Many of the people in major federal safety-net programs could work but don’t, according to a new White House study.
The analysis, published Thursday by the Council of Economic Advisers, helps provide a basis for the Trump administration’s push for “welfare reform” in the form of more work requirements for safety-net programs.
The analysis finds that majorities of Medicaid, food stamp, and housing beneficiaries are all working-age, nondisabled adults. Within those categories, majorities work fewer than 20 hours a week.
“Now is the ideal time to expand carefully designed work requirements to non-cash welfare programs,” the unsigned document concludes, suggesting that Congress should act. President Trump has also directed agencies to pursue work requirements administratively where possible.
The report justifies work requirements as needed to decrease government dependency, while crediting the safety net with helping achieve “a dramatic reduction in poverty.”
Nearly one in five nondisabled, working-age adults now receives what the administration calls “welfare” in the form of Medicaid, food stamps, or housing assistance, in addition to cash welfare, the study found.
Some of those programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the federal food stamp program, already include work requirements. Democrats have criticized Trump’s push for stricter requirements as unnecessary and cruel.
But the CEA, in Thursday’s report, notes that the existing requirements don’t extend to many people that would normally be expected to work. In some cases that’s because requirements don’t apply to adults with children. The analysis, though, suggests that work requirements for adults with children should be tightened to the standard set in the welfare reform signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1996.
Republicans around the country have pushed for tighter work requirements for benefits. For example, Maine required childless, able-bodied adults to work in order to get food stamps and saw the vast majority of beneficiaries stop seeking benefits.
The data for the report comes from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, produced by the Census Bureau, through 2013. The CEA report finds that the data should hold up for today’s beneficiaries, based on a comparison with trends in administrative data.
The specific figures, according to the study:
- Non-disabled working-age adults made up 61 percent of adult Medicaid beneficiaries, 67 percent of adult food stamp beneficiaries, and 59 percent of adult housing assistance beneficiaries.
- Of those adults, the shares working fewer than 20 hours a week were: 60 percent for Medicaid, 60 percent for food stamps, and 52 percent for housing assistance.
