off the charts
POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
The Washington Post points out that the 2009 Recovery Act, signed five years ago yesterday, accomplished much more than its critics acknowledge. When it comes to using the safety net to keep people out of poverty, for example, the Recovery Act was probably the most effective piece of legislation since the 1935 Social Security Act, as our 2011 analysis explained.
Six Recovery Act provisions — three new or expanded tax credits, two expansions of unemployment insurance, and a SNAP (food stamp) benefit expansion — kept 6.9 million Americans out of poverty in 2010. This estimate uses an alternative poverty measure based on National Academy of Sciences recommendations (a forerunner to the Supplemental Poverty Measure that the federal government now regularly reports) that considers the effect of government benefit programs and tax credits as well as cash income.
As the graph shows:
Image

- Expansions in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) kept 1.6 million people out of poverty.
- The Making Work Pay tax credit, which expired at the end of 2010, kept another 1.5 million people out of poverty.
- Expansions in unemployment insurance benefits kept 3.4 million people out of poverty.
- Expansions in SNAP benefits kept 1 million people out of poverty.
Stay up to date
Receive the latest news and reports from the Center