The number of Americans living on less than $2 a day has doubled from 1996 to 2015 – and researchers point to the law as one of the drivers of extreme poverty
In late 2015, a pair of researchers stumbled upon a remarkable finding: since the 1996 federal welfare reform law, the number of people who are living on less than $2 a day in America has doubled. They found that 1.5m American households, including three million children, are now living at or near this threshold, as guaranteed government aid that once existed in this country has all but disappeared. While they didn’t place all of the blame on reduced government aid, they pointed to the welfare reform law as one of the main drivers of increased extreme poverty in the US.
With that finding in hand, I attended a 20th anniversary event in Washington DC featuring many of the architects of the welfare reform law, which placed strict limits on aid to needy families. Bruce Reed, one of Bill Clinton’s chief domestic policy advisers and the man who coined the former president’s pledge to “end welfare as we know it”, told me that while the law had its shortcomings, overall it was a “success”. Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, another early advocate for welfare reform, was similarly unrepentant. “It did work,” he said. “Poverty went down and more people are working.”
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2UbM6uD
