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Work, Work Supports, and Safety Nets |
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From Economic Policy Institute: To the extent that poverty exists---and this briefing paper defines poverty more broadly than the official method---it is largely a failure either of the market or of social policy. Along with setting goals, the nation needs to both track its progress, and motivate the political system to undertake these goals. To do so, this paper calls for reforming and refining the way the United States measures poverty and for setting concrete targets to reduce the share of the population whose income puts them under the updated poverty thresholds. To the contrary, the low-wage labor market was particularly robust in these years. Of course, major reform of the welfare system occurred in the 1990s as well, and a great deal of analysis has been devoted to figuring out its impact on the economic conditions of affected families. Summarizing, it has proved quite daunting to separate out the policy impacts specific to welfare reform from those of all the other moving parts, both in the market economy (the move toward full employment) and the complementary changes like the EITC expansion or minimum wage increase. Such jobs could meet important community needs and let people use their newly minted skills. As with any other potentially expensive new social policy, it would make sense to test this idea with a few local demonstration projects. The employment rate remains considerably below its peak at the end of the 1990s cycle, suggesting large numbers of potential job seekers are missing from the unemployment rate, which only counts those actively seeking work.
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