After 1996 Welfare Law, a Weaker Safety Net and More Children in Deep Poverty
End Notes
[1] Robert Greenstein, “Welfare Reform and the Safety Net,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, June 6, 2016, https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/6-6-16pov2.pdf.
[2] Arloc Sherman and Danilo Trisi, “Safety Net for Poorest Weakened After Welfare Law But Regained Strength in Great Recession, at Least Temporarily,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, May 11, 2015, https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/safety-net-for-poorest-weakened-after-welfare-law-but-regained.
[3] Overall unemployment rates were similar in 1995 (5.6 percent) and 2005 (5.1 percent) and both years were the fourth full year of an economic recovery.
[4] The poverty line in this analysis was about $25,000 a year in 2010 dollars for a couple with two children renting in an average-cost community.
[5] For more on the erosion of TANF benefits, see Ife Floyd, LaDonna Pavetti, and Liz Schott, “TANF Continues to Weaken as a Safety Net,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, updated October 27, 2015, https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/tanf-continues-to-weaken-as-a-safety-net.
[6] The Center’s 2015 analysis used estimates of work expenses and rental subsidies — broadly similar to those used in the federal government’s Supplemental Poverty Measure — that are not yet available for years after 2010.
[7] In this analysis of trends, counting non-cash benefits is particularly important. For example, the Food Stamp Program (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) protected somewhat fewer children from deep poverty in 2005 than 1995.
[8] Our 2015 analysis corrected for underreporting in every underreported program for which consistent corrections are available since 1995: TANF, Supplemental Security Income, and SNAP. TRIM does not provide an underreporting correction for other programs such as unemployment insurance (UI), but rough calculations suggest that including corrections for underreporting in these programs (if the data to do so were available for the 1995-2005 period) would not alter the conclusion that children’s deep poverty rose significantly between 1995 and 2005.
[9] Yonatan Ben-Shalom, Robert A. Moffitt, and John Karl Scholz, “An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Anti-Poverty Programs in the United States,” prepared for the 2012 Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Poverty, Chapter 22. Figures are based on monthly income and are from the first waves of the 1993 and 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation, adjusted for underreporting.
[10] Christopher Jencks, “Why the Very Poor Have Become Poorer,” The New York Review of Books, June 9, 2016, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/06/09/why-the-very-poor-have-become-poorer/.
[11] Robert A. Moffitt, “Introduction to Volume 1,” forthcoming in Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Robert A. Moffitt, ed. (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2015), http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13482.pdf.
[12] Stephen Freedman et al., National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies Evaluating Alternative Welfare-to-Work Approaches: Two-Year Impacts for Eleven Programs (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Education, 2000), Exhibit ES-9, page ES-34), http://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/full_93.pdf.
[13] H. Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin, “Rising Extreme Poverty in the United State and the Response of Federal Means-Tested Transfer Programs,” National Poverty Center Working Paper Series #13-06, May 2013, http://npc.umich.edu/publications/u/2013-06-npc-working-paper.pdf.
[14] Ife Floyd, LaDonna Pavetti, and Liz Schott, “TANF Continues to Weaken as a Safety Net,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, updated October 27, 2015, https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/6-16-15tanf.pdf.
[15] Ife Floyd and Liz Schott, “TANF Cash Benefits Have Fallen by More Than 20 Percent in Most States and Continue to Erode,” updated October 15, 2015, https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/tanf-cash-benefits-have-fallen-by-more-than-20-percent-in-most-states.
[16] “Chart Book: TANF at 20,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, updated August 5, 2016, https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/chart-book-tanf-at-19.
[17] Ron Haskins, testimony before the Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources, February 11, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2-11-15-lowincome-families-haskins-testimony.pdf.