What Are the Main Characteristics of the Typical Family Receiving Public Assistance

Demography. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2016 Jun 1.

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The Deserving Poor, the Family unit, and the U.S. Welfare Organization

Robert A. Moffitt

Johns Hopkins Academy

Abstract

Contrary to the popular view that the U.S. welfare system has been in a contractionary phase subsequently the expansions of the welfare state in the 1960s, welfare spending resumed steady growth after a pause in the 1970s. However, while amass spending is higher than ever, there has been a redistribution away from non-elderly and non-disabled families to families with older adults and to families with recipients of disability programs, a redistribution away from non-elderly nondisabled unmarried parent families to married parent families, and a redistribution of transfers away from the poorest families to those with higher incomes. These redistributions likely reflect long-standing, and mayhap increasing, conceptualizations past U.S. order of which poor are deserving and which are not.

Keywords: Welfare, Poverty, Single Mothers

The nature of the U.Due south. welfare system has been a subject field of long-standing research interest among those who study low income and disadvantaged families and children, for the state's system of welfare programs has a strong relationship to the family. Historically, for example, the primary recipient group has been unmarried mothers and their children, a group of much research focus given their loftier rates of poverty and the implications of that poverty for children. The part of absent-minded fathers and their relationship to children, and the role of the child support system, has been some other focus of research relating the welfare arrangement to the family. The welfare system also provides support that is quite different depending on whether individuals are single or in a marriage, whether children are present in the family, whether a male and female partner are married or cohabiting, and whether the adults are biologically related to the children. In all of these classic areas of research on the family unit, the welfare organization plays a part.

This newspaper will address two wide questions about the evolution of the U.South. welfare arrangement and how that evolution has resulted in changing patterns of back up for families of dissimilar types The first question is just whether the welfare organization, taken equally a whole, has become more or less generous over fourth dimension. I will argue that the common view amidst researchers and many, though mayhap non all, members of the public is that the system had its greatest expansion in the 1960s and early 1970s, partly stemming from the War on Poverty, but that that expansion was halted, if not reversed, some time later; and that nosotros have been in a contractionary period for two or iii decades. I volition note the scholarly research that supports this view and will examine the evidence to determine whether it is correct.

The second question is whether, given whatever has happened to the generosity of the organization in amass, the distribution of back up across different family types and across families at unlike points in the income distribution has changed. Here I will examine whether trends in support take been different for unmarried mothers and their children, married couples with children, and childless families, for example. I will also examine whether support has evolved differently for the poorest of the poor, on the i hand, and for those with withal modest incomes just with incomes just below or just above the official U.S. government poverty line, the most ordinarily used index of economic condition among the disadvantaged population. I volition also examine whether support has evolved differently for families with older adults and those with disabled family members relative to the rest of the population.

My results show that the aggregate generosity of the arrangement has continually trended upward, admitting with some pauses and slowdowns, and that the rate of spending growth has in fact been greater in some recent periods than information technology was in the 1960s and early 1970s. However, I will likewise show that financial back up has evolved very differently for different demographic and economic groups, with the disabled and aged experiencing much greater increases in support than the residue of the population, and with much slower rates of increase, if not decreases, for unmarried mothers and their children. I will likewise show that at that place accept been decreases in support for families with the lowest incomes and increases in back up for those with higher incomes. I will interpret these changes in the distribution of benefits as reflecting centuries-quondam notions of which of the poor are "deserving" and which are not (Katz, 1989).

I well-known topic to which I will devote minimal scant attending is whether the U.S. welfare system has encouraged nonmarital childbearing and the formation of single parent families, and whether it has discouraged work. These issues are important not only for their own interest but also because, if family and work behaviors have been influenced by the welfare arrangement, this could bias trends in support by family blazon and by level of earnings, which would themselves be affected by the system. At the end of the paper, I will briefly review the existing inquiry literature and will argue that, while some incentive furnishings of this type are probably nowadays, they are small in magnitude and would not bear on the large trends documented earlier in the newspaper.

A Short Chronology of the Evolution of U.S. System of Transfers

The modern welfare state in the U.Southward. was begun in the depths of the Great Depression when Congress passed, and President Roosevelt signed, the Social Security Act in 1935. That Human action created three programs: the old-age retirement programme that is ofttimes simply chosen "Social Security," the Unemployment Insurance organization, and the Assist to Dependent Children plan, or the ADC programme (after its name was changed to Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC, which is what it is generally known as at present). The starting time two of these are "social insurance" programs, which are programs that base eligibility on having worked a sufficient amount in the past and having had a sufficient level of earnings to quality. For example, currently an individual establishes eligibility for Social Security retirement benefits only if he or she has worked at least 10 years in so-chosen covered jobs and has earned at least $1,200 per quarter. Likewise, eligibility for Unemployment Insurance payments is based on whether an involuntarily unemployed private has had a certain amount of work and earnings in the past yr or so, depending on the country of residence. The of import feature of social insurance programs is that they do not base eligibility primarily on current income or poverty status and, in fact, to the extent that poor individuals tend to have spotty employment histories and low earnings, they are less likely to be eligible for these programs in the kickoff identify. However, despite the fact that these two social insurance programs are non specifically directed to the poor, their enormous size means that they practice, in fact, provide large transfers to poor elderly families and to poor unemployed families at the same time they are providing payments to center class families. In 2007, for instance, expenditures in the Social Security retirement program were $485 billion and were $thirty billion in the Unemployment Insurance program (and this was a low unemployment year). This compared to, for example, $12 billion in the cash portion of the TANF plan, which is the current name for the one-time AFDC plan.

