13M people in poverty exist outside social safety net
More than a quarter of people living in poverty in the U.S. receive no help from food stamps or other nutrition programs, subsidized housing, cash benefits or child-care assistance, according to a new Urban Institute analysis examining the reach of the social safety net.
That means 13 million people at the poverty line, with household incomes below $25,100 a year for a family of four, are disconnected from federal programs for the neediest Americans.
Among the very poorest Americans — families of four making less than $13,000 a year — nearly a third receive no benefit from the federal safety net.
“There are a lot of people in this country who are not attached to our major systems of support, and they are in desperate need,” said Gregory Acs, vice president for income and benefits policy at the Urban Institute.
Black Americans are most likely to receive assistance, with 85 percent of those in poverty receiving at least one form of aid. Hispanics and Asians are least likely, with 66 and 67 percent, respectively. Among whites, 70 percent receive at least one benefit.
Researchers who study poverty and governmentassistance programs suggested multiple reasons some groups are more likely to receive benefits than others. Studies have shown that lower-income white families have more resources to fall back on than lowerincome nonwhite families.
Among black and white families with equally low incomes, the assets and net wealth of poor Africanamericans tend to be well below those of whites, leaving them with fewer alternatives to governmentassistance programs, said Arloc Sherman, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Whites are more likely than blacks and Hispanics to own homes, have retirement savings and inherit money, even at lower-income levels, said Signe-mary Mckernan, an economist at the Urban Institute whose research focuses on financial security.
“That’s money that can be used to tide families over in an emergency,” Mckernan said.
In addition to family wealth, immigration status and the social stigma surrounding federal benefits may also play a role in the gap, researchers said. Undocumented immigrants — of whom a fifth live in poverty, according to the Pew Hispanic Center — are not eligible to receive benefits.
“There is a real racial undercurrent in our state in attitudes toward public assistance,” said Carol Burnett, executive director of the Mississippi Lowincome Child Care Initiative, who is white. “Public assistance is maligned by white conservative policymakers the same way it is nationally — that it serves as a disincentive, that people are too lazy, that people don’t deserve it — this whole set of descriptors that functions as code language in Mississippi to basically mean black people.”
Valorie Ladner, a white mother in Waveland, Mississippi, said she’s had to brush aside the judgment of extended family members and seek government help to feed her four children. She receives about $750 a month in food stamps, a fact she used to try to hide from strangers at the grocery store by quickly swiping her benefits card.
“I’m not going to let my kids go without because of my pride,” said Ladner, 36, whose husband, who is in construction and plumbing, is out of work. Ladner recently got a temporary $1,200-a-month job as a janitor at her daughter’s school.
Ladner said she was also set to apply for subsidized housing but her father, a retired fireman, allowed her family to live in his house rent-free.
“If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have a roof over my head,” Ladner said. “I’m lucky to have help from my family. Not everybody has that safety net.”