Better analysis shows anti-poverty programs more effective than previously thought

Study: Food stamps do much more to fight poverty than we thought

Quick version: People on food stamps like to leave the income portion of surveys blank, thus causing their poverty level on surveys to be a ?.

A group decided to track their income from other directions, in order to fill in the ?, and were surprised by the size of the gap they found.

A new study suggests that programs like food stamps and housing vouchers cut poverty by almost twice as much as we thought they did.

According to standard census numbers, the poverty rate in New York from 2008 to 2011 was 13.6 percent, before taking these programs into account. The programs the study examines — food stamps (a.k.a. SNAP), welfare (a.k.a. TANF), state-level general assistance programs, and housing aid — dropped that down to 10.8 percent. But the study suggests the real number was even lower: a mere 8.3 percent. If that's true, then the estimated poverty-fighting power of these programs has been dramatically understated for years.

Fewer people in the sample fill it out, and fewer people who fill out some of it fill out the income portion. This means it misses a lot of money people are receiving from the government. "The underreporting of income from government programs is a problem that is well-known in the CPS, and which has grown over time," Christopher Wimer, a poverty researcher at Columbia and lead author of a landmark 2013 paper on the war on poverty, writes in an email.

So University of Chicago economist Bruce Meyer, who has produced a lot of the research identifying this problem, and CERGE-EI's Nikolas Mittag got microdata from the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to see how much various households in New York state were getting from food stamps, welfare, and housing assistance.

The article goes into prior studies that have discovered similar things:

A 2013 study on the effects of programs on the poverty rate from 1967 to 2012
Graph of Poverty rates with and without taking programs into account

And an Article from a Harvard poverty researcher, who notes the rates don't include non-cash benefits, which cut the effective rates even further.

He found that after you do that, the poverty rate in 2013 was more like 4.8 percent — far lower than either the 14.5 percent official number that year or the more directly comparable 19 percent figure from 1964, before the war on poverty.

Before these programs were put into effect, the United States poverty rate was nine-teen-freakin'-percent! 1 in 5. Now, depending on how you count it, it's half or even less that.

Impressive stuff.

Yes, keeping everybody dependant on the government is such a good thing for our country! 🙄

This post highlights the exact beliefs of Q.

So, three different studies from three different reputable sources- University of Chicago, Colombia, and Harvard- are posted, and you two just roll your eyes and assume it's wrong because it doesn't line up with your beliefs, without counter evidence.

It's just knee-jerk, y'know?

Eh, may as well throw in a fourth. Brookings institute

You can also see this trend in a 2012 paper by Meyer and James X. Sullivan, which measured poverty by looking at how much people reported consuming, as opposed to how much they reported earning. That makes it easier to take into account what government programs help you buy. Meyer and Sullivan found that poverty, measured thusly, fell from 30.8 percent in 1960-'61 to 4.5 percent in 2010.

Originally posted by Star428
Yes, keeping everybody dependant on the government is such a good thing for our country! 🙄

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's better than 1 in 5 Americans living in poverty. I'm not sure why you'd think it's better, 19% sounds like a high poverty rate to me, but you must have your reasons.

And note, these are still mostly working people who contribute, and people in turn pay in to the government, which they can do better when out of poverty. One can view programs like this as an instrument with which people use to deal with some problems, like poverty.

Regardless of your ideological opinions, they clearly work.

McDonalds is always hiring.

Shut up

....

Really, you two are sad. You're like dogs who bark at everything, trying to chase it all alway. What it is, what evidence there is.... I dunno, I feel bad about poking you two with evidence sometimes? Like, you obviously don't know any better. If I draw something with evidence, you bark to try and chase it away. If I don't, you bark. It's empty, you obviously don't want to hear anything that doesn't agree with you, and it reinforces your habit of barking at everything without even considering it, and it's not like I wanna reinforce that habit, I want you to actually stop and look at stuff and consider data, but you really don't want to, and when someone tried to get you to look at something, you just bark.

Q, do you not know what you're posting?