Simply the 3rd program, Assistance to Dependent Children, was explicitly directed to poor families, by providing benefits to families where there were children merely where i biological parent was absent-minded from the home. But rather than reflecting a sympathetic view of the poor in general, the ADC programme was instead intended to support widows with children and women whose husbands had become disabled. In some sense, it was not unlike a social insurance program because it presumed that the married man had provided income to the mother and the children, income which they had lost involuntarily. Since it was assumed that mothers would not piece of work and would stay habitation with their children, it seemed natural that the children should be helped and that the mother should be helped in the procedure.

Interestingly, although mothers whose husbands had become disabled were supported by the 1935 Social Security Act through the creation of the ADC program, the Deed had no provision for back up for the disabled in general. There was intense debate in Congress starting in 1936 over whether a program for the disabled should exist included along with the other three (Berkowitz, 2000). There was strong opposition to its inclusion because Congress felt that there was besides great a danger that such a programme would serve besides many men who were not really disabled and who could obtain a job. Debate over whether to have a program for individuals with disabilities continued for the next 20 years, when Congress finally added a program for those individuals in 1956, called the Social Security Inability Insurance (or SSDI) program. When information technology did and then, however, it created a plan would only comprehend the severely disabled to reduce the probability that recipients would be capable of employment. The severity of the eligibility status in the SSDI programme distinguishes the U.South. from many countries in Western Europe, where less stringent definitions are often used and the moderately disabled are oftentimes covered. The SSDI program is, over again, a social insurance plan, for only those who take worked and earned plenty in the by are eligible. But, once again, the program is large in size---$99 billion in 2007--and ends upwardly covering many individuals who are in poverty.

After the cosmos of the three programs in the Social Security Deed and the SSDI program, little development in the transfer system occurred until the 1960s. Information technology is widely recognized that the 1960s and early 1970s were a period of major expansion of government social welfare programs. Commencement with the publication of Michael Harrington's book The Other America in 1962 (Harrington, 1962), which awakened Americans to the existence of widespread poverty in the midst of the country'south full general prosperity, and continuing with President Kennedy's plan to address the poverty trouble and so on to President Johnson's heralded War on Poverty appear in 1964, the need for government intervention to help the neediest families became evident and gained widespread public back up.

Interestingly, President Johnson intended the State of war on Poverty to be focused on educational activity, grooming, and health programs for the poor, not welfare programs--or, in his words, a "hand up" and not a "hand out." The Head Get-go plan, which provides early pedagogy assistance to children from low income families, is one program of this type. Nonetheless, whether intended by Johnson or not, and whether officially part of the War on Poverty or not, the 1960s and early 1970s were a period in which just about all of the major welfare programs for the poor that are still with united states of america today were created (run across Table 1). These include the Nutrient Stamp plan, which was created in 1964 and which provided food coupons for low income families and individuals. Information technology began equally a modest voluntary program but was eventually made mandatory for all counties in the 1970s and began its evolution toward the major program it is currently. Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965. Medicare is the health program for older individuals; information technology is a social insurance program, not a welfare program, merely Congress has fabricated all individuals 65 or older eligible for it even if they accept not worked for 10 years in the Social Security organization. Medicaid is the medical intendance program explicitly providing health care to those with low income and avails and hence is directly aimed at helping poor families. It has grown dramatically since 1965, as volition be shown below.

Table 1

Important Dates in the History of the U.S. Transfer Arrangement

Engagement	Event
Ancestry
1935	Creation of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Onetime-Age Social Security program, and Unemployment Insurance
1956	Creation of the Social Security Disability Program
Great Expansion
1964	Formation of Food Postage program
1965	Creation of Medicare and Medicaid programs
1965	Creation of Caput Start programme
1966	School Breakfast and School Luncheon programs formalized
1972	Congress creates the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programme
1975	Creation of the Women'south, Infants, and Children (WIC) program
1975	Congress legislates the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)
Contractionary Developments
1971–1972	President Nixon'south Family Assistant Plan fails in Congress
Late 1970s	President Carter'due south expansionary welfare reform plans neglect
1980	Ronald Reagan elected President afterwards campaign proposing retrenchment
1984	Charles Murray publishes Losing Basis
1988	President George H. Bush's expansionary work-based welfare reform plan passes Congress but later is judged a failure
1996	President Clinton oversees the near contractionary welfare reform in modern U.S. history

In 1966, the National School Dejeuner Program and the School Breakfast Plan were formalized, providing subsidized lunch and breakfast meals to low income children. Housing programs were expanded in the early 1970s, for the first fourth dimension giving low income families a voucher which they could accept to a private landlord and but take to pay a portion of the rent on the housing unit. The Supplemental Security Income program, or SSI, which provides cash payments to the anile, blind, and disabled individuals if they have low enough income or avails was created in 1972. Upward to that fourth dimension, there was no national plan nether which poor anile or disabled were eligible for cash aid if they did non qualify for Social Security, although there were state programs. The Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, which provides food and nutrition assistance to pregnant women and to infants, was created in 1975. Finally, in 1975 Congress passed the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, which gave families who worked a tax credit on their federal income taxes, the credit amount in proportion to their amount of earnings. Economists telephone call this an "earnings subsidy" program considering it helps those who piece of work more by supplementing their earned income. While the Earned Income Tax Credit is not unremarkably thought of every bit a welfare program in the public centre, it does, in fact, fit the definition, because it only gives credits to families where earnings are below an upper level cutoff and is intended to help only those in the population who take low or modest levels of earned income.

