Who is addressing poverty

The first is that not all of the spending on means-tested programs goes directly to individuals and families. Second, some of the money in programs that provide cash or in-kind benefits directly to households goes to individuals and families that are not below the poverty level. Children in families of up to percent of the poverty level, for example, are eligible for Medicaid or the Child Health Insurance Program CHIP in almost every state.

Thus, means-tested spending has increased enormously no matter how it is measured. Although there have been some periods of comparatively rapid growth, such as during the recession of to , Figure 2 shows that spending has grown almost every year for the last five decades.

The increase in spending has been the most rapid in health programs, but cash, nutrition, and several other types of spending have also increased rapidly. Spending per person in poverty has also increased substantially, although not quite as rapidly as total spending. The first is to give money to people who are not expected to work and the second is to use welfare policy to strongly encourage work and then to subsidize earnings because so many of the poor have low skills and often cannot earn enough to escape poverty.

Before reviewing these and other strategies for reducing poverty, I want to emphasize the importance of individual initiative in reducing poverty and promoting economic success. My Brookings colleague Isabel Sawhill and I have spent years emphasizing the importance of individual responsibility in reducing poverty and increasing opportunity. One of our arguments, based in part on a Brookings analysis of Census Bureau data, is that young people can virtually assure that they and their families will avoid poverty if they follow three elementary rules for success — complete at least a high school education, work full time, and wait until age 21 and get married before having a baby.

These numbers were almost precisely reversed for people who violated all three rules, elevating their chance of being poor to 77 percent and reducing their chance of making the middle class to 4 percent. Call it blaming the victim if you like, but decisions made by individuals are paramount in the fight to reduce poverty and increase opportunity in America.

The most straightforward way to help people escape poverty, primarily when they belong to a group, such as the elderly or disabled, who are not expected to work is to give them cash and in-kind benefits that will bring their income above the poverty threshold.

The Social Security program, for example, is designed specifically to help the elderly avoid destitution. Indeed, research shows that virtually the entire decline in poverty among the elderly is accounted for by the rise in Social Security benefits.

If the value of taxes, in-kind benefits except health insurance , and the imputed return on home equity are taken into account, poverty among the elderly drops even further, from the official rate of 8. The strategy of reducing poverty by providing government benefits touches on one of the major fault lines in American politics. As polls consistently show, Americans think able-bodied, non-elderly people should earn their own way.

But it seems likely that simply giving welfare to the able-bodied poor, even if they are single mothers, will never be an effective strategy for reducing poverty in the U. At the other end of the continuum from policies that give money and other benefits to the poor are policies that encourage work. Well over 75 percent of families with children that lack a full-time, year-round worker are in poverty.

Passed on a strong bipartisan basis, and signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, the new law required individuals to meet work requirements in order to qualify for welfare benefits. Mothers on welfare had to participate in state-designed welfare-to-work programs that provided training, job search assistance, or actual work experience.

If the mothers did not participate, states were required by federal law to impose financial sanctions on them in the form of reduced or even terminated cash welfare although they remained eligible for non-cash benefits.

In addition to work requirements and sanctions, the reform law imposed a 5-year time limit on benefit receipt for most mothers who accepted welfare. After passage of the reforms, poor mothers entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers. Between and , for example, there was an increase of more than 40 percent in the number of never-married mothers, the poorest of the poor, who found employment.

Similarly, poverty among black children, who live disproportionately in female-headed families, reached its lowest level ever in This example demonstrates what is possible if government policy encourages and even pressures adults to go to work and then subsidizes the incomes of those who earn low wages.

The combination of work requirements and earned public benefits has the appearance of an approach to reducing poverty that has strong bipartisan overtones. It is notable that even during and after the recessions of and to , work rates among never-married mothers did not return to their pre-welfare reform level.

Although their work rates fell from the peak and highest ever of The predominance of low-wage work for poorly educated workers is the reason encouraging work is only half the federal strategy for increasing work rates to attack poverty.

Millions of Americans have low-wage and part-time jobs that do not provide them with enough money to support a family at or above the poverty level. Realizing the problem of low wages, and hoping to increase work incentives at the bottom of the wage scale, Congress and three presidents, beginning roughly in the mids, passed a series of laws that created, modified, or expanded programs that provide cash and in-kind benefits to poor and low-income working families.

