Welfare Reform and the Safety Net
Evidence Contradicts Likely Assumptions Behind Forthcoming GOP Poverty Plan
End Notes
[1] Jeffrey Grogger, “The Effects of Time Limits, the EITC, and Other Policy Changes on Welfare Use, Work, and Income among Female-Head Families,” Review of Economics and Statistics, May 2003; James P. Ziliak, “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,” in Robert Moffitt, ed., Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2015, http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13483.pdf.
[2] Robert Moffitt, “Introduction to Volume I,” in Robert Moffitt, ed., Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2015, http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13482.pdf.
[3] Peter Germanis, “Will Conservative Reforms to the Safety Net Reduce Poverty? A Skeptical Conservative Responds to Scott Winship,” January 17, 2016, http://mlwiseman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Germanis2016Conservative.pdf.
[4] 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/sites/default/files/atoms/files/5-11-15pov.pdf.
Other studies have found similar results, including a rise in deep poverty for the U.S. population as a whole from 4.5 percent in 1993 to 6.6 percent in 2004 (Yonatan Ben-Shalom, Robert Moffitt, and John Karl Scholz, “An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Anti-Poverty Programs in the United States,” Institute for Research on Poverty, Discussion Paper no. 1392.11, revised June 2011) and a near-doubling between 1996 and 2011 in the number of families with children living on monthly cash income of less than $2 per person per day ( H. Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin, “The Rise of Extreme Poverty in the United States,” Pathways, Summer 2014, http://web.stanford.edu/group/scspi/_media/pdf/pathways/summer_2014/Pathways_Summer_2014_ShaeferEdin.pdf; see also Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, 2015).
[5] Data for the last few years are not yet available, and data for the years of the Great Recession don’t provide an appropriate comparison, both because of the increase in unemployment and because of significant temporary increases in safety-net income as a result of stimulus measures enacted in 2008, 2009, and 2010.
[6] Ife Floyd, LaDonna Pavetti, and Liz Schott, “TANF Continues to Weaken as a Safety Net,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, revised October 27, 2015, https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/6-16-15tanf.pdf.
[7] Sherman and Trisi. The analysis shows that the safety net lifted fewer children above half the poverty line in 2005 (7.6 million) than in 1995 (10.7 million). The majority of that decline was driven by TANF, which protected 0.6 million children from deep poverty in 2005, down from 2.4 million in 1995.
[8] These figures use Census data, adjusted for the underreporting of key safety-net benefits. The $3,400 decline is in 2015 dollars using the CPI-RS to adjust for inflation. If the PCE deflator is used instead, the decline is $2,600. If other technical adjustments are made (such as to adjust for changes in the average number of people in a family, subtract expenses as the Supplemental Poverty Measure does, and the like), the dollar loss shrinks somewhat but substantial dollar losses remain, regardless of the measure used to adjust for inflation. All figures adjust for changes in family size and are expressed in four-person-family equivalents.
[9] Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Greg J. Duncan, “The Effects of Poverty on Children,” The Future of Children, Vol. 7, No. 2, Summer/Fall 1997.
[10] John M. Pascoe et al., “Mediators and Adverse Effects of Child Poverty in the United States,” Pediatrics, March 2016, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/03/07/peds.2016-0340.
The Harvard Center on the Developing Child defines toxic stress as “strong, frequent, or prolonged activation of the body’s stress management system” without adequate support from a caring adult. Toxic stress in sensitive periods of child growth can adversely affect brain architecture, leading to underproduction of neural connections in areas of the brain dedicated to reasoning. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, Excessive Stress Disrupts the Architecture of the Developing Brain: Working Paper 3, updated 2014, http://www.developingchild.harvard.edu.
[11] Greg J. Duncan, Pamela A. Morris, and Chris Rodrigues, “Does Money Really Matter? Estimating Impacts of Family Income on Young Children’s Achievement with Data from Random-Assignment Experiments,” Developmental Psychology, June 2011, pp. 1263–1279.
[12] Christopher Bollinger, Luis Gonzalez, and James P. Ziliak, “Welfare Reform and the Level and Composition of Income,” in Welfare Reform and its Long-Term Consequences for America’s Poor, James P. Ziliak (ed.), Cambridge University Press, 2009. Another study, of Connecticut’s time-limited welfare pilot project, found that the program raised income inequality among affected low-income families; families with incomes slightly below the median of affected families lost income, while those slightly above the median gained income. Marianne P. Bitler, Jonah B. Gelbach, and Hilary W. Hoynes, “What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments,” American Economic Review, 2006, Vol. 96 No. 4: 988-1012; cited in Moffitt, “Introduction to Volume I.”
[13] Moffitt, “Introduction to Volume I.”
[14] Testimony of Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution and Annie E. Casey Foundation before the House Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, “Hearing on Challenges Facing Low-Income Individuals and Families,” February 11, 2015, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/testimony/2015/02/11-challenges-facing-low-income-families-haskins/2-11-15-lowincome-families-haskins-testimony.pdf.
[15] Max Ehrenfreund, “Bernie Sanders is right: Bill Clinton’s welfare law doubled extreme poverty,” Washington Post, February 27, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/27/bernie-sanders-is-right-bill-clintons-welfare-law-doubled-extreme-poverty/.
[16] Christopher Jencks, “Why the Very Poor Have Become Poorer,” New York Review of Books, June 9, 2016, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/06/09/why-the-very-poor-have-become-poorer/.
[17] Ehrenfreund.
[18] Speaker Paul Ryan, Weekly Republican Address, June 3, 2016.
[19] Christopher Wimer et al., “Trends in Poverty with an Anchored Supplemental Poverty Measure,” Columbia Population Research Center Working Paper No. 13-01, 2013, http://cupop.columbia.edu/publications/2013.
[20] Danilo Trisi, “Safety Net’s Anti-Poverty Effectiveness Has Grown Nearly Ten-Fold Since 1967,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, January 4, 2016, https://www.cbpp.org/blog/safety-nets-anti-poverty-effectiveness-has-grown-nearly-ten-fold-since-1967. The 42 percent figure, which is for 2014, updates an estimate of 44 percent for 2012. Trisi calculated these figures, and the 4 percent figure for 1967, from unrounded figures provided by Christopher Wimer.
[21] Arloc Sherman and Danilo Trisi, “Safety Net More Effective Against Deep Poverty Than Previously Thought,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, May 6, 2015, https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/5-6-15pov.pdf.
[22] Judith Bartfeld et al., eds., SNAP Matters: How Food Stamps Affect Health and Well-Being, Stanford University Press, 2015; Chuck Marr et al., “EITC and Child Tax Credit Promote Work, Reduce Poverty, and Support Children’s Development, Research Finds,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, updated October 1, 2015, https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/eitc-and-child-tax-credit-promote-work-reduce-poverty-and-support-childrens; Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Lauren Bauer, and Greg Nantz, “Twelve Facts about Food Insecurity and SNAP,” Brookings Institution, Hamilton Project Economic Facts, April 21, 2016, http://www.hamiltonproject.org/papers/twelve_facts_about_food_insecurity_and_snap; Danilo Trisi, “Chart Book: Accomplishments of the Safety Net,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, updated November 17, 2015, https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/chart-book-accomplishments-of-the-safety-net#part2_1.