As I asserted in the Introduction, the ascendant view of researchers is that this era of expansion of the welfare state and programs to help the poor was followed by a long period of retraction and retrenchment, or at to the lowest degree stabilization and failure to further expand. Many observers believe that this began equally early as 1971, when President Nixon submitted to Congress, and later resubmitted, a bill to create a guaranteed annual income to poor families called a negative income tax (Tabular array 1). It failed in Congress after both submissions. Afterwards in the 1970s, President Carter formulated a vastly expanded program for the poor with higher benefits, more universal eligibility, and calling for the creation of millions of public service jobs for the disadvantaged. It never made it to the floor of the House. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President, having campaigned on a hope to curtail the welfare state and he continued to savour enormous popularity during his two terms in part. In 1984, Charles Murray published an influential book called Losing Ground (Murray, 1984), which argued that not but had the expansion of the welfare state failed to reduce poverty, it had really made the problem worse by discouraging the poor from working and giving them incentives to not marry. In 1988, President George H. Bush, a moderate Republican, proposed to Congress a bill to add together mandatory piece of work programs to the AFDC program. The bill passed but the implementation of the plan never made work mandatory and was widely considered to be a failure. When a Democrat was finally elected to the Presidency, he presided over, and signed in 1996, the nigh retractionary beak in the modern history of welfare reform, imposing into the AFDC program work requirements backed upwardly by credible and enforced monetary sanctions for noncompliance, and legislating maximum fourth dimension limits of receipt into the program, which was renamed the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, program. The legislation reduced the number of poor families served by the program past 63 per centum within ten years, effectively removing it equally an important program in the nation's prophylactic internet for the poor. Since 1996, welfare reform has been mostly off the political agenda, whether nether President George W. Bush or President Obama, with no further major reforms discussed. Jencks, writing in 1992, provided one of the all-time and near cogent summaries of the post-expansionary era. He wrote that "After 1976 … the idea that authorities activeness could solve--or even ameliorate--social bug became unfashionable, and federal spending was increasingly seen as waste product" (Jencks, 1992, p.seventy). Jencks wrote these words prior to the 1996 welfare reform equally well.

Answering the First Question

With this fairly extended background, let u.s. address the showtime question of whether the overall generosity of the U.South. system of transfers has grown less generous over the last two or three decades. To accept the virtually comprehensive approach, let us include social insurance besides as welfare (or means-tested) programs first, and let us have the largest 16 of those programs. ⁱ Government statistics on expenditure--including state and local spending as well every bit federal--are available back to 1970. Figure one shows the blueprint of growth of full real per capita spending (to control for natural population growth) from 1970 to 2007, the last yr before the Great Recession (it will be considered separately below). As expected, spending rose rapidly from 1970 to 1975, to pick an finish year roughly coinciding with the cease of the expansionary menses noted above, by 60 pct over the short 5 years; and this would take been larger if pre-1970 data were available. Also as expected, per capita spending rose at a much slower footstep, past 25 pct, from 1975 to 1986. But the finish date 1986 is selected in Effigy 1, despite the contractionary events after 1986 noted in Table 1, considering spending picked up again after that year. And from 1986 to the end of the flow in 2007, spending rose a big 72 percent, larger than in the first period of the early 1970s. While this tertiary flow was apparently longer in total years than the initial five-year period, in that location is no sign of a slowdown in spending growth in that recent 20-year period. ^{2 3}

Real Aggregate Transfer Program Spending Per Capita, 1970–2007

Now, 1 event with these figures is that they do include major social insurance programs and it is well-known that the Social Security retirement program, to take only one of them, was liberalized repeatedly by Congress over this period and, in improver, toward the latter period the size of the older population was growing. The upper line in Effigy 2 shows a data series compiled by the Congressional Research Service (Spar, 2006) for per capita real spending on 84 of the largest means-tested programs in the country, thereby excluding those for social insurance, but the series was not nerveless later 2004 and only sparsely collected before 1975. The rates of growth of real per capita means-tested spending, in fact, rose faster than full spending, by 90 percent, xviii percent, and 93 percent in the same 3 periods. Thus, social insurance programs are not responsible for the go on growth of spending in the last period.

Existent Expenditure Per Capita in Means-Tested Programs, 1970–2007

Another issue is that the large rate of growth in the third menstruum may be partly a outcome of the growth of spending in the Medicaid programme, which is by far the largest means-tested program in the state in terms of expenditure, and which has been growing more rapidly than spending in other programs in recent decades. From 1986 to 2007, for example, real per capita Medicaid spending rose by 210 per centum. ^four The lower line in Figure 2 returns to the large programs shown in Figure 1, merely excluding not only the 5 social insurance programs but also excluding Medicaid. While the rate of growth of spending in the 3rd menses is now less than that of the upper line in Effigy two, it is withal 69 per centum, representing a major increment in spending. To sum upwardly, this evidence, therefore, provides no indication of a more than conservative era of retraction and retrenchment that the popular view assumes.

The caption for the difference in the popular view and the actual feel is, in large part, that the 1996 welfare reform referred to in Table 1, which dramatically reduced the size and spending in one of import program, the AFDC-TANF program, was the exception rather than the dominion. This is demonstrated in Figure 3, which shows per uppercase real spending growth from 1970 to 2007 for that program but for several other important ones besides. Every bit the line for the AFDC-TANF program in the figure shows, spending in the program took a dramatic dive in the 1990s and, by 2007, spending was only virtually a quarter of what information technology was in 1995; and, in fact, information technology is lower in 2007 than it was in 1970. But spending in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) plan, for example, which pays cash to poor aged, bullheaded, and disabled individuals, rose by fourscore percent in the five brusque years between 1990 and 1995. This actress spending was a upshot of changes in eligibility rules that allowed more than children to exist defined as eligible by inability criteria (Daly and Burkhauser, 2003). And the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which provides a tax credit to low-income families with earnings, was greatly expanded by both Presidents George H. Bush and Clinton in the late 1980s and early 1990s, resulting in expenditure growth from 1988 to 1998 of 274 percent and taking it from a minor program in the land'south welfare system to 1 of the leading ones (and the largest one among those shown in Figure two). Another revenue enhancement credit, called the Child Taxation Credit (CTC), was passed past Congress and signed past the President in 1997 and started upwards in 1998. The CTC gives low income families with children a significant revenue enhancement break and, as the figure shows, it is now a major program in the country's safety cyberspace. The Medicaid plan--non shown in the figure because the magnitude of the numbers is so much college than for other programs--too rose dramatically since the mid-1980s likewise.

