As the
survey correctly notes, “Any approach in alleviating poverty will need to be
supported by the public to be sustainable.”
There’s a lot of interesting stuff in the raw top-line results, and AEI
should be commended for this effort.
In
announcing the survey, Robert Doar, Morgridge Fellow in Poverty Studies,
highlights three key findings.
- · Fully 87% of Americans—including 81% of individuals living below the poverty line—believe that requiring poor people to seek work or participate in a training program in return for welfare benefits is a better approach than providing benefits without asking for anything in return;
- · 64 % of Americans living in poverty say that most poor people who receive welfare benefits would rather earn their own living instead of staying on welfare; and
- · Only 27% of Americans believe that conditions for the poor have improved since 2001.
Recent
AEI work on poverty has made a big push to make all state welfare benefits
contingent on beneficiaries working, looking for a job or participating in
training programs leading to gainful employment. AEI was probably quite happy to highlight the
fact that the survey confirms that there appears to be public support for its
argument that all public assistance should include a work requirement. I’m not convinced. Here’s the relevant survey question:
Q: Some welfare programs have different
requirements to qualify for benefits.
Which one of the following do you think is generally the better
approach?
·
Requiring
poor people to seek work or participate in a training program, if they are
physically able to do so, in return for benefits, OR
·
Sending
benefits to the poor without asking for any effort in return.
The first
problem with this question is that it doesn’t identify the additional benefits
for which, in order to qualify, a recipient would have to work or participate
in a training program. Survey
respondents might feel differently about Supplementary Nutrition Assistance
Program benefits (“food stamps”) or Medicaid benefits than they do about other
kinds of welfare payments such as Temporary Aid to Needy Families benefits
(“TANF”). Are Americans really willing
to let people die or starve if there simply aren’t any jobs in the locality?
Second, the
question tacitly asks respondents to make certain crucial assumptions about
marginal applicants for these benefits.
Only about 65% of the people who need welfare benefits are able to work;
the remaining 35% are children, disabled or retired. 63% of the 65% of applicants who can work
actually do work, at least part time while 37% do not.
The
question tacitly asks respondents to guess why the remaining 37% of the
employable poor do not work. No doubt,
some fraction of this group of people is simply lazy, and even I’m offended by
simple laziness. Yet the remainder of
the group may have good reasons for not working, including having to care for
children or other aged or infirm family members. People caring for other family members are working—they’re just not getting
paid for it. To get a fair answer to the
question, it seems to me that the latter group should be distinguished from the
former.
And
finally, for a culture steeped in the Protestant work ethic, the alternative to
the “require work” response is a poison pill that the question’s authors should
have assumed very few would take. In
fact, overall, only 9% of the survey respondents thought that welfare
applicants should not have to put in any
effort—apparently at anything—to get welfare benefits.
Doar’s second
key finding, though, could help in dispelling the notion that welfare
recipients are lazy and undeserving of help from their fellow citizens. 61% of all Americans seem to recognize that
poor people would rather earn a living than continue to receive public
assistance. In fact, according to the
survey, 64% of all Americans living below the poverty level say this compared
to 59% of Americans who are financially better off. The survey also found that 63% of Americans
who live above the poverty line think that most of the poor are “hard-working”
people.
Doar’s
third key point requires some unpacking.
Overall 27% of Americans think
that conditions for poor people have improved over the past 10 to 15 years. But
only 23% of the poor have seen an improvement compared to the 29% of the
non-poor respondents who think things have improved. In fact, 59% of the non-poor
think that the lot of the poor has either improved or stayed the same while
only 43% of the poor agree. And 53% of
the poor think that things have gotten worse compared to only 38% of the
non-poor who think the same thing.
The survey
also shows that the public is ambivalent about the government’s ability to
fight poverty. According to the survey, 73% of all Americans, think that even
if it had unlimited resources to devote to poverty, the U.S. government wouldn’t
know how to eliminate poverty. By contrast a plurality of Americans agree that
the government’s efforts to fight poverty have had a positive impact.
The fact is
that the government does know something about fighting poverty. Its anti-poverty programs have had a major
impact on the prevalence of poverty in the U.S.
As Figure 1 shows, without government programs targeting poverty, the
poverty level in the United States would be twice as high.
Figure 1
*Based on the Census Bureau’s Supplemental
Poverty Measure (which includes the effects of government transfers and taxes),
using a threshold anchored to 2012 and adjusted for inflation.
Note: Race categories are described by the U.S. Census Bureau as Asian alone, black alone, Hispanic of any race and white alone. Not all Americans are shown.
Note: Race categories are described by the U.S. Census Bureau as Asian alone, black alone, Hispanic of any race and white alone. Not all Americans are shown.
Sources: Christopher Wimer, Liana Fox, Irwin
Garfinkel, Neeraj Kaushal, and Jane Waldfogel, “Trends
in Poverty with an Anchored Supplemental Poverty Measure,” Columbia
Population Research Center (poverty rates); U.S. Census Bureau (government
programs and poverty status)
Despite
some of its shortcomings, the AEI survey provides a solid foundation for
building the durable political consensus the organization believes is required
for improving the welfare system. If the public continues to recognize that
poor people are generally “hard-working,” if larger percentages of the
population can be convinced that the poor need more help, and if conservative
organizations like AEI can help make the case that government can play an important
role in improving the lot of the poor, the next administration might be able to
make major advances in the ongoing war on poverty.
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