Work, Family, and Community: A Framework for Fighting Poverty

2019 ◽  
Vol 686 (1) ◽  
pp. 340-351
Author(s):  
Angela Rachidi ◽  
Robert Doar
Keyword(s):  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Material Hardship ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
Support Employment ◽  
Individual Program ◽  
Work Family

The contributions to this volume make clear that the social safety net in the United States is large, complex, and robust. In this reflection, we offer insights into the adequacy of the existing safety net to reduce material hardship and meet the future challenges facing this nation. Our perspective is broad and moves from the effects of each individual program covered in this volume to the safety net’s function as a whole and its relation to employment and earnings. We offer a framework for reform that we believe should guide policy-makers and analysts moving forward, and we comment on challenges and potential solutions offered in this collection of work. We conclude with some suggestions for how the safety net can better support employment as the cornerstone of an antipoverty agenda and, by extension, help to build strong families and communities. With this framework in mind, we challenge the next generation of social safety net reformers to reconsider the structure of the social safety net, so it is focused on work, strong families, and vibrant communities.

Taking the Long View: COVID-19 Priorities for the Biden Administration

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandro Galea ◽  
Catherine K. Ettman ◽  
Nason Maani ◽  
Salma M. Abdalla
Keyword(s):  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Health Decision Making ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
National Conversation ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Response ◽  
Health Decision ◽  
Policy Priority

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the American political landscape, influencing the course of the 2020 election and creating an urgent policy priority for the new administration. “The Biden-Harris plan to beat COVID-19” represents a practicable, technically competent, plan to contain the pandemic, one that will serve the country well in the months ahead. We suggest that the United States would also benefit from an even bolder set of aspirations—reframing of the national conversation on COVID-19, embedding equity in all health decision making, strengthening the social safety net, and changing how we talk about health—as part of the national response to COVID-19. This would represent a genuine step forward in our approach to health, informed by the systemic flaws COVID-19 exposed, and realize benefits from the pandemic moment that would propel national health forward for the rest of the century.

Checks

Paid ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Servon
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Older Americans ◽  
Retirement System ◽  
The Social ◽  
Security Checks ◽  
Security Check

In 1940, the first monthly Social Security payment in the form of a paper check was issued. Social Security was established by the United States government as a universal retirement system for workers. The Social Security check became a symbol of the social safety net for older Americans, and the relation of that safety to a lifetime of compulsory productivity. Over the years, there has been much innovation in the physical properties of Social Security checks, as well the systems that produce, distribute, and cash them. The Social Security, check, however, will soon become a thing of the past. With or without their cooperation, recipients are being transitioned to electronic direct deposit systems.

scholarly journals The program is perfect

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Narcotics Anonymous ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
The Social ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Life Course

This article examines Narcotics Anonymous (NA) membership in two ways: how blame for failure is displaced from the ‘perfect’ organizational program and onto the individual addict working to remain sober and how this displacement is accompanied by notions of individual responsibility and work. These discourses illustrate the influence of a neoliberal outlook on the life course among ‘clean’ NA members, particularly as the social safety net in the United States has been systematically reduced and replaced by a system that focuses attention on personal responsibility. I show how NA’s ideological approach blinds group members and the larger public to the complexity of addiction, turning addicts who struggle with recovery into failures, through internalized ideological trajectories that root responsibility in the self while discounting context.

The U.S. Welfare State Is Minimal

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-105
Author(s):  
Mark Robert Rank ◽  
Lawrence M. Eppard ◽  
Heather E. Bullock
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
The Social ◽  
Welfare Expenditures ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 13 examines the size of the social safety net in the United States. Compared with European and other OECD countries, the United States has a fairly small safety net. The amount spent is approximately 2 percent of our GDP. In particular, programs aimed at protecting children from poverty are minimal. These programs have also been reduced over time, especially since the 1996 welfare reform changes. Challenging the myth of the bloated welfare state requires tackling multiple intersecting misperceptions, including erroneous portrayals of U.S. welfare expenditures as exorbitant and low-income programs as driving up the national debt. It will also require shattering myths that legitimize keeping welfare benefits low.

Entitlements: Options for Reforming the Social Safety Net in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 686 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Moffitt ◽  
James P. Ziliak
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
High Quality Research ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Demographic Aging ◽  
Almost All

A combination of demographic aging and diversification, volatile business cycle conditions, stagnant real wages, declining employment, and policy choices have increased the need to examine the adequacy of the U.S. social safety net. Is it accomplishing what it is designed to do? Can it weather a fiscal storm? Current “entitlement” programs are in almost all cases providing important assistance to U.S. families and are improving families’ well-being, but they face significant challenges that will require the attention of policy-makers around the country. Some programs may need a structural revamping, while others could do with incremental modifications. Because U.S. entitlement programs address complex social issues, they are themselves complex systems; it follows, then, that meaningful reform must be thoughtful and nuanced, eschewing political expediency. Further, federal support is needed for even more high-quality research that will provide evidence on the types of reforms that will achieve the goals of the programs.

Caught in the Net: The Impact of Changes to Canadian Employment Insurance Legislation on Part-time Workers

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norene Pupo ◽  
Ann Duffy
Keyword(s):  
Labour Force ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Employment Insurance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Canadian Context ◽  
Insurance Programme ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Industrialised Countries ◽  
The Impact

Throughout Western highly industrialised countries, there has been a marked shift toward more conservative social policies signalling a dismantling of the welfare state as part of the process of globalisation. This paper examines the aetiology of the (un)employment insurance programme in the Canadian context. Recently, legislators have tightened eligibility rules, lowered earnings replacement rates and altered coverage requirements. While these changes signal a shredding of the social safety net, they differentially impact on certain segments of the population. Despite official pronouncements of fairness, employment insurance changes intensify the subordination women experience in the paid labour force.

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