Cardinal Direction
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Cardinal Direction
Overview of the American Social Safety Net with Angela Rachidi
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In the season premiere of Cardinal Direction, host Jessi Troyan sits down with American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Angela Rachidi to examine America’s social safety net and why programs intended to help families can sometimes stand in the way of stability and upward mobility.
Drawing on nearly three decades of experience in government, research, and the private sector, Rachidi explains how overlapping programs and conflicting rules create administrative burdens, marriage penalties, benefit cliffs, and disincentives to work. The conversation explores lessons from the landmark welfare reforms of the 1990s, the dignity and nonfinancial benefits of employment, and the role states can play in leading the next generation of reform.
It’s a thoughtful look at how America can transform the safety net from a system that manages poverty into a bridge toward opportunity and self-reliance.
I'm Jesse Torian, Director of Policy and Research with the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy, and I'll be your host for this season of the Cardinal Direction Podcast. In this season, we'll discuss the American Social Safety Net. We start with the origins of these programs, how they've evolved, and what reform efforts have been made. From there, we discuss how one state operates differently and the pathways that the other 49 states can take to move toward this model. Finally, we look ahead to what work remains at both the state and federal levels to ensure that these programs serve as a true bridge during temporary hardships and preserve resources for our fellow citizens who truly rely on such programs to survive. Hello and welcome to the Cardinal Direction Podcast. I'm Jesse Troyan with the Cardinal Institute. And today I'm joined by Angela Rashidi, who is the Senior Fellow and the Row Scholar in Opportunity and Mobility Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Thanks for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's great to be with you, Jesse. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Well, let's start off and let our listeners into a little bit of your background. You've got a diverse career history inside government, working in public policy and in the private sector. Share with us a little bit about your journey and especially what led you into working into poverty reduction and safety net reform.
SPEAKER_00Sure, yeah, that's a great question. And I do often describe my background as somewhat non-traditional. But I do consider the bulk of my career having been a public servant working for government. It's hard to believe, but I've been in this space for almost three decades. But I started out my career working for the New York City Department of Social Services. And that actually was my first my first sort of exposure to safety net programs. My academic background was in public administration. So I had built a background or built at least an academic background in understanding how government programs worked. But when I started working for New York City, that was my first exposure to really programs that were focused on helping low-income households. And so I spent a little over a decade working there. We ran all of the major federal safety net programs, including TANF, you know, supplemental nutrition assistance program, food assistance, Medicaid, so all of the big ones. And I really got a first-hand view of how these programs operated at the local level, but also how families experienced them. And so when I left there in kind of the mid, you know, about 2015, I was leading the Office of Policy Research and Evaluation. And so I, like I said, really had a kind of a first-hand view of how these programs were working and in some instances not working for families. I built on that experience to move into the kind of think tank world, which is you know where I kind of use my research background to help federal policymakers for the most part, but also state-level policymakers to help them understand how these programs are working as well, just kind of doing it from a different lens. And then, like you mentioned, I've spent a little bit of time in the private sector as well. And that also for me was formative because it gave me the opportunity to apply and to really build my research skills and just have exposure to other parts of the country besides New York City in terms of how other states, other cities were implementing programs and the challenges that they faced. So, yeah, I think I have, you know, a lot of a lot of experience from a broad, you know, set of perspectives, and it's really just helped me kind of understand these programs and how we can make them more effective.
SPEAKER_01No, that's so important because I know it's it's very easy for a lot of us, you know, speaking for myself especially, kind of in the think tank world, like we've read research, we've written articles, we've done all the things about it, but it's a fundamentally different experience when you're boots on the ground interacting with the people who are using these programs. And for better and worse, like, yes, a lot of us have this great understanding of it kind of from a theoretical level, but practice is really where everything counts.
SPEAKER_00Oh, for sure it does. And I mean, again, I said I, you know, ran the policy research office, but that actually we did a lot of work, uh, qualitative work, like focus groups and interviews of actual participants in our programs. And so, I mean, I visit, I've sat in on interviews, SNAP interviews, I have done focus groups in our employment service uh programs. And so you're exactly right, like just the um kind of view into what clients experience and actually hearing from them for me was so was really formative in my career. Um, and it helped connect that, you know, what what do we do from a policy perspective? And then how do participants experience it and and where's the disconnect and kind of how can we how can we fix that? Um, and so that has influenced a lot of my work, just understanding incentives and disincentives and how programs can actually change behavior. Uh, and so, like I said, I think it's given me a kind of a unique perspective.