Its saying welfare recipients don't stay as broke as they were before going on welfare....

Um...of course .they don't stay in poverty because They're given more and more free money by the gov. They aren't earning it.

Originally posted by Q99
....

Really, you two are sad. You're like dogs who bark at everything, trying to chase it all alway. What it is, what evidence there is.... I dunno, I feel bad about poking you two with evidence sometimes? Like, you obviously don't know any better. If I draw something with evidence, you bark to try and chase it away. If I don't, you bark. It's empty, you obviously don't want to hear anything that doesn't agree with you, and it reinforces your habit of barking at everything without even considering it, and it's not like I wanna reinforce that habit, I want you to actually stop and look at stuff and consider data, but you really don't want to, and when someone tried to get you to look at something, you just bark.

Woof woof *****

Q99 is right. Don't bother posting if you are not actually going to engage with the thread.

Nice to see that freedom of speech is banned on the forum now. "Agree with us and our liberal opinions or else don't say anything at all!". At the risk of getting unfairly banned I must say that I'm getting a similar biased vibe from this forum now to what we all witnessed during the Republican debate last week.

That's a total nonsense. It's nothing to do with freedom of speech, it's about you showing respect for the content and point of a thread. Play the victim all you like- the problem is your confrontational attitude.

I don't think for one moment you paid any serious amount of attention to what the OP posted. That's not acceptable. Either engage and discuss or stay out.

i think the study gives a good enough idea of actual poverty rates but at the same time can be questioned as to why the income portion wasn't comepletely filled out

Originally posted by long pig
Q, do you not know what you're posting?

Its saying welfare recipients don't stay as broke as they were before going on welfare....

Yes. This is called a 'good thing.' It is also a sign that there is return on investment here- return on investment notably higher than the level at which people were already willing to support the programs.

Um...of course .they don't stay in poverty because They're given more and more free money by the gov. They aren't earning it.

They're mostly either people who work but still need help and where combined with working gets them to a point where they no longer need help and can offer it, or cannot work due to age, disability, and similar. Often soldiers- wounded soldiers are a very traditional source of people in poverty.

Note that not everyone who contributes to society gets paid for it- poor parents trying to put their kids through college so they can get better jobs being an obvious example.

One other overlooked thing is that if you don't help people, they don't simply vanish. They still cost society, often more. There's more crime, more hospital trips, or even simple costs of dealing with homelessness and similar poverty-problems. Police salaries, cleanup, etc..

Here is another article, the Republican state of Utah cuts homelessness 74% by giving people homes. And it cut the state's costs in doing so.

"A Colorado study found that the average homeless person cost the state forty-three thousand dollars a year, while housing that person would cost just seventeen thousand dollars."

Helping people actually saves money.

Which is more valuable to you, making sure that people don't get so-called 'unearned help,' or actually doing things that cost less money?

I'd rather help people and have more money, than not help people and have less.

Genesis-Soldier
i think the study gives a good enough idea of actual poverty rates but at the same time can be questioned as to why the income portion wasn't comepletely filled out

That's not surprising- there's a lot of stigma to accepting help in the US, even if one is working and one needs it. Just look at this thread- we've had three people do just that.

Originally posted by Time-Immemorial
Woof woof *****

You came into a thread and basically go, "Hah, you listen to evidence?" because the evidence doesn't agree with you.

You come across as frankly terrified of things that don't agree with you when you so obviously react like that. I am sad for you.

Originally posted by Star428
Nice to see that freedom of speech is banned on the forum now. "Agree with us and our liberal opinions or else don't say anything at all!". At the risk of getting unfairly banned I must say that I'm getting a similar biased vibe from this forum now to what we all witnessed during the Republican debate last week.

Your definition of free speech seems to be allowing you to bark at anything that disagrees with you, without anyone commenting on it or doing anything about it.

You feel threatened by the topic, so you attack, but without argument or substance.

You don't have to agree, but you do not even try and pretend that you're listening, you merely don't want people to speak things that disagree with you.

