On Being

Supplemental Security Income (SSI and SSD) and mandatory Workers' Compensation benefits provide at least some income for disabled people and prevent total indigence. While SSI benefits (for the never- or little-employed disabled) are less than $500 a month currently and will not raise an individual out of poverty and SSD benefits (for those who have worked consistently) are higher than SSI (they vary with previous income) yet still relatively meager, both are pegged to inflation so that their value remains constant (in contrast to AFDC payments).

While Social Security benefits the poor and non-poor alike, it is an extraordinarily important and effective anti-poverty program for the elderly, keeping the official poverty rate for the elderly at approximately 10%. Similarly Medicare is available to all elderly persons and thus disproportionately benefits the poor, especially those who would not qualify for Medicaid.

Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), despite the cutbacks, remains an important program for families with small children as does Medicaid, which covers not only young families but the disabled. What has largely been missed in the welfare debate is the fact that AFDC (the precursor to TANF) was never intended to make people self-reliant. Its purpose has been to alleviate poverty through direct cash grants rather than change the conditions in which the poor live. To call welfare a failure because it has not raised people out of poverty is like calling the fire department a failure for not preventing a city's fires. While welfare funds are a necessary bridge to keep people out of poverty, they must be accompanied by other programs if they are to give people the resources to escape the "Surround."

The Food Stamp program, administered through the Department of Agriculture, is available to all the poor, not just to young families. Initiated during the New Deal as a small program, it was expanded greatly during the War on Poverty. Research has indicated that food stamps have been effective in virtually eliminating hunger in the United States.

Despite the massive cutbacks in the early 1980s, there is still some public housing (with rents proportional to income) as well as "Section 8" vouchers to subsidize some housing costs. While many poor people would be eligible for such housing assistance and while the programs are very important to the people they serve, the waiting lists are long (as long as ten years in the District of Columbia), so the large majority of poor people do not benefit at all from these programs.

At the state and local level, Public Assistance (general relief to anyone who is poor) has largely disappeared over the past twenty years. Most state and local assistance is now in the form of social services (child protection, shelters for the homeless, grants to voluntary institutions to provide particular services, and so on) rather than as cash grants.

It is a raggedy assortment of programs that is especially hard on poor children. The United States separates public assistance from social insurance and then tries to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor as it hands out benefits. Compared to other nations, our programs do very little to pull people out of poverty.