SPEAKER_01Definitely. Well, kind of along this journey, is there a particular experience or a person that you interacted with, or just like a moment that really changed the way you thought about this work and how you were going to approach it moving forward?
SPEAKER_00There is actually a hundred percent. And I would say it's my time in New York City. Um, when I was, so I started in New York City's Department of Social Services right a couple years, I should say, out of graduate school. So I was young, I was green, you know, didn't have a, you know, I had an academic background, but I didn't have a whole lot of experience uh actually seeing how programs were run. And so when I first started in New York City, it was extremely eye-opening to me just how complex these programs were, but also how how I would say sophisticated the behind-the-scenes processes were in order to determine eligibility, to ensure participants were were following, I would say, the the rules appropriately, and then holding not only participants, but also workers that were processing these cases, holding them accountable. And so just the, you know, I remember the first six months that I worked there. I mean, I knew nothing. And it was just sitting, sitting in meetings and listening to these kind of career staff explain the process. Um, you know, we had a very sophisticated data system in New York City that tracked like almost every action that a caseworker and a participant took. And so, like, just sitting and mapping out the process, like for me, was just so impactful because again, it was eye-opening that there was such a sophisticated process behind what seems maybe simplistic, like, oh, people need help. You assess them and then you you uh distribute funds to them to help them meet their expenses. But when you really dig in and see what happens behind the scenes, um and and for the all the right reasons, I mean, to make sure that you know programs are you know cost effective, that funds are being used appropriately, that they're targeting the right household. So all of it's necessary, um, but just really interesting to see how all of that works on the back end.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can imagine, because I think a lot of us, and probably in particular, like the listening audience here, is not going to be familiar with this up close on the listener or you know, on the participant side. But you might have some folks who have who have experienced this, or you know, you've seen someone, you've heard about the programs, but actually like understanding, you know, what's going on underneath the hood, to use a certain metaphor here. But to kind of springboard off of this discussion you had about the sophistication on the back end of these programs. When a lot of folks hear about the social safety net, they're thinking of a single system. But in reality, we've got dozens of state and federal programs. And so, how would you describe this to someone who isn't familiar?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a good question because I think you're right that we say the social safety net, and it does give the impression that it's one thing. Um, and maybe conceptually it's one thing, because I mean the overarching goal of the safety net is to ensure that households that that lack the necessary resources to meet their basic needs have access to those resources. So, yes, conceptually it's one thing, um, but like you mentioned, there's you know dozens of programs uh that are part of the safety net. And one word to describe it would be disjointed. Um, many of these programs uh don't necessarily work together. They have overlapping purposes, overlapping eligibility requirements. Um, households that are participating in them, they're often not on the same schedule in terms of when they have to apply and when they have to recertify. And so it is quite disjointed, and that creates a lot of duplication of effort on the the administrative side. Um, and it also creates a lot of duplication and probably unnecessary uh burden or redundancy, I should say, on the participant side. So it's not, you know, the safety net's not very well coordinated. And I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that, and you know, it's certainly not something that was designed necessarily this way, but it doesn't change the fact that it is, you know, for the most part, largely uncoordinated and can be challenging, like I said, both on the administrative side and the receiving side.
