Taking Stock of the Safety Net, Part 5: Helping Families Stay Afloat During Unemployment Spells. Unemployment Insurance (UI) replaces up to half of the income that workers lose when they become unemployed through no fault of their own.
That lessens the financial strain on their families while these workers look for new jobs. In a weak economy like the current one, UI also helps sustain consumer demand, keeping a downturn from being worse and providing a boost for a recovery. As in previous recessions, policymakers responded to the deep recession that began in December 2007 by giving additional weeks of federally funded UI benefits to workers who run out of regular, state-funded UI benefits before they can find a job. The number of people receiving UI benefits in a given week quadrupled from about 3 million at the start of the recession to a peak of 12 million in early 2010, according to Labor Department data. Although that number has since dropped below 7 million, jobs remain hard to find and the long-term unemployment rate is unprecedentedly high (see chart).
Taking Stock of the Safety Net, Part 4: Helping Families Afford an Adequate Diet. As other posts in this series have shown, 2011 was another tough year for low- and moderate -income families.
One indicator is that over 2 million new people joined the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — SNAP, formerly known as food stamps — between January and September (the latest month available). SNAP now helps 46 million low-income Americans afford a nutritionally adequate diet, and it has been one of our most effective weapons against rising hardship and unemployment in the recession. Indeed, the 46 million low-income Americans who now receive SNAP benefits include 19 million people who have come on the rolls since the recession started. SNAP lifted 5 million people, including 2 million children, out of poverty in 2010, under the Census Bureau’s new Supplemental Poverty Measure, which counts the value of families’ SNAP benefits as income. SNAP is due for renewal as a part of next year’s Farm Bill. Do no harm. Examine ways to further reduce errors and fraud. Taking Stock of the Safety Net, Part 3: Helping Families Afford Decent Housing. No one wants to spend the holidays without a safe place to call home.
Yet a growing number of families with children are homeless; a recent report estimated that one in 45 children in the United States was homeless during 2010. Also, 7.1 million households — with 16.6 million people — paid more than half of their incomes for rent or lived in severely substandard housing in 2009, a jump of more than 20 percent since 2007.
(The Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD] considers housing unaffordable if it consumes more than 30 percent of a household’s income.) These problems would be much worse without federal rental assistance, which enables nearly 5 million low-income households to rent modest housing at an affordable cost, typically 30 percent of household income. (Click here for state-by-state information.) Unfortunately, only one in four households that qualify for housing assistance receives it, due to limited funding. Taking Stock of the Safety Net, Part 2: Meeting Families’ Basic Needs Through TANF. December 15, 2011 at 2:17 pm About 3.5 million children and 1.1 million parents receive cash assistance each month from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to help cover their basic needs.
Families turn to TANF at times of major economic or personal distress, usually when they have lost a job or are facing a crisis such as fleeing an abusive situation or caring for a sick child. Many also face serious personal and family challenges, such as mental or physical health problems. In spite of the barriers they face, nearly all adult recipients must look for work and participate in approved work activities for 20 to 30 hours per week in order to receive benefits. Most recipients receive assistance for two years or less. Congress created TANF as part of the 1996 welfare reform law to serve two different functions: (1) help parents find and maintain employment and (2) provide a safety net for families when they cannot work. Taking Stock of the Safety Net, Part 1: Overview.
We will issue a series of posts in the coming days that will look back at some of the major programs that helped struggling families during the year — their goals, impact, and issues facing policymakers in 2012.
Today, we’ll begin by setting the context. For America’s low- and moderate-income families, 2011 was another very bad year, as the Great Recession of 2007-2009 continued to have a large and lingering impact. Unemployment and long-term unemployment remained very high, as did the percentage Americans without health insurance. Yet things aren’t nearly as bad as they could have been. The safety net is helping to hold the line against poverty and hardship, as the latest available figures in several areas show.
These silver linings come with a big cloud, however. All major deficit-reduction agreements of the past 25 years have reflected the principle that deficit reduction should not increase poverty or inequality.