Major Means-Tested and Income Support Programs for the Working Class, 2009–2019

Abstract

This article examines policy changes to and trends in five cash or near-cash income support programs for low-income workers and their families from 2009 to 2019. Our analyses show that the safety net expanded during the recession and then contracted via the tightening of eligibility rules and expiration of most temporary expansions for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), unemployment insurance (UI), and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Expansions for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) over the period 2009 to 2019 align with a decades-long trend of social welfare policy reinforcing or enforcing labor force participation. Caseloads fell mostly rapidly for UI, which is explicitly designed as countercyclical support; and for TANF, which maintained high levels of administrative burden. We conclude with a cross-program discussion of the state of the social safety net in the pandemic era and postpandemic recovery.

How do low-income single-mothers get by when unemployment strikes: Patterns of multiple program participation after transition from employment to unemployment

“…Given that states’ stringent work sanctions and time limit policies have been associated with lower TANF participation among single mothers [ 60 ], the inconsistencies in cash benefit patterns may be attributable to state-level variations in the social safety net policies in the United States. Both the federal-state TANF and state UI programs vary considerably in fiscal capacity, program design, eligibility rules, benefit adequacy, and administrative procedures [ 12 , 61 ]. This lack of uniformity can create significant inconsistencies regarding eligibility, benefit amount, and participation duration, which may result in policies having disproportionate effects among some single mothers, depending on the state’s financial or political circumstances.…”

“…Data from the 2020 SIPP panel that covers the period of the pandemic recession is not yet available. Consequently, the 2008 panel offers the best data for studying longitudinal patterns of multiple program participation during an economic recession during which the federal government temporarily expanded social safety net programs under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 [ 11 , 12 ]. Because the conditions reflected in the 2008 panel are similar to expansions temporarily implemented to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19, we believe our analyses offer timely insights relevant to the current policy and support service landscape.…”

Poverty Reduction through Federal and State Policy Mechanisms: Variation Over Time and Across the U.S. States

“…Efforts to determine if President Johnson's War on Poverty was "won" (Burkhauser et al 2021;Fox et al 2015;Haveman et al 2015) and the consequences of a reconfigured safety net that provides conditional, worksupporting services and expense-reducing benefits (Blank 2002;Halpern-Meekin et al 2015;Heinrich and Scholz 2009;Ziliak 2009) continue to receive considerable attention. Recent work has also explored the efficacy of largely temporary policy changes made in response to the Great Recession (Bitler and Hoynes 2016;Chang et al 2021;Larrimore et al 2015;Moffitt 2013) and the COVID-19 pandemic (Bernstein et al 2021;Bitler et al 2020;Cooney and Schaefer 2021;Moffitt and Ziliak 2020;Parolin and Curran 2021) characterized by fiscal stimulus cash supports and temporary federal extensions of benefits or eligibility for specific programs.…”

“…[TANF] program), increasing importance of in-kind food assistance (SNAP in particular) and of work-conditioned tax benefits (federal and state EITCs) especially for poverty reduction and income gains among households with children and those able to work (Chang et al 2021;Fox et al 2015;Hoynes and Schanzenbach 2018;Wimer et al 2020).…”