SPEAKER_01For sure. When you were talking about in the introduction here, some of the ways that programs do work really well and the ways that they don't, in your opinion, kind of how much of this dysfunction and you know, unworkability is a direct product of this disjointed nature of these programs?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I think a lot of it is. Um, and I'll just give you two examples because you know, most low-income households participate in the nation's food assistance program, which is supplemental nutrition assistance program or SNAP. Um so the you know, the listeners might be familiar with that program, but most low-income households participate in that program, as well as the earned income tax credit. And so that's also a federal benefit, um, but they're both run out of two different, you know, there's different authorizing legislation for both programs. They're run out of completely different federal agencies. So the EITC is through the tax system, the IRS, SNAP is through the USDA because it's a food assistant slash agriculture program. Um, and so these programs were created at different times, created by different congressional committees and you know, different congresses and presidents authorize them. And so they're not really coordinated. And just to give you one example, so you know, I focus a lot of my work on the effects of these programs related to employment. And so we have these two programs where we have SNAP, which is the main goal is to provide resources into households so they can afford a nutritious diet. And on the EITC side, it's really around providing uh supplement to wages, so in a way that encourages work, but also supplements low wages. The problem is when households, and like I said, this is a very common situation where low-income households are receiving both, you have the EITC, which is encouraging work, because you can only get it if you're working, and it actually phases in, so you get more of it if you work more up to a certain point. But on the SNAP side, there are work disincentives. Um and the work requirement policy around SNAP is not consistent across all households. There's various requirements depending on the composition of the household. And so a large share of SNAP recipients actually are disincentivized from work because they'll get less SNAP dollars the more they work. So it's just like kind of very counterintuitive that we have these two programs that households are receiving, and yet they have completely different incentives when it comes to employment. And I mean, that's just one example. There's the same competing incentives and disincentives around marriage, around how households construct their families in terms of who lives there and who doesn't. And so it can be just, you know, completely, uh, I would call it dysfunctional. Um, again, not by design. It's just kind of the way things happen. Um, but that's what many families are experiencing and and why our policymakers uh have taken a look at these programs to try to fix some of those problems.
SPEAKER_01Well, with that, you know, you're really hitting on a key point here that my my nerdy economist heart loves: incentives and disincentives. If I could wave a magic wand and get everybody to understand something, it's that incentives matter. So when you're thinking about the safety net and the the myriad programs that make this whole apparatus up, what do you see as some of the most significant perverse incentives or disincentives that are baked into the safety net when we're thinking about the mission of kind of helping people in their time of need, but then also facilitating their journey back into stability?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's another great question. Um, I would say, you know, I kind of highlight two, two in particular that I think are the most impactful. One is slightly more conceptual, and then the other is more, I would call it kind of mechanical or technical. So the the first one is around marriage and family formation. Um and this is the one that I would say is conceptual because it's hard to, it's hard to understand exactly how this affects behavior around marriage. But conceptually, if you just think of our safety net programs and how they're designed, um, and again, this is you know an appropriate way to to design them in the sense that if you have the least resources, you should get the most help from the government. Like that's just kind of commonsensical, right? Like we want to help people. So if you have the least amount of income or least amount of resources, then you get the most assistance. But what ends up happening, and this is the conceptual side of it, of things, that incentivizes people to only have one working adult in the household. And so you can imagine if you have two parents who maybe weren't married when they had a child, maybe they cohabitated, or maybe they were, you know, just in a relationship but not married, the existence and availability of safety net benefits actually discourages them from getting married and forming a two-parent family. Because if they're both low income or they're both kind of just getting connected to the labor market, actually, if they both started working, that might push them over the income eligibility for programs and they would not be eligible. And so they may actually be eligible for no assistance from the government. Whereas if just one of them is in the household or one of them doesn't work and only one works, then that means that they would be eligible. And some people might say, oh, well, does that really matter? Like, are people gonna change their marriage behavior because of that? And that's what I mean. Like maybe we're the research isn't completely clear about that, but that's my point about it being conceptual, that we're, you know, our federal policies are sending the message that you may be financially better off if you actually remain unmarried and you do not form a two-parent household. And that's just completely the wrong message. I mean, we have decades of research showing that having two parents in a household is better for kids, uh, both because of a resource perspective, there's just more opportunity for resources, but also because um just having two adults and having both parents in the household is better for kids. So that's the conceptual side. The other side, then I would say, is um benefit cliffs. And this might be, this is probably a term that your listeners are familiar with, but it reflects um kind of a flaw in how some of these programs are designed, in that if you if you work more, benefits do need to phase out because in this country at least we don't provide universal benefits. So you provide benefits again that target the the households with the least income. And then as they increase their income, you phase out those benefits. And they should have that should process should happen at a fairly predictable and slow rate of phase out. But what happens in too many of our programs, and SNAP is one I think that that reflects kind of the worst of worst of this uh scenario, is that households will be working and increasing their income, and they may abruptly hit like an income eligibility limit, and they potentially stand to lose uh you know several thousand dollars in benefits for just a little bit more in earnings. And so that can actually make them financially worse off if they if they increase their income. And that's just completely counterintuitive, not by design at all, and something that can really substantially impact people's ability to move up the income ladder. Because the message that's sent is well, work a little bit because that's going to be good for you, but don't work too much. Because if you work too much, then we're gonna take away all of this assistance and you're worse off. So I would say those are kind of the two things that I pay the most attention to or have been recently, and probably the two areas where there's the most opportunity for reform in our safety net programs.
