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

Date01 May 2021
Published date01 May 2021
DOI10.1177/00027162211033524
Subject MatterInstitutional Outcomes
242 ANNALS, AAPSS, 695, May 2021
DOI: 10.1177/00027162211033524
Major Means-
Tested and
Income Support
Programs for
the Working
Class, 2009–
2019
By
YU-LING CHANG,
JENNIFER ROMICH,
and
MARCI YBARRA
1033524ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYMAJOR PROGRAMS FOR THE WORKING CLASS, 2009–2019
research-article2021
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 tight-
ening of eligibility rules and expiration of most tempo-
rary 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 admin-
istrative burden. We conclude with a cross-program
discussion of the state of the social safety net in the
pandemic era and postpandemic recovery.
Keywords: Great Recession; safety net; Earned
Income Tax Credit; Child Tax Credit;
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program;
unemployment insurance; Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families
The labor market and economic trends cov-
ered by other authors in this volume exist
alongside safety net and social insurance pro-
grams that both shape and are shaped by the
labor supply and socioeconomic well-being of
low- and moderate-earning workers and their
families. Inasmuch as this volume reflects on
the well-being of America’s working class dur-
ing the decade of recovery that followed the
Great Recession in 2009, it makes sense to
Yu-Ling Chang is an assistant professor of social wel-
fare at the University of California, Berkeley. Her
scholarship focuses on poverty, inequality, and social
safety net programs. Her research addresses both the
process of policy-making and the consequences of
income support policies for economically disadvan-
taged populations.
Correspondence: romich@uw.edu
MAJOR PROGRAMS FOR THE WORKING CLASS, 2009–2019 243
assess the performance of social insurance and means-tested programs that make
substantial contributions to the overall picture. To that end, this article examines
trends in income support programs for low-income workers and their families
from 2009 through 2019.
We focus on five programs that support the income of households with work-
ers or potential workers: the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Child Tax
Credit (CTC), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), unem-
ployment insurance (UI), and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).
Aligning with the volume’s overall focus on the “working class,” all of these pro-
grams provide benefits to the household of working-age adults with the capability
to participate in the labor market and earnings below or around the median. We
leave coverage of income support for nonworkers to Leila Bengali and colleagues
(this volume), who cover the interplay between disability programs and employ-
ment over this time period. While other programs, such as child care subsidies,
Medicaid, and housing subsidies, provide important supports for families who
receive them, we limit this analysis to cash or cash-like programs that have the
most straightforward implications in terms of labor supply.
How did income support program policies and coverage change during the
most recent economic expansion? What do these trends and shifts of selected
program provisions and workers’ participation in them foretell for the pandemic
downturn? Our analysis pays attention to policy coverage, benefits, and outcomes
over the period 2009 to 2019. Changes in program provisions, including target
beneficiaries, coverage, and benefits, speak to a program’s generosity and policy-
makers’ intent. These matters are important to the well-being of program partici-
pants and potential participants, and they have symbolic significance in that they
represent negotiated political agreements on the role of social welfare programs.
We then examine outcomes of these policy changes through tracking caseload
counts, and the ratio of caseloads to potentially eligible households, and provide
state-level differences on other program dimensions in some instances.
We conclude with a cross-program discussion of the state of the safety net for
low- and moderate-income households with workers as of the beginning of 2020
and the likely impact of such program designs on attenuating hardship in the
pandemic era and postpandemic recovery.
Jennifer Romich is a professor of social welfare at the University of Washington School of Social
Work and faculty director of the West Coast Poverty Center. She studies resources and eco-
nomic well-being in families, with an emphasis on low-income workers, household budgets, and
families’ interactions with public policy.
Marci Ybarra is an associate professor in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and
Practice at the University of Chicago. She studies the impact of social welfare policies and
provisions on the well-being of lower-income families with a focus on families headed by
women with young children and immigrant parents.
NOTE: The authors thank Emily Ellis for excellent research assistance and our fellow authors
in this volume, particularly Tim Smeeding, for valuable feedback. Partial support for this
research came from a Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development research infrastructure grant, P2C HD042828, to the Center for Studies in
Demography & Ecology at the University of Washington.

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