Selected Ways-Tested Program Spending Per Capita, 1970–2007

The Food Postage program is shown in the figure to accept grown up through the 1980s, so brutal as the economic system improved in the later 1980s, just then rose again to a new peak in the early 1990s as a outcome of changes in the programme that liberalized various rules. The about interesting aspect of Food Postage program spending growth is that, later falling in the tardily 1990s as a upshot of the improvement in the economic system, it resumed growth through the heart and latter part of the 2000s despite a falling unemployment rate over the period, growing by xx percentage from 2003 to 2007. The reason for the increment was that the U.S. Section of Agriculture reformed the programme to reduce barriers to participation and to reduce paperwork, and encouraged families who were eligible only hadn't applied to apply for benefits, a witting and deliberate expansion of the program. ^v

Answering the 2d Question

Although aggregate spending continued to rise after the mid-1980s, and fifty-fifty accelerated for many programs, whether the distribution of that spending across families of unlike demographic and economic types is a separate question. Indeed, that the distributional impact of the rise in aggregate spending may not have been neutral is already suggested by Figure iii, for nigh of the programs which grew served different types of recipients than the program which vicious (AFDC-TANF). The SSI program, to take an obvious example, serves only the aged, blind, and disabled, not the poor population in general or even unmarried mother families, 1 of the major groups served by AFDC-TANF. Further, the EITC by its structure does not serve whatever family unit with no workers because it is an earnings subsidy. Indeed, the largest tax credits in the EITC programme go to families whose earnings are roughly betwixt $10,000 and $20,000 a year, which means that it does not primarily serve those who are the well-nigh disadvantaged. The CTC, equally will be noted below, shares this characteristic with the EITC. The Nutrient Postage stamp programme is the only program that serves all family unit types equally (that is, if they have low income and assets) and also serves those who accept no other income, including no earnings. Only that program likewise only provides benefits for nutrient purchases and, in magnitude, benefits from the program are far less than the benefits that were provided by AFDC-TANF or those provided past the SSI program, for example, both of which are intended to aid in all the living needs of the family or private.

In addition, if we return to social insurance programs, which nosotros take not considered in order to focus on welfare programs, the evidence too shows that the programs that take expanded the almost are Medicare, Social Security Retirement, and the SSDI plan for the disabled. Many of the recipients of those programs, as noted before, are poor, but nevertheless those programs but benefit older individuals and the disabled. Poor families in these groups are in demand of assistance from the government merely, over again, this just demonstrates how many of the programs that have grown in size serve specific needy groups.

Nevertheless, a shut examination of distributional changes requires data on individual families and the benefits they receive. For this purpose, I draw upon contempo work by Ben-Shalom et al. (2012) which used the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine this question. The SIPP is mayhap the all-time data set up for this type of examination, for it is a representative household survey of the U.S. noninstitutional population conducted by the U.Southward. Bureau of the Demography which has equally 1 of its main goals the collection of information on receipt by families of benefits from all major transfer programs, both social insurance and welfare. Specific questions in the survey on each program are asked and underreporting of benefits is much lower than in other surveys such as the Electric current Population Survey (Meyer et al., 2009). But the SIPP was merely begun in 1983 and the last survey before the Great Recession was conducted in 2004, so the 1983–2004 menstruum is the only period that tin can be examined with these data. Nevertheless, this catamenia covers both the contraction of the AFDC-TANF program besides as the expansion of many of the other programs discussed above and hence should carry directly on the question of interest.

Ben-Shalom et al. calculated, for each family, the total amount the family unit received from all major social insurance and means-tested programs in the calendar month prior to interview, except Medicaid and Medicare. Medicaid and Medicare accept to exist excluded because families answering a household survey do not know how much the government has spent on their health care under those programs, and that is the relevant figure for these calculations. Ben-Shalom et al. totalled up the family benefit receipt from all major programs from which each family unit received benefits, and examined how that total varied across unlike types of families and how the total changed between 1983 and 2004 for those different types. ^half-dozen

Figure 4 and Figure 5 illustrate some of the results of their study. ⁷ Figure 4 shows the boilerplate monthly benefits received from all transfers programs in 1983 and 2004 for families with an older caput (62 years or age or over), families with an adult receiving SSI or SSDI ^eight , and the rest category which I term non-elderly non-disabled families. The figure shows mean total transfers over all families of each type, whether receiving benefits or non from each of the programs, and hence represents a weighted average of benefits received amongst recipients of each program weighted by the fraction of the group receiving benefits from each program. The effigy clearly shows that families with older adults and families with disabled members receive much more in transfers than other families, which is a effect of the high rate of receipt of Social Security retirement benefits by older individuals and of the relatively high do good amounts in the retirement program and in SSI and SSDI, i.eastward., they are intended to cover all expenses, non just food or medical care, and are much college than AFDC-TANF benefit amounts too. More than relevant to the issue here is the change over time, where the figure shows that, while all 3 types of families experienced increases in benefits, the families with older individuals and with disabled members received greater increases than non-elderly nondisabled families in absolute magnitude ($208, $74, and $20, respectively) although in percentage terms the third group had a somewhat large increment because of its small base of operations (per centum increases for the iii are xix, 6, and xiii, respectively). Thus the share of transfer benefits received by older developed families necessarily rose betwixt 1983 and 2004, and the benefits for the disabled also rose significantly, which type of redistribution of total benefits.