SPEAKER_01I couldn't agree more from my own experience working on these issues. I know in particular, a couple of years ago, we did some kind of focus groups, listening research, field work, if you will. And that was borne out in the anecdotes that people we were talking to said. There was, I distinctly remember there's an individual who I think it was in particular, they were getting housing assistance. But he and his partner, I think, you know, they had a number of kids together and they couldn't sort of move in, get married, form that they want to be a family. They want to be that like classic two-parent American family that was kind of, you know, that's very sort of idealized and for good reason. And but the financial implications of that were just staggering, that any semblance of stability that they had would have just been blown to smithereens because of the way that their eligibility would have been, you know, knocked off for I think a number of these programs all at the same time. And so it's it's heartbreaking, but it's also if you're in the position of being an individual who's, you know, you've got this responsibility to put a roof over your family's head, put bread on the table. And if marriage is going to jeopardize that in a very substantial and very like tangible way, it's upsetting. But like we also kind of can't be mad at people for making this rational decision to maintain that stability in the face of kind of a really nasty trade-off.
SPEAKER_00Yes, exactly. And I think that last point you made, Jesse, is exactly right that you can't you can't really blame people for making decisions that are rational and based on how we've designed these programs. And so to me, it really speaks to the need to redesign these programs and take some of those considerations into play.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So as we're kind of moving along in this conversation and we're talking about reforms, I think a lot of our listeners are going to be familiar with the big welfare reforms, social safety net reforms that occurred in the 1990s under President Clinton. But kind of before that, what was the state of reform discussions or the state of just kind of understanding that, hey, maybe something isn't quite working out the way that we want it to here that led into those landmark reforms 30 years ago?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there was um two kind of driving trends. Uh, and this is, you know, before my time, but certainly well documented in terms of what was happening in the 70s, 80s, uh leading into the 1990s. Um, but there were two kind of major trends that were causing a lot of concern. Um, and and much of this was driven by the states as well, like state governors and you know, um eventual president Bill Clinton, who was the pres or was the governor in Arkansas, was a leader on this issue. But the two trends were one was a pretty dramatic increase in non-marital births. Uh so births to single uh mothers, um, and that had increased as a share of all births pretty dramatically, um, from really starting in the 1960s and you know continuing through the 80s and into the 90s. So there was a major concern about that. And the reason our welfare policy that predated welfare reform was viewed as contributing to that is because single mothers were the primary beneficiaries of the program that predated uh welfare reform. It was called aid to families with dependent children. And it was uh, you know, it targeted low-income, mostly single mother households. And so there was that trend in terms of increases in non-marital births. And then the second, which is you know 100% related, is just the explosion in the number of recipients of that pre-welfare reform program, which um I mentioned is the acronym is AFDC. And so again, that program was started in the 1930s under very good intentions. Um, you know, there was a recognition that children growing up with only one parent did not have the resources they needed, and and the federal government decided they had a role in helping you know provide a safety net for those households. But it's another example how incentives and disincentives come into play because as soon as uh a second parent becomes unnecessary because the government is stepping in with resources, that impacts uh you know the formation of families. And then also uh the second aspect was that there was no expectation for work for the mothers who were receiving these these benefits. And this um, you know, if you recall at the time there there was really a very large, well, there was a cultural shift in thinking about women in the workplace. And so certainly in the 1930s, when this program started, women were not working. They were not expected to be working in the workplace, um, certainly working at home, but not you know, for pay in the workplace. And as soon as that started shifting throughout the 60s, 70s, and many more married women and and mothers were working, it became clear that we had this program that was actually disincentivizing employment and and you know providing uh a replacement for the need for earnings for these mothers. And that just led to this explosion in the caseload and you know, something that states found unsustainable for them. And so it was really those two kind of trends. Um, and I'll also say throughout the 70s and 80s, other reforms were tried. Um, you know, during the Reagan years, they tried implementing work requirements in some of these programs in a fair or in the AFDC program in a somewhat narrow way. Um, and those did not prove to be very effective. Um, but really what was the game changer was that states, states really made the argument that this AFDC program was not sustainable. They asked the federal government for flexibility in implementing these programs, applying work requirements, you know, doing other things. And they uh they evaluated how that worked. Once states did this, there