Work requirements for safety net programs – they don’t work

Everyone who has raised children know what happens when you give them a monthly fee without them needing work for work: they plop for their new video game consoles while their dirty dishes gather in the sink.

That’s the logic behind it Republican plans To determine work requirements for people who receive safety net benefits – if you give them money without connected curves, they have no incentive to work. If, on the other hand, people who can be offered those programs such as Medicaid and the additional food utility (BiteWhat used to be called food vouchers) have an incentive to work, some of them can even eliminate themselves from poverty.

As a speaker Mike Johnson Put it: “You do not want valid employees in a program that is intended for, for example, single mothers with two small children who just try to make it. That is what Medicaid is for. Not for 29-year-old men who sit on their banks play video games.”

When reducing the costs of Medicaid and other safety network programs, Republicans expects them to push aggressively for work requirement, an approach supported By many Americans.

Unfortunately, work requirements often do not work. Consider what happened in 2016 when the state of Connecticut expanded the work requirements for people who receive Snap -benefits. As expected, many of them did not stop money to pay for food. Here is a photo of one study In Jama’s internal medicine, which shows a decrease of approximately 5% in Snap -registration:

Now for the crucial question. How many of these people lost benefits because they could not find work and how many were motivated to find jobs and therefore no longer needed the help?

One way to answer that question is by looking at the rates of Medicaid registration with the same group of people. If they have found jobs, they no longer need medicaid coverage (or are eligible). But as the following photo shows, there was no proportional reduction in the Medicaid registration:

In theory, work requirements must encourage people to get jobs, reducing poverty. In reality, being poor is already a huge incentive to work. Most people who receive government financing to pay for basic principles, such as food and medical care, would like to give up that help if they could find jobs. It is misleading and incorrectly informed to think that most people who receive such help are too lazy, or to be well compensated by safety net programs, to look for jobs.

Some are too sick or disabled to work.

Some have children at home and the income from low wages jobs does not cover the costs of childcare.

Some are forced to stay at home and to take care of older lovers.

If work requirements would work, I would enthusiastically support them. But they don’t do that. It is time to explore policy that helps people find good paying jobs – things such as better childcare support – without punishing people who, by no debt, cannot yet work out of poverty.