Monthly Benefits Received in 1983 and 2004 past Families by Historic period and Disability Condition.

Monthly Benefits Received in 1983 and 2004 past Non-Elderly, Non-Disabled Families by Family Type

Tabular array five shows similar figures for non-elderly, non-disabled single parent families, married parent families, and childless individuals and families. ⁹ Here again nosotros see that the size of transfers differs markedly beyond groups, with single parent families receiving more than than married parent families, and childless individuals and families receiving very petty from the U.S. transfer system. However, hither the differences in changes in benefits over time for the three groups are dramatically dissimilar, with transfers to the average unmarried parent family falling by xx pct and those to the average married parent family rising past 68 percent. The reject for single parent families reflects the contraction of the AFDC-TANF program combined with increases in transfers from other programs which were smaller in magnitude because those other programs largely served dissimilar family unit types. Transfers to childless individuals and families were essentially unchanged, rising by a small 7 pct. These results imply a redistribution of benefits away from single parent families toward married parent families.

These figures suffer from the obvious problem that income is not being controlled for, and transfers should ordinarily exist expected to menstruation unduly to those with low income. It is possible that the redistributional movements shown in Figure 4 and Effigy 5 could be the result of differential changes in income across the unlike groups, which would give them a rather different interpretation. To address this issue we must condition on individual income for each family unit. To this terminate, ascertain private income for a family equally the sum of its earned income and its private unearned income. For most families eligible for welfare programs, individual unearned income is very small relative to earned income; most families have very petty capital income and merely miscellaneous income from other sources (e.k., kid support). After computing each family'south income, I will classify their degree of disadvantage by the relation of their income to the official U.S. government poverty threshold for their family size, putting families into 1 of our groups: private income less than 50 percent of the poverty threshold (and so-called "deep" poverty), private income greater than fifty percent simply less than 100 percent of the threshold (the "shallow" poor), private income greater than the poverty threshold but less than 150 percent of it (the "near-poor"), and greater than 150 percentage but less than 200 percent of the threshold (the "non-poor").

Figure half-dozen, Effigy 7, and Figure 8 prove the results when the three groups in Figure 5 are broken out by the level of their individual income relative to the poverty threshold. Figure 6, for instance, shows the results for single female parent families. If their overall decline observed in Figure 5 had been solely a outcome of a alter in the private incomes of those families, the average benefit levels for the iv separate private income groups would have been stable over time, simply the fractions in each group would accept changed. Instead, what is shown is a abrupt refuse in the transfers made to the poorest single mother families, those in pre-transfer deep poverty, by a remarkable 35 percent. At the same fourth dimension, the transfers made to unmarried female parent families in shallow poverty rose past 73 percent and as did those in the well-nigh-poor and non-poor groups (75 percent and 80 percentage, respectively). ^ten These patterns are explained by the changes in the AFDC-TANF, Food Postage stamp, EITC, and CTC programs. On the i hand, the drastic decline in the AFDC-TANF program, meant that, while 57 pct of unmarried mother families in private income deep poverty received back up from the program in 1983, just xx percent did by 2004. Real benefits of recipients besides fell. In addition, the percent of deep poverty families receiving Food Stamps declined from 73 percentage to 54 percent over the same period, probably because AFDC recipients were automatically eligible for Food Stamps whereas non-AFDC recipients take to brand an contained awarding to the program. On the other mitt, the major expansion of the EITC program in the late 1980s and early on 1990s provided meaning additional back up to working unmarried mother families above almost $10,000 of annual earnings. And the introduction of the CTC, which is a non-refundable tax credit--significant that only families with positive tax liability are eligible and therefore the size of the credit grows as earnings grow, upwards to a point--led to additional government back up for working single mother families merely little or no support to those with low levels of private income. The net outcome was some other redistribution of benefits, in this case from the poorest unmarried mother families to those with higher incomes.

Monthly Benefits Received in 1983 and 2004 for Not-Elderly, Not-Disabled Single Parent Families by Private Income Level

Monthly Benefits Received in 1983 and 2004 for Non-Elderly, Non-Disabled Married Parent Families past Private Income Level

Monthly Benefits Received in 1983 and 2004 for Non-Elderly, Non-Disabled Childless Individuals and Families by Private Income Level

Figure seven shows the aforementioned design for married-parent families, with declines in back up amidst those in pretransfer deep poverty (31 percent refuse) and large increases for those with higher incomes (ranging from 75 percent to 138 percent increases). ¹¹ Role of the decline among the poorest families of this type was also from the decline of the AFDC-TANF program for, while the participation charge per unit of married couples in 1983 was less than half of what it was for unmarried mother families, it was still substantial. The AFDC plan did permit 2-parent families to participate in the program and, in addition, stepparent families have always been treated by the program as single parent families since both biological parents are not nowadays in that case (Moffitt et al., 2015). Married parent families in deep poverty also experienced declines in Nutrient Stamp receipt and in UI receipt. At the aforementioned time, married parent families with higher incomes received even greater EITC payments than working single female parent families because the former had both higher earnings levels and more than children, both of which raise EITC benefits in the relevant ranges.