was a handful of pilot programs happening, um, well, more than a handful, um, you know, a few dozen. And once they got the evidence from those programs that it actually, you know, improved employment and was better off for families, that among other things, um political will for one, just led to these major reforms in the late 1990s, which gives us uh TANF and probably I would say one of the most significant social policy achievements in our generation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's so important. And I kind of want to go back in here and dig a little bit further because you were you were highlighting sort of the changing expectations for women with respect to work. And there's a there's a really rich literature throughout the social sciences discussing and exploring the relationship between work and well-being, not just from like this material standpoint, but also physical health, mental health, um, what have you. But in your experience, both on the ground and just as a researcher, what are some of the most compelling things that you have learned and you have seen about this relationship between work and well-being that kind of that tends to get lost in these policy debates?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's another great question. Um, and I actually did a deep dive into this a few years ago because there was, I mean, there's always been a policy debate about work requirements in many of these programs. Um, and it it was frustrating for me as a scholar, but also as somebody who had experienced these programs firsthand. It was frustrating when people described work as a kind of punishment for people. Um, and so I did a deep dive because I think there was, maybe I took for granted that work was actually viewed as a positive thing. And so I did want to look into the social sciences and just kind of remind myself what the research actually showed. And to your point, there is a large res uh large uh evidence base that there are many non-financial benefits to employment. Um, and that comes from the unemployment insurance system, where there's been research looking at disincentives built into unemployment insurance and how that can actually uh harm individuals because it takes them out of the labor force. Um, and so, like you said, there's a whole body of how you know being in the labor force helps individuals from a health perspective, um just physical health, uh as well as mental health. And and I would argue, you know, based on my read of the of the literature, that that mental health aspect is even more important. Uh, because, you know, and I think conceptually this makes sense. Work gives people a sense of purpose. Um, it also is where many people form relationships with other adults, meaning friends, you know, a network of people. Um, it's where people kind of have that social interaction. Uh, and so if you if you take that away or deny people of those many non-financial aspects to work, you can see that how that can uh be harmful to them, but also can then uh contribute to deteriorating physical health. Um, and so I think that all of those, and we hear often about the dignity of work, just giving people a sense of purpose and things that they can talk about with their peers, you know, all of those aspects are so crucial. Um, and I do think that that um around the time of welfare reform, that was certainly recognized by many of the supporters of these policies, but I think you're right, it's it's missed and it continues to be missed today, just about all those added benefits of employment that aren't even financial.
SPEAKER_01It's a little stunning, too, that we've kind of stepped away from that kind of so quickly after, you know, when the world shut down and everything kind of got chaotic, just you know, it's hard to believe it's been six years ago since the COVID outbreak. But I distinctly remember, you know, seeing countless news stories, reading different articles, and even just talking to people kind of throughout that if you were all of a sudden you were put out of work because you were deemed a non-essential worker for you know, pick whatever industry, whatever, you know, field of work, and and for whatever reason, because it did vary so much from state to state, all of these negative effects that shown up, whether it was you see, like increases in domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, even, you know, at its most tragic. But we saw so much of this kind of break out when you had this very abrupt and very unexpected change, this shock into the labor force. And then now, you know, just a few years later, on the heels of the big federal reform, that it's like, no, we're gonna make work an integral part of the eligibility to receive, you know, the assistance from especially programs like Snap and Medicaid, that we've stepped away, or that it's just sort of been like memory hold for lack of a better description.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly right. I mean, I think it's you know, it's misguided to think that receiving assistance from the government or receiving some kind of a check from the government can somehow replace uh what people gain from employment. Um, and like you said, time and time again, when things like that have happened, um pandemic being one of the worst examples, but when that does happen, um we're just reminded that no, people actually uh, even if it's a one-to-one on a resource side, like even if you can get as much from the government as you can from working, people still are going to prefer uh to work for the most part. Um, and that comes into play in the, you know, all the debates around the universal base basic income. Um, this again, I would say a misguided view that people prefer to not work and just receive assistance from the government. I just think that that that is kind of misguided and misunderstands sort of the nature of who we are as as human beings.
