The safety net should work for working-age adults
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Able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) receive minimal support from traditional safety net programs. The safety net’s impact on poverty reduction for ABAWDs has remained stagnant for 25 years, showing only a 1.1 percentage point decrease. A plurality of low-income ABAWDs report work-limiting disabilities, many face health challenges, and almost 40 percent are parents. The authors offer evidence that a safety net that predicates its inaccessibility to ABAWDs on the grounds of self-sufficiency through work does not recognize the state of the low-wage labor market and the precarious position of many of its workers. The safety net does little to support low-income ABAWDs. The authors show that approximately 14.4 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 64 who do not reside with children and do not receive Social Security (SS) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) were in poverty in 2017. This rate decreases to 13.3 percent after accounting for taxes and transfers—a mere 1.1 percentage point difference. In contrast, those with SS/SSI saw the largest percentage point reduction in poverty in 2017 (37.8 percentage points), even more than elderly adults overall (34.5 percentage points). The safety net for working-age adults has been broken for a long time even as the safety net has strengthened for others. From 1993 to 2017, the total reduction in poverty for all groups increased from 6.9 to 11.9 percentage points. For ABAWDs, the safety net went from reducing poverty by 0.8 percentage points in 1993 to 1.1 percentage points in 2017—effectively no change in poverty reduction in the past 25 years. The authors argue that the American safety net fails to protect millions of Americans who are in poor health, are part of a complex family, or work in the low-wage labor market who either cannot access or struggle to gain and maintain access to protections. Stereotypical assumptions about ABAWDs, an outdated understanding of the volatile labor market, and changing family norms and demographics render policies and laws regarding ABAWDs unresponsive to the needs of many individuals, families, and their communities. The authors offer many policy proposals to support this population, including expanding access to and the generosity of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), making searching for work an allowable activity for SNAP, and continued expansion of Medicaid without work requirements. Opening the aperture for those who merit the protection of social insurance and increasing investment in the nation’s low-income ABAWDs would plug a hole in the nation’s safety net that currently leaves many working-age adults exposed to economic insecurity.

#SafetyNet #WorkingageAdults #Abawds #PovertyReduction #LowwageLaborMarket #PolicyProposals

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-safety-net-should-work-for-working-age-adults/