Work, Family, and Community: A Framework for Fighting Poverty

• Published date: 01 November 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716219884867
• Date: 01 November 2019
• Subject Matter: Reflections

884867ANN
The ANNALS of the American AcademyWork, Family, and Community
research-article2019
the contributions to this volume make clear that the
social safety net in the United States is large, complex,
and robust. In this reflection, we offer insights into the
adequacy of the existing safety net to reduce material
hardship and meet the future challenges facing this
nation. Our perspective is broad and moves from the
effects of each individual program covered in this vol-
ume to the safety net’s function as a whole and its rela-
tion to employment and earnings. We offer a framework
Work, Family, for reform that we believe should guide policy-makers
and analysts moving forward, and we comment on chal-
and
lenges and potential solutions offered in this collection
of work. We conclude with some suggestions for how
the safety net can better support employment as the
Community: cornerstone of an antipoverty agenda and, by extension,
help to build strong families and communities. With
A Framework this framework in mind, we challenge the next genera-
tion of social safety net reformers to reconsider the
structure of the social safety net, so it is focused on
for Fighting work, strong families, and vibrant communities.
Poverty
Keywords: safety net; poverty; means-tested pro-
grams; economic prosperity
As of this writing, the American economy is
on pace to experience its longest economic
By
expansion in history. Unemployment rates
ANgeLA RAChIDI
across the country are at historic lows, with
and
strong wage growth being driven by workers in
RObeRt DOAR
the bottom half of the income distribution
(bureau of Labor Statistics [bLS] 2019).1 At
the same time, changes to family structure, a
labor market that requires new and different
Angela Rachidi is a research fellow in poverty studies at
the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she
studies poverty and the effects of federal safety net
programs on low-income people in America.
Robert Doar is the president of and Morgridge Scholar
at the AEI. He previously led the poverty studies team
at AEI and served in leadership positions in the social
service programs of New York State and New York City.
Correspondence: angela.rachidi@aei.org
DOI: 10.1177/0002716219884867
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ANNALS, AAPSS, 686, November 2019

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WORk, FAmILy, AND COmmUNIty
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skills, and an evolution in what individuals want from the labor market all present
challenges for future generations. As we revisit the purpose of our social safety
net, we assess its adequacy within this context.
Among the strengths of this volume is that it not only provides a comprehen-
sive look at this country’s social insurance and means-tested transfer programs; it
also raises a number of important issues that too often get ignored in partisan
policy debates, such as how program participation affects employment and family
structure. We applaud the authors and editors for acknowledging the complexity
of these issues, even though we do not always agree with their interpretations or
with their proposed solutions.
Our reaction to the contributions to this volume centers on the goal of a safety
net working in conjunction with a free and vibrant economy, which encourages
employment as the best path out of poverty. Our safety net is clearly and rightly
designed with this in mind: programs either support people while they work (for
example, the earned Income tax Credit [eItC] and child care assistance) or
offer a safety net during periods of unemployment (for example, temporary
Assistance for Needy Families [tANF], unemployment insurance [UI], Social
Security Disability Insurance [SSDI], and Social Security).
With this in mind, the safety net performs well. the vast majority of poor
families with children (87.4 percent) receives some cash support from the safety
net, and when near-cash benefits through Supplemental Nutritional Assistance
Program (SNAP) are considered, the share reaches 97 percent (Rachidi and Jin
2017). this does not even account for medicaid, school lunch, and a host of other
programs discussed in this volume. but the safety net works best to support low-
income people and reduce hardship when combined with employment. A full-
time working single parent of two children earning $8 per hour can expect more
than $11,000 in refundable tax credits and SNAP benefits per year, which, when
combined with earnings, brings her or him above the poverty line. Add to that
the value of medicaid and other potential benefits such as housing and child care
assistance, and the safety net brings most full-time working families well out of
poverty.
the work of researchers such as Dr. bruce meyer of the University of Chicago
and Dr. James Sullivan of Notre Dame has borne this out. Using a consumption-
based poverty measure, meyer and Sullivan find that only 2.8 percent of people
today are poor in the United States based on 1980s poverty thresholds, a decline
of 11 percentage points over the last 35 years (meyer and Sullivan 2017).
Similarly, meyer and colleagues recently found that extreme poverty in the
United States is almost nonexistent when making adjustments to survey data to
account for misreporting and underreporting (meyer et al. 2019).
but assessing adequacy, in our view, involves more than just determining
whether the social safety net reduces material hardship. this is where we depart
from one of the main themes across this volume, which is that to address future
challenges we need to expand existing programs. We believe that redistributing
more income without consideration for how it affects work effort and family
structure results in a number of negative consequences that undermine the over-
arching goal of economic prosperity for all Americans. For example, some

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individual programs can discourage nonworkers from taking employment and
discourage those already working from earning more, in direct conflict with the
overall work-promotion aspects of the safety net. transfer payments may ease the
hardship of poverty, but sustained employment and strong families are the best
path toward economic prosperity and human flourishing.
Reforming the social safety net for the next generation means revisiting it from
this perspective, asking how it can better encourage employment and strong
families collectively, while continuing to provide sufficient security for those who
cannot provide for their families through employment.
the volume as a whole touches on many of these issues. the implications of
the safety net for work and earnings are covered throughout, with some authors
giving more attention and raising more concerns than others. many authors
acknowledge that, much like the benefits of individual programs for reducing
material hardship, individual programs’ negative effects on employment seem
modest when considered in isolation. however, taken as a whole, the structure of
the safety net and its effects on employment, earnings, and even the message it
sends about work expectations may have profound implications.
the same is true for family formation. It is no secret that most government
programs are more generous for unmarried families than married ones, suggest-
ing a marriage disincentive or “penalty.” yet as a whole, this volume leaves the
impression that the behavioral effects of safety net programs on marriage are
small to nonexistent. One must wonder, however, about the collective impact on
marriage and childbearing when families participate in more than one program
at a time, a question facing methodological challenges not well addressed in the
existing empirical research (see, for example, Wilcox, Price, and Rachidi 2016;
Low et al. 2018). At the very least, the evidence is clear that having married par-
ents benefits children (kearney and Levine 2017)....