SPEAKER_01For sure. Because I know, you know, just personally, like I think you and I would both agree that the work that we do provides a lot of meaning. We love that feeling of helping get a policy reform across the finish line, producing some new research, recording a podcast like this, to have these meaningful discussions to help help the world around us kind of better understand these big, these big hairy, audacious problems that we're trying to trying to help get to a better place to make them smaller problems in the grand scheme of things. And to take that away from people or to think that not everyone wants to cultivate and experience that same sense of accomplishment is incredibly misguided.
SPEAKER_00It is, yeah. And I mean, I do recognize, you know, not all jobs are the same, and there's a lot of very challenging, you know, not always fun jobs out there. I mean, I, you know, have worked many of those in my youth. And but I mean, I think that that, you know, that's also an important aspect to, you know, your your kind of life cycle of work is that there's also incentives built into doing that kind of work. You know, if you're uh a landscaper as a youth and have to pick weeds, or if you have to dishwash at a restaurant, like there's incentives built into that because it teaches young people and and you know, even uh, you know, immigrants largely work those jobs, and they they they teach um they teach young people how to be successful in the workplace, that then builds those skills and hopefully then they can kind of move up the income ladder. I mean, that's the you know, the the traditional American dream. Like that's and and not to argue that, oh, it's easy for everybody to achieve, but it's like if we move away from that, that's when we start running into problems. It's like we can still hold that up as our ideal and then use government to fill in some of the gaps and when people face a crisis or you know, maybe when the the economy tanks and there's no jobs available, like that is the role for government. But we have to maintain this ideal that work, all work is important, important and really provides a stepping stone for kind of that next job. Um, and like you said, that next job that can be completely fulfilling and provide households what they need to be successful.
SPEAKER_01For sure. So now that we've kind of taken that aside, let's go back to another point that you brought up that you know, maybe our listeners will have caught in there. That political will is a huge factor in being able to bring these reforms, being bring these discussions to the forefront and really be able to progress these reforms across the finish line and see meaningful changes made. So it's you know, we're sitting here right now, it's been 30 years since the Clinton reforms, you know, including the questions of political will. Why do you think it's taken so long to get back to a place where the discussions like we're having right now have kind of come to the focal point of a national discussion and where we are seriously discussing work requirements, or as I personally like to call them, work expectations. We expect that you can do this, we believe that you're capable of doing it. But you know, in your opinion and informed by your experience, why has it taken another 30 years to keep marching this forward?