Figure viii shows a similar blueprint for childless families and individuals just the amounts are very minor and in that location was simply a few dollars' difference in the two years' benefit levels. The major benefits received past the low-income childless are Nutrient Stamp and UI benefits, although working families could receive a small tax credit from the EITC as well. ¹²

Transfers to families with older individuals, individuals receiving disability benefits, and the residual non-elderly nondisabled grouping can also be separated past private income category. Figures for their trends in benefits are not shown for brevity. Notwithstanding, virtually all of the first two groups are non working, so a comparing with the few families who work is non particularly of import. Notwithstanding, the results show that average benefits for both these ii groups rose from 1983 to 2004, even those with private incomes less than 50 percent of the poverty threshold. One time over again, the sizable increases in benefits from the Social Security Retirement program, the SSDI program, and SSI are responsible for this result.

The results in this section of my newspaper permit me to answer the second question I posed at the beginning, of whether at that place has been a change in the distribution of transfer benefits to low income families inside the overall growing full size of full transfers. The results show that there accept been three major redistributions. Outset, there has been a redistribution abroad from non-elderly and not-disabled families to families with older adults and to families with recipients of inability programs. Second, there has been a redistribution away from non-elderly nondisabled single parent families to married parent families. Third, inside unmarried parent and married parent families, there has been a redistribution of transfers away from the poorest families to those with higher incomes, those with incomes merely below and but to a higher place the official government poverty threshold. These developments establish a new blazon of "diverging destinies" (McLanahan, 2004), although in this case not between those from low income and center income families, but between different types of families within the low income population. ¹³

Caveats and Concerns

Three different caveats and concerns are worth addressing. These include the importance of the Medicaid program, the affect of the Great Recession, and the relevant of incentives to work and to change family structure. All of these issues could in principle affect the results on trends in redistribution found in the previous section.

The Medicaid program is omitted from the benefit calculations because authorities spending on each individual family cannot be obtained in a household survey. Yet those eligible for Medicaid can receive it fifty-fifty if not working and hence it is an important do good for the poorest families. In addition, there were significant expansions of eligibility over the 1983–2004 menstruation for, while in 1983 most eligibles were single mothers on AFDC, in the belatedly 1980s and early on 1990s eligibility was extended to poor pregnant women in general and later to well-nigh children in poor families. Later, many states extended eligibility to many parents in low income families in general as well. In addition, looking to the time to come, Medicaid eligibility expansions under the Affordable Intendance Act are likely to brand even more depression income families eligible.

On the other hand, some researchers take obtained data from dissimilar sources which have data on medical spending under Medicaid for individual families (Burtless and Svaton (2010) and Burkhauser et al. (2013)). Those studies take noted that if Medicaid is included every bit a transfer, logic requires that the value of employer-provided health insurance also exist included. When both Medicaid and employer-provided health insurance are both valued and added to private incomes, the result is a remarkably distribution-free modify in inequality, with the additions to center-income families about the aforementioned, or sometimes greater, than those going to low-income families. A like issue going frontwards will ascend with the Affordable Care Act, for that legislation also introduces new subsidies for private health insurance for those families with incomes between 133 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line, which ways a further increase in implicit government transfers to the higher income portion of the disadvantaged population. Fifty-fifty one of the Medicaid provisions in the Affordable Care Deed, that which encourages states to raise their upper income eligibility levels from where they frequently are now--often below the poverty line--at to the lowest degree up to the poverty line, which will benefit the shallow poor, not the poorest families. Consequently, it is unclear at the present time how much adding Medicaid would change the conclusions reached in the final section, although this is certainly an important topic for subsequent research.

Much attending has also been focused recently on the performance of the safety internet during the Great Recession, roughly between 2007–2008 and 2012. The federal regime expanded many of the major transfer programs significantly during the Recession. Benefit levels for the Food Stamp programme were raised and eligibility requirements were relaxed, EITC amounts were increased for big families, additional funds were provided for the TANF programme, amounts for the CTC were increased, income and payroll revenue enhancement rates were temporarily reduced for low-income families, and one-time extra benefits were given to Social Security retirement and SSI recipients. An additional major legislative change involved the Unemployment Insurance (UI) programme, where the potential duration of benefits was increased, benefit levels were raised, and states were encouraged to broaden the bases for eligibility. For present purposes, the question is whether these additional benefits were provided in equal or unequal measures to different family unit types and to those of dissimilar income levels, and whether therefore the redistributional trends noted in the last section were continued or countered. Interestingly, the evidence on this question indicates that, opposite to the long-term trend, the boosted benefits provided went to both single parent and married parent families, childless individuals and families as well as those with children, and were about equally spread amongst those in deep poverty and those with higher income levels (Moffitt, 2013). The poorest families received major increases from the Food Stamp and UI programs, while millions of families who lost their jobs just withal had significant earnings (e.grand., to a higher place $10,000 a year) received additional EITC benefits.

Nevertheless, at this writing, most of these temporary expansions have phased out. Some of the EITC and CTC changes have been extended a scrap farther, and some of the UI eligibility changes are likely to stay. Bated from these, yet, the condom net will return to its pre-Recession structure. Consequently, for the safety net as a whole, there is no indication that the long-run trend of reduction in support for single mothers and for the poorest families and increases in support for married parent families and meliorate-off working families will be reversed.

Finally, a traditional issue with examining how safety net programs affect low-income families is whether those programs discourage work and hence increase the proportion of families with very low or zero earnings, and whether those programs encourage the formation of single-parent families. The research evidence to date suggests that these issues are of little or no importance for the purposes of this paper for several reasons. Beginning, the existing evidence shows that neither work disincentives nor family structure incentives are large in magnitude, especially in the aggregate. Ben-Shalom et al. (2012) reviewed the existing show on work disincentives for all major transfer programs and found that, while some of them announced to induce non-lilliputian reductions in work effort among the recipients of some programs, the aggregate effect on earnings in the depression income population is about zero because too few families participate in programs where those reductions occur. As for family construction incentives, a large body of inquiry on this question for the AFDC program failed to show any major effects on the fraction of single mother families, although the testify suggests that there may have been a small effect (Moffitt, 1998). Inquiry on the effects of the 1996 reform of the program on family structure also has shown very mixed results and no evidence of any major effect (Grogger and Karoly, 2005).

