There has to be some psychological reason as to why, she keeps getting pregnant. I wish we had an expert here at WS who could explain this to me. It's not just to gain welfare benefits, there is more to it. Someone said the other day how many children she has given birth to, is this child the 8th or 9th?
SBM
Back in the 1980s when I had a job administering emergency assistance for a private agency (not government), the increase of benefits per child was nowhere near enough to actually cover the costs of each additional child. Particularly once there were 4 children in the household.
Personally, I never met a woman who was having children in a calculated decision to increase her welfare benefits. As you noted above, there were always psychological factors in play that caused the mothers to make really poor family planning decisions.
Usually they had been neglected and/or abused when they were children themselves. They talked about how they had fantasised about having a "baby to love me" from very young (six or seven years old). They were emotionally needy and looked to men and babies to fulfil that neediness.
Sadly, babies are not just bottomless wells of love, they are also highly needy themselves. A lot of times, the mothers weren't emotionally equipped to deal with the reality of babies, just the romantic Kodak moment vision.
They had multiple partners because again, they had this romantic vision of a man who would love unconditionally but had no grasp on the day to day realities of adult relationships (where partners are sometimes needy or crabby too!). So they went through this cycle with every new partner where in the beginning, he could do no wrong and she treated him like he was the answer to her every prayer. But inevitably, he would start doing things wrong and once he did, she would feel incredibly betrayed and angry.
They didn't have the emotional tools to work out a good relationship with another adult human being. So they went from "you can do no wrong" to "get OUT of my life NOW" without anything in between.
The lucky ones had substance abuse problems as well; if they got into a good rehab program, they had a chance to learn how to deal with their emotions in adult, productive ways. But not every rehab program is good (there's a lot of snake oil salesmen in that field) and, of course, not every woman with a substance abuse problem was able to learn in that environment.
That's true of any learning situation, by the way. Some people do best one on one, others do best in small groups and a few excel at large group lectures (many colleges select for those who learn well in large group lectures). Many times, the women needed therapy at a way more basic level than most rehab programs start at.
I've said it before: I strongly suspect that once upon a time, Jerice was a starry eyed little girl who didn't get what she needed in order to grow up to be an emotionally stable adult. I doubt she was born a "bad seed" or whatever; her behaviour was shaped by her environment. Which failed her.