SPEAKER_00I mean, the easy answer is that oh, we're you know, politically the country's polarized. Um, and I think that that's obviously a big part of the answer. But I mean, politically, we've been polarized throughout throughout American history. Um and you know, I don't think the time where, you know, people pundits argue, oh, we're in a different time. Maybe, because I do think that we probably have a larger share of the political class at the extremes, maybe than in the past. Um, so that I I kind of do buy into that a little bit. But I think that we've always been very polarized in the sense of um, you know, having two major parties in this country and and kind of having a lack of uh willingness to maybe compromise. Um, what I think was different in the 1990s, again, was that much of what happened with welfare reform was led by the states. Um, and because you had some democratic governors, I mean, Bill Clinton, you know, obviously was the catalyst behind this, but you had democratic governors in, you know, either purple or at the time would be called purple or even red states that just recognized the dysfunction of the AFDC program. And they saw firsthand how it was really harming communities and harming families. Like it was it was undeniable for them. Um, and so I think the conditions of that program were so bad that it made some of that polarization uh dissipate on this particular issue. Um, and you also had, like I said, I don't want to underestimate those trends in non-marital births. That that is at the time was not necessarily a partisan issue. Like there was a general acceptance that this tremendous increase in single motherhood uh was not something to be celebrated. I think that has changed a little bit over time, uh just in terms of how people on different sides of the political aisle view uh that issue and the role for government in addressing that. Um and so, yeah, it's been 30 years, I think partly because, you know, there we don't have the same major issues that we had in the 90s in terms of this dysfunction and and what was happening in the 90s just with crime, and all of these things were looked at as being related. Um, and I think the other part of it is because welfare reform was such a success, um, and there's gonna be a lot of people there that are like, what? What are you saying? And but no, it it was a success in the sense that the the number of families receiving that traditional cash welfare completely plummeted to the point that it's almost uh, I mean, it's a very small program now. And so that was somewhat predicted, but what wasn't predicted is that poverty, child poverty reductions also plummeted. Um, employment rates for for single mothers increased, and households were have, you know, research shows single mother households are better off over time since welfare reform happened. And so that's what I mean when I say it's a success. So we just we don't have the same issues that we had in the 90s to address. And so I think that gives some of these policy reforms less urgency than we experienced in the 90s and can partly explain why we haven't had more progress over the last 30 years.
SPEAKER_01That's an interesting take on that. That, you know, we've been stymied by our own success, to put it in a certain way. That it's kind of we can all throw our shoulders out, pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. And it's like, oh, well, there's all these other challenges that we have to address instead of kind of keeping your eye on the ball of like, no, there's still serious challenges here that have very, very serious downstream impacts on, you know, children, families, and just general well-being of our fellow American citizens that still deserve attention, even with the groundbreaking success that 90s welfare reform facilitated.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And I think where we where we as a country, or at least in the social policy area, have failed is that we haven't shifted from the welfare reform mindset of just reducing dependency and decreasing poverty, which we did. We haven't shifted to in okay, now we want to increase opportunity and increase upward mobility. And so from my from my perspective, you know, that should be welfare reform version two, because we've done a good job transferring, redistributing income to lower income households so that they maybe are below a poverty line or they are able to meet their basic needs, but they they aren't becoming completely self-reliant and they're not necessarily moving up the income ladder. Um, and there's a lot of things that come into play there. I mean, it's not just our safety net policy, it's education, it's you know, lots of things. Um, but we haven't really shifted into that mindset of how do we actually support upward mobility? Um, and I would like to see more attention paid to that. And I think to your point, a lot of these flaws in the safety net that we talk about, it's more geared towards that. It's how do we reduce employment disincentives so people can work more so that they can actually escape the need to rely on government assistance? Like that should be our goal. It shouldn't be how do we just get more people on government benefits? It should be how do we get fewer people on government benefits, but so that they are supporting themselves. Because in my view, that's what every household actually wants. They don't want to be reliant on government. They want to provide for themselves and be able to move up the income ladder on their own.
SPEAKER_01Definitely. I mean, and I think that's such a hopeful and an optimistic way to look at it. It's not about kind of cutting these programs, it's creating a world where fewer people need them.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And like I said, there's a lot of policy components that come into play there. And say the safety net is, you know, one important one, but certainly not the only one. And we also could do a better job kind of marrying these different policy areas like education. Um, you know, even early childhood education should be part of our thinking around safety net policy and just how how do we set these uh kids that are coming from low-income households and and challenging communities? How do we set them up for success?
SPEAKER_01Indeed. We've talked about the political challenges, we've talked about some of the, I don't want to call it intractability. Like we understand kind of that it is a big complicated problem and it's a target-rich environment. But with that, what keeps you optimistic that that good things are happening and that we can kind of help form this better world through policy work, through the work of like direct service agencies, civil society. What keeps you optimistic about the prospects for meaningful change?