That's not free speech you're after, you want control of speech.

What are you going on about?

I think I'm missing something.

These results seem to point to the idea that welfare programs are being taken advantage of because of under-reporting and not reporting of income. That quite clearly points to a massive misuse of these programs. That's what these studies indicate to me. If it brings them out of poverty, that's awesome! But the results seem to indicate that they keep collecting the benefits after being brought out of poverty.

So am I understanding these studies properly?

Good: brings people out of poverty.
Bad: but they miss-report or don't report their income so they still can stay on the programs.

Someone chime in (Q99) with a serious reply. I'm not interested in bashing liberal agendas. I'm a social liberal and I think welfare programs do not go far enough (and they are not optimally designed, executed, and funded) in the US. For example, a universal healthcare option would be a very nice start for fixing poverty issues in America, in my opinion.

Originally posted by dadudemon
I think I'm missing something.

These results seem to point to the idea that welfare programs are being taken advantage of because of under-reporting and not reporting of income. That quite clearly points to a massive misuse of these programs. That's what these studies indicate to me. If it brings them out of poverty, that's awesome! But the results seem to indicate that they keep collecting the benefits after being brought out of poverty.

So am I understanding these studies properly?

Good: brings people out of poverty.
Bad: but they miss-report or don't report their income so they still can stay on the programs.

Someone chime in (Q99) with a serious reply. I'm not interested in bashing liberal agendas. I'm a social liberal and I think welfare programs do not go far enough (and they are not optimally designed, executed, and funded) in the US. For example, a universal healthcare option would be a very nice start for fixing poverty issues in America, in my opinion.

The way I understood it the survey data is incorrect because people feel uncomfortable or embarrassed to report receiving government assistance. So looking at these surveys makes it seem like there's more poverty.

That is not be related to eligibility for government assistances however, which surely the government does not base on a sample survey, but decides on a case by case basis.

Originally posted by dadudemon
I think I'm missing something.

These results seem to point to the idea that welfare programs are being taken advantage of because of under-reporting and not reporting of income. That quite clearly points to a massive misuse of these programs. That's what these studies indicate to me. If it brings them out of poverty, that's awesome! But the results seem to indicate that they keep collecting the benefits after being brought out of poverty.

So am I understanding these studies properly?

Like Bardock said, this doesn't affect whether or not someone gets benefits, just whether or not people knew the results and how the data compiled.

The way they found out the surveys were so far off was by going around to the agencies and searching out their numbers. The individual agencies normally focus on specific criteria like, "is your income below X and are you in Y situation," not "if you lump everything together do you fall above or below the poverty line," so the information then had to be compiled together from these various ones. Different benefits happen or don't at different times. Like, benefits to a student in poverty for education fade when they're no longer a student, and such.

Also, thanks for asking an on-topic, real, critical question. It doesn't matter if someone is a social liberal or not, a good question to remove confusion is a good question.

Yeah damn those women for keeping their pregnancies. The fetus, once it's left the body, doesn't need any welfare.

Also, while on the topic of people's responses- Long Pig did post something on-topic too. Rather than barking or rejecting the data, he posted how he viewed it in a different light. That's at least something.

Originally posted by Q99

Like Bardock said, this doesn't affect whether or not someone gets benefits, just whether or not people knew the results and how the data compiled.[/B]

My knowledge of the programs like SNAP says that if they are no longer under the federal poverty level (which has a definition that includes children and dependents so it can change depending on the family), they no longer qualify.

Is that not the case?

Because if that is not the case, then my issue with these studies is null. If that is the case, then research like this can hurt the cause, in my opinion. If it turns out that the programs are helping people get out of poverty but also causing people to not report their income properly, then opposition to Welfare programs will take this information and run with it.

Edit - I am more than open to admitting my assumption is horribly and ridiculously wrong. I hope it is.

If we end up getting in another circle of argumentation and you know you're right, just say, "dadudemon, don't worry about it. You're wrong. I'm right." Then I'll drop it. 👆