for Social Development: "ICODES," Bogotá: Edgar Berman, M.D.; the Reverend Robert O. Johann, S.J.; the Reverend Stanley Kutz, C.S.B., University of Toronto: the Reverend John S. Dunne, C.S.C., University of Notre Dame; and the Reverend Felix F. Cardegna, S.J., rector of Woodstock College. I am indeed pleased to call to the attention of this subcommittee the pioneering work of the University of Notre Dame in the field of population studies and I trust these studies will be followed with great interest by everyone concerned with population problems. Senator GRUENING. We will be glad to place these items in the record. (The items referred to follow :) EXHIBIT 198 PROPOSAL TO THE AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR SUPPORT OF A RESEARCH INVESTIGATION ENTITLED "FAMILY AND FERTILITY CHANGES IN LATIN AMERICA," UNDER THE DIRECTION OF DONALD N. BARRETT IN THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME, NOTRE DAME, IND., APRIL 25, 1965 (University of Notre Dame, Rev. T. M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., president, Desired starting date: September 15, 1965. Date of submission: April 25, 1965. Proposed duration: 4 years. Amount requested: $611.914. Donald N. Barrett: Principal investigator. Julian Samora: Head, department of sociology. Rev. Charles E. Sheedy, C.S.C.: Dean of the college of arts and letters. FAMILY AND FERTILITY CHANGES IN LATIN AMERICA I. THE PROBLEM OF FAMILY CHANGE The seriousness of rising rates of population growth in Latin America cannot be underestimated. Increases of 3 and even 4.2 percent per year imply doubling of these populations in considerably less than 30 years, changes almost unprecedented in the history of the world. Death control through improved public health and sanitation as well as many other forces has been truly remarkable in the course of just a single generation. The unprecedented changes wrought by the improvement of schools, housing, roads, and community development. which have been so strongly influenced by AID, Peace Corps, and other assistance measures from within and outside these countries, contribute further innovating factors in the complex struggle of these countries toward balanced institutional growth. Of special moment is the widening gap between birth and death rates and the recognition that the humanitarian efforts of death control and improvement in standards of human dignity bring serious problems of rapid population growth. The most important single result of all this is to be found in changes in the institution of the family. Present-day parents in Latin America grow up with all the sociocultural expectations associated with high mortality, grinding poverty, and relatively unchanging family and community life. There is little doubt that they welcome the prevention of needless suffering and death, the rise in standards of living which are becoming available, but today's parents are ill equipped to cope with the markedly new pattern of family life and the large family sizes, which have followed such rapid changes. Traditional methods of problem-solution are simply not effective. Poverty and misery are no longer viewed as the "will of God" and rising levels of expectations for a better life are becoming endemic and a cycle of family change is instituted. Careful study of recent censuses, which are developing in quality and completeness, suggest many of the forces at work. The rapid migration to urban slums around such cities as Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, and Lima is but one important index of family change. The problems of obtaining adequate food, income, housing, as well as rearing a larger number of children in human dignity simply cannot be ignored. Those who resist change in the new situation are termed "traditional families." But we must note immediately that this designation does not describe a unitary phenomenon. Indian traditional families, for example, differ widely from Negro, mestizo, and white traditional families. So also the so-called modern family manifests different cycles and styles which bear sympathetic study and scrutiny. National, regional, and local authorities are investing huge amounts of their scarce resources to combat illiteracy, to increase the average levels of school attainment, to improve income distribution to families, to upgrade skills and occupational achievement, to control disease, delinquency, and crime. But it is difficult for governments to get "inside" families in order to assess the meaning and impact of such crucial changes. Thus, we feel that it would be of great value to develop research insights (1) into the more powerful sources of family resistance to change and adaptation, (2) into the internal and external family elements most sensitive and flexible for change, and (3) into the routes by which family change occurs most effectively with the least instability and disharmony. The remarkable research by the United Nations Demographic and Training Center in Santiago on pregnancy wastage is most significant and valuable. It seems clear that families are definitely taking measures to control excess pregnancies, but this is hardly a socially or medically desirable method of resolving family problems. Further, Latin America is basically a Catholic region where from 89 to 98 percent of the populations of the various countries are counted as Catholics. The Catholic Church has a powerful appeal and the recent reinvigoration of the church suggests that its influence is rapidly becoming more informed and pervasive. Mr. In September 1964 the Organization of American States and the Planned Parenthood Association delegates held a meeting showing deep interest and concern on the part of these countries with the problems of growth. Rockefeller stressed the importance of recognizing the quality of human life, the dignity of the human person and family. Thus, it would be enormously poor strategy to consider fertility regulation a panacea, especially where the method employed would put families in opposition with their church. A commitment to balanced institutional change must grapple with the problem of "fitting" fertility regulation into the total matrix of family change. It is not the function of this research to activate such family change, but to discover the conditions, the changing values, attitudes, and beliefs, under which such changes occur in given settings. Many studies, such as those by J. Mayone Stycos and others in Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and elsewhere, have surfaced many of the complexities involved. The generic values of machismo and virginity, for example, contain many useful leads in an attempt to comprehend this phase within the total pattern of family change. II. CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE PROBLEM Since we live in democratic societies where coercion in the control of family change and fertility would ethically and legally be out of the question, we can affirm the central significance of values, beliefs, and attitudes in the process of change. In regard to fertility change, however, it would be hazardous to affirm unequivocally for Latin America the following words of Prof. Arthur Campbell: "It is apparent that many of the fertility differentials that now exist in the United States are due more to differences in values and norms about family size than differences in the ability to prevent conception and in other limitations that cause actual fertility to differ from desired fertility" (in "Concepts and Techniques Used in Fertility Surveys," Emerging Techniques in Population Research, New York, Milbank Memorial Fund, 1963, p. 30). Such a statement assumes that families rationally and reflectively order their fertility values according to the priorities assigned to all family values. This cannot be assumed validly for Latin America. Nonetheless, as Campbell |