SPEAKER_00Another good question. I mean, I would say I'm I am optimistic that we can have meaningful change. I mean, I think that passage of the one big beautiful bill last summer, you know, it obviously was slightly controversial, but I think that was a major step in the right direction in terms of reconstituting the employment and the importance of employment in our safety net programs. Um, and so I mean, I think the downside of that is that it was not bipartisan. So on one side, I'm optimistic because I think a lot of federal policymakers are understanding and willing to put their uh, you know, willing to uh contribute to meaningful reform when it comes to safety net, like they did last summer. Um, but I'm slightly less optimistic because I haven't seen that bipartisan buy-in yet, like we saw in in the 90s with welfare reform. Um, and I don't know if that's gonna change. I mean, I think there's still this desire among those who have more of a kind of center of left perspective, there's still the main goal of the safety net is to see how many people we can get receiving benefits. Like that is the main focus. And if you listen to, I mean, I was just at a um Senate hearing a couple weeks ago where that was the message from you know all of the Democratic witnesses and and policymakers. It's how do we get more people receiving benefits? And to me, like that's just the opposite of what we should be talking about. And so I just I haven't yet seen that shift on the left. Um, and I don't know if that's gonna happen. And I think that's somewhat gonna be required if we want to see bipartisan support for major reforms. Um, but like I said, I'm optimistic that we'll see kind of some small things and we'll see kind of this reorientation of the safety net towards employment. Um, I do see you know some positive movement in that direction. Um, but I'm not necessarily going to hold my breath that we're gonna see another kind of major welfare reform version two in the in the foreseeable future.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the the political dynamics do make this kind of a lot different than what we saw 30 years ago. It's been very easy for me to gloss over that because I wasn't really old enough to grasp what the 90s reforms meant. You know, I'm like six years old at that time. And I was like, oh, uh, you know, I was probably still watching like Sesame Street or something. And so to live through kind of the big, beautiful bill last summer and a lot of the discussion that's been had around that, I was like, oh man, this is this is so big. And I'm really grateful for the perspective that you're bringing to bear on this, kind of looking at the broader context around it, that that bipartisan buy-in and that kind of shared understanding of just even agreeing on what the problem, what the challenge is, but kind of with that that measured optimism that you have, um, let's let's kind of close out this discussion on a positive note. Um, in your opinion, how will we know, you know, whether it's as policy workers or just as you know, general everyday Americans, how will we know that we have been successful in reforming the American social safety net?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, I I think that we'll know we've been successful if we start to see states demanding that the federal government reform these programs. And the reason I say that is because states, so states, as I mentioned, really led much of the reforms that um were really the catalyst behind the federal reforms in the 90s. They have not been a catalyst up to this point, and it's largely because the federal government provides the vast majority of benefits to low-income households, and states up to this point have viewed that as a positive economic boost to their state, meaning that, oh, well, if we have more people receiving SNAP, that contributes to our economy. If we have larger EITC benefits, that contributes to our economy. And so there's no the incentive for states is to get more people receiving benefits. And they don't, and that's a very short-term view. It's not looking at this longer-term view of what is the best thing for our state residents in terms of upward mobility. So, to your point of to your question about well, what does success look like? I think that once those dynamics shift, once there's a larger financial stake in the game for the states and they have to shift from that short-term thinking to that longer-term thinking, because you know, if we require states to contribute towards benefit costs, for example, they may then be more uh or feel more responsible for getting people on a path towards upward mobility. And they likely would work harder to do that than they currently are working because the incentives aren't there. So I think if we start seeing state governors, state uh even secretaries of human services going to Washington going to Washington and demanding that they the federal government reform some of these programs, I think that could be a tipping point. And that's when we might realize, hey, this isn't just uh, you know, something, you know, us think tankers are cooking up. Like this is a real, this is a real issue, and states are starting to recognize that they need more authority and they need to reform these programs.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think that's a fantastic note to end on. The people closest to the challenges are really stepping up and clamoring for more attention to be paid to it. Exactly. So, with that, I want to thank you again for joining us, Angela. And this has been the Cardinal Direction Podcast. Thanks, Jesse. This has been the Cardinal Direction Podcast, a deep dive into America's Social Safety Net. Follow or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcast so you can stay informed when a new episode airs. Ready to learn more? Read about our mission and learn how to contact us at cardinalinstitute.com. Thank you for listening.