All of the programs allow at least some of their benefits to flow to families that avoid or leave welfare for work. Federal policymakers developed the work support system over a period of roughly two decades. A more recent estimate of benefits from these programs for working families by Sheila Zedlewski of the Urban Institute shows that between and , work support benefits grew by 27 percent in real dollars.

Federal policy does a lot to increase income and reduce poverty among low-income working families. The increase in work by single mothers following enactment of welfare reform in activated the work support system for millions of these families, both those leaving welfare and those who never went on welfare. Work and work support, in short, functioned together to reduce poverty and welfare dependency. The raw poverty rate before any government transfers or taxes in was nearly 20 percent lower than in Undoubtedly, this decline in raw poverty before any government assistance was due to increased work and earnings by these never-married mothers.

As shown by the second bar graph in each set, social insurance and non-cash benefits reduced poverty by between 20 and 25 percent in both years.

In short, both more work by the mothers and more work support benefits from government contributed to the final poverty rate being almost 40 percent lower in Although controversial, a reasonable implication of these results is that federal policy should encourage work. One way to achieve this end would be to strengthen work requirements in both the SNAP program and the means-tested housing programs.

This recommendation is controversial because the reforms showed that some mothers either do not find jobs or have difficulty holding down a job for an extended period. As often happens in these situations, an argument has broken out among researchers and pundits about whether the finding that many mothers do not retain employment is a major problem.

There are two primary facts that are accepted by both sides. Second, the percentage of poor single mothers and children who receive cash welfare from the TANF program is the lowest ever; in , about 82 families were receiving cash from the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program for every families with children in poverty; by that number had fallen to 27 families receiving TANF for every families in poverty.

Caution in this case means that strengthening work requirements in SNAP and housing programs should be done on a limited basis and studied carefully during implementation.

Caution may also call for Congressional hearings and studies by Congressional agencies of how states are implementing the work requirements established by the welfare reform law and the Deficit Reduction Act. If giving money to the elderly and incentivizing work combined with supplementing earnings with work support benefits have proven to be effective in reducing poverty, at least four other strategies hold promise for reducing poverty.

History shows that immigrants are often a hard working and creative group of people who move from their home country specifically because they want to get ahead. It appears from recent debates that there is now widespread recognition that it would be wise to shift immigration policy to reduce the importance of family relationships in favor of increasing the emphasis on skills and on giving employers more flexibility in allowing valuable employees to stay in the U.

The hope for legislation to reflect this recognition is being held up, however, primarily by continuing disagreements concerning what to do about undocumented immigrants.

If we shifted immigration poverty to place a greater emphasis on education and skills, we would see a shift in the percentage of immigrants who earn higher wages and thereby avoid poverty. In addition, immigrants with higher education and skills would contribute more to the American economy which would in turn contribute to economic growth and increase both employment and tax revenues.

There does not appear to be any downside to immigration reforms of this sort. Reducing Nonmarital Births. Addressing Poverty For families to be healthy and thrive, they must be able to meet their basic needs. What We Work For We believe all families need access to stable and sufficient income and fresh, nutritious, and culturally- appropriate foods.

How We Do It We advance inclusive policy ideas at the state and federal level to expand opportunities for children and families. Ultimately, our work is focused on ensuring that all families can thrive. Approach Results Projects Policy Resources. We develop policy strategies and work with partners to create pathways for all families to achieve economic security.

To do this, we: Conduct research and highlight data so that our policy recommendations are always evidence-informed and research-based. View All Addressing Poverty Resources. Young Lives. University of Oxford. Bird, K. Manchester: Chronic Poverty Research Centre. Chant, S. The international handbook of gender and poverty: Concepts, research, policy. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Chronic Poverty Research Centre. The chronic poverty report Escaping poverty traps. Clements, B.

Inequality and fiscal policy. Handley, G. London: ODI. Haughton, J. Handbook on poverty and inequality. Washington, DC: World Bank. International Poverty Centre. Gender equality Poverty in focus Number Brasilia: International Poverty Centre. Kabeer, N. Can the MDGs provide a pathway to social justice? The challenge of intersecting inequalities. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Gender equality and economic growth: Is there a win-win? IDS Working Paper Molyneux, M.

Pathways Working Paper 5. Olinto, P.