Second, withal, the calculations in the previous department were of average benefits conditional on level of earnings and provisional on family unit structure, and hence whatsoever effect of the program on changing the proportions of families at different earnings levels or in different demographic groups should not, at least at the simplest level, bear on the level of transfers conditional on vest to ane of those earnings or family unit type groups. Further, with regard to the trends noted higher up, if anything, the work disincentives of the nation'southward transfer programs should have declined from 1984 to 2004 as benefits for nonworkers declined and benefits for workers increased. If anything, work incentives should have increased. The pass up in benefits for single mother families and the increase in benefits for married parent families should, likewise, have provided even fewer incentives for unmarried motherhood and greater incentives for marriage over fourth dimension.

The Deserving Poor

While I am not a professional political scientist or even sociologist, I nevertheless advise that one explanation for the changing distribution of transfer benefits I take uncovered can be traced to long-standing concepts of what is chosen the deserving poor. I am far from the showtime to note that the U.Southward. lodge has, for most of its history, starting in the 18th century, made distinctions between which poor families are deserving and which are not, just as some of our forebears in England did with the English Poor Law (Katz, 1989; Iceland, 2013; Jencks, 1992; Patterson, 1994). In the eyes of the American voter, those who are deserving are those who piece of work, who are married or at least widowed, and who have children. Those who are undeserving are those who do not work, who are unmarried parents, and who do not have children. In colonial America, the elderly and children were also seen equally more deserving than prime number-historic period adults (Republic of iceland, 2013, p.thirteen). Interestingly, the enquiry literature merely referred to also reveals that, historically, just receiving government assistance has been taken itself as a sign of undeservingness, a point that the individual has not been exerting enough effort on his or her own. This notion dates to the England and the English Poor Police of 1984, where the "pauperism" referred to those who were receiving relief and were less deserving than the more honest individuals who were desperately poor simply not receiving government assist. A similar conceptualization appeared in the popular contend over the 1996 welfare reform law and its subsequent discussion, where welfare "dependency"--meaning simply receiving benefits--was taken equally an object of its own to be reduced, for its own sake, and independent of whether such reductions reduced the incomes of the poor. Another interesting parallel to current economic developments is that in certain historical periods, like the early 19th century, many prime-age unemployed men were unable to find jobs because of rapid technological change such equally the mechanization of agronomics (Republic of iceland, 2013, p. 13). Today, the emergence of skill-biased technological change, with its increasing need for workers with loftier skill levels and decreasing demand for workers with low levels of skills and instruction, is a leading explanation for the pass up in earnings among the nearly disadvantaged and rise in their unemployment levels. Every bit occurred in colonial times, when unemployed men were treated equally lacking effort, low-skill men without jobs today are often similar regarded as being at fault for their lack of employment.

While these distinctions have been made for a long flow of time, they accept grown sharper over the last xx or 30 years in the U.South. The emphasis on piece of work in welfare programs has grown as piece of work requirements take been added to various programs and as some of the major expansions in welfare programs have only been directed to assist those with earnings. For women, it is often argued--every bit by Garfinkel and McLanahan in their landmark 1986 volume on unmarried mothers, for example--that this alter in attitudes has its source in the rise in employment among middle-class and higher-educated women, leading to a greater expectation that all women today should work, even if they have young children and fifty-fifty if their job opportunities and skill levels are low (Garfinkel and McLanahan, 1986). The growing negative attitudes toward the AFDC plan which contributed to the 1996 reform were in part a reflection of the irresolute nature of its caseload, from one equanimous primarily of widows to one composed primarily of never-married mothers. In 1942, 59 percent of AFDC adult recipients were widows or widowers or were married to spouses with disabilities, simply by 1992, 58 pct of the caseload consisted of the much less popular group of unmarried mothers.

As for families with older adults, the touch on of authorities transfer programs, peculiarly the Social Security retirement plan, is well known (run into Kathleen McGarry (2013) for a recent contribution). Also, the PAA Presidential Address past Preston (1984) noted the increase in authorities support of the elderly relative to that of children. Preston gave a number of explanations for this trend rooted in the political process. I would simply add to his business relationship that the disabled take been similarly favored, and that includes disabled children also as adults (Christopher Jencks likewise adds the disabled to the elderly equally a favored group). I would probably add to Preston's account that those without children are even less favored than those with children.

To economists, the distinction between more and less deserving families is at odds with their archetype models of how welfare should be delivered, as formulated by Milton Friedman (1962) in his proposal for welfare reform in the United States. Friedman argued forcefully that families should be given assistance entirely and solely on the basis of their level of income, and possibly family size, but nothing else. No family or personal characteristics should be used for eligibility or do good levels, and families with the same level of income should be treated identically. He decried government programs in the U.S. in the 1950s that singled out item groups for government support (farmers were ane of his examples). Friedman thought that making distinctions on the basis of characteristics other than income would lead to back up reflecting political lobbying and would harm the economy.

