"Year in and year out, Social Security lifts more than 20 million Americans above the poverty line; tax credits lift 6 million; and food stamps, housing subsidies, unemployment insurance, and Supplemental Security Income payments lift another 2 million to 4 million each. Expanding these programs would move the poverty rate lower, experts have long argued. Providing families with much-needed cash also tends to have a range of positive knock-on effects, such as keeping kids in school and improving health measures."
""multiple large, high-quality randomized studies are finding that guaranteed income transfers do not appear to produce sustained improvements in mental health, stress levels, physical health, child development outcomes or employment. Given the sobering results, politicians and policy makers should hesitate before pumping funds into these safety-net initiatives, she argues. If not, "money will be wasted on things that don't work.""
The United States produced $28 trillion in goods and services in 2023 and the average family had a net worth of $192,900, yet one in eight Americans and one in seven children lived in poverty. Social Security, tax credits, food stamps, housing subsidies, unemployment insurance and Supplemental Security Income lift millions above the poverty line and expanding these programs would lower poverty while improving school attendance and health. Recent high-quality randomized studies of guaranteed-income transfers find no sustained improvements in mental or physical health, stress, child-development outcomes, or employment. Ongoing political cuts to safety-net programs make careful policy design and evaluation especially consequential.
Read at The Atlantic
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