New Directions for Safety Net Policy and Research

It is of import to note that addressing the trends noted in a higher place with new policies should not be pursued by reducing support for families with older adults, those with disabilities, or those with pregnant levels of earnings in the depression-income population. Those families in these groups deserve support and, particularly for the last group, the long-term tendency in providing additional assist for disadvantaged individuals to work more through additional child care, additional didactics and training, and earnings subsidies like the EITC is a welcome development. Nor is the solution to the trouble a return to a welfare system with completely open-ended transfers bachelor to those who do not work with no questions asked, although the U.S. has never really had such a system. However, the decline in support for the poorest families and for single-mother families is not likely to improve the prospects for their improvement and is, if anything, likely to accomplish the opposite. Families in the poorest and most disadvantaged sections of the population confront many barriers to work, including low levels of education and literacy, learning disabilities, concrete and mental wellness bug, domestic violence, substance corruption, and criminal histories (Loprest, 2011). The best direction for public policy should exist one which searches for a fashion to support the non-anile, non-disabled families at the bottom of the earnings distribution in means are that consistent with long-standing American values such every bit taking responsibility for one's own actions. The decline of support to families with nonemployed members and to single parents is presumably rooted in the presumption that they have not taken personal responsibleness for their own state of affairs. Along with Jencks (1982), Garfinkel and McLanahan (1986), and many others, we should not dispute the societal norm in favor of work and marriage which gives it such primacy. Information technology is role of the American heritage and has had enormous positive effects on our society. Simply more needs to be done for those facing the largest obstacles to piece of work, whether information technology be training programs, more discriminating work requirements, better kid intendance for working mothers, or other forms of employment assistance. And, most importantly, even if their employment and earnings cannot rise to the levels we and they would desire, new means to assist those families who are making an effort but are not succeeding should be developed for assistance in the short-term and fifty-fifty in the medium term.

Every bit for research, there several areas where more than investigation would be worthwhile. The crude demographic categories used in the classifications here miss the important developments in the American family unit requiring distinctions between never-married and divorced and widowed mothers and children, cohabiting unions, stepparent families, and blended families with children from multiple partners also equally absent-minded fathers. How those more detailed family types have fared under trends in the prophylactic net would be of interest. On a related topic, the calculations hither do non business relationship for the variability and instability of government support in response to instability of family types themselves, which requires a more dynamic examination of changes in family construction and respective changes (or lack of changes) in regime support. Notwithstanding another topic is to examine how families with decreasing government support "make ends meet," in the words of Edin and Lein (1997)--what strategems they follow to provide for the adults and children in their families. The consequences of decreasing government support for children in the poorest families would besides exist of interest to investigate, and would tie in with the big and growing literature on the determinants of child development and the consequences for intergenerational mobility and intergenerational manual of poverty. These and other research topics would contribute to the cognition base we need for the public policy discussion of these problems.

Acknowledgments

The writer would like to give thanks Andrew Cherlin, Kathryn Edin, and other participants of a seminar at the Hopkins Population Center besides as Sandra Hofferth, Michael Rendall and other participants of a seminar at the Maryland Population Research Centre for comments. Nadia Diamond-Smith and Gwyn Pauley provided excellent research assist. Financial support from the Russell Sage Foundation is also gratefully acknowledged.

Footnotes

Presidential Accost to the Population Association of America, Boston, May ii, 2014.

ⁱThe 16 are the Former-Historic period Survivors Insurance programme (i.due east., Social Security retirement), Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, Workers Compensation, Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, the Supplemental Security Income Program, AFDC-TANF, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Kid Taxation Credit, Food Stamps, subsidized housing programs, school food programs, WIC, and Caput Start. The one important prepare of programs that is left out for lack of good data are child intendance programs.

ⁱⁱThe annualized rates of growth in the 3 periods are ten, 2, and ii.6 per centum, respectively.

³Spending in the tertiary period besides rose relative to Gross domestic product, from 9 per centum of GDP in 1985 to 12 pct in 2007, a meaning and non-trivial increase.

^ivOffice of this growth is a result of increases in medical care prices, which were ascension faster than general inflation over this flow. These figures deflate spending by a general price alphabetize and hence overstates the growth of real medical intendance utilization.

⁵Some of the decline in spending after 1996 has been attributed to the decline of the AFDC-TANF program as well, for many recipients of that program prior to 1996 had been automatically eligible for Food Stamps.

⁶The programs include Social Security retirement, SSDI, Workers Compensation, Unemployment Insurance, AFDC-TANF, Food Stamps, SSI, subsidized housing, veterans benefits, WIC, Full general Assistance, Other Welfare, the EITC, and the CTC.

⁷I have modified the toll index and a few of the details of their calculations, and then these figures will not friction match up exactly to those in their published study.

⁸It would be preferable to define a disabled population independent of benefit receipt, but the questions on disability in the SIPP data are not adequate to exercise and then. represents i.

⁹The data on cohabitation in the 1983 SIPP is inadequate, so marriage is used to define the first two groups. Families with children are those with children under 18 in the household.

¹⁰The percent of single mothers in the income groups did change somewhat over the period. In 1983, the percent of families in the iv groups (out of those with individual income less than 200 percent of the poverty threshold) from lowest to highest, were 53, xvi, 16, and 14, and they had changed to 41, 22, 21, and sixteen by 2004.

¹¹There are many fewer married parent families in deep poverty--20 percent in 1983 and 17 percent in 2004.

¹²Carve up tabulations for childless individuals and married childless families prove like, minor changes.

¹³Some other by inquiry on related topics provides complementary evidence. A literature on "asunder" families shows a rise fraction of low income families who have lilliputian or no earnings as well equally little or no greenbacks welfare (Blank and Kovak, 2009; Loprest, 2011). And the findings of Shaefer and Edin (2013) evidence an increase in the number of families with incomes less than $ii per solar day, which is partly a result of these declines in government aid for the poorest families.

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Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4487675/

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