We should plug the safety net’s biggest hole

Over the past half-century, the U.S. safety net has grown considerably stronger for children and elderly adults, substantially reducing poverty among them. But the story is starkly different for another group of Americans that we hear far less about: non-elderly adults, aged 18-64, who aren’t raising children and don’t have a severe enough, or long-lasting enough, disability to meet the stringent criteria for federal disability benefits.

This is no small group. In 2017, the last year for which we have data comparable to those for earlier years, they numbered 106 million people — or nearly one-third of the nation’s non-institutionalized population. Though their poverty rate is similar to that for children, their deep poverty rate — the percentage of them who live below half the poverty line — is double that for children.

Due to the weak safety net for this group, they now comprise one of every two people in America who lives in deep poverty, they constitute the vast majority of those who are homeless, and they are the people most likely to pay over half their limited income for rent.

It’s high time federal and state policymakers did more to help this group, such as by expanding their access to supports such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, food and rental assistance, and basic health coverage — and their access to key services such as job training and mental health care. That would both reduce poverty among this group and better enable them to work.

Consider how the safety net treats this group compared to others. Social programs lift out of poverty 69 percent of the elderly and 44 percent of children who would otherwise be poor. But social programs lift from poverty just 8 percent of otherwise-poor childless adults, aged 18-64, who aren’t receiving disability benefits — only one of every 12.  

That’s because these individuals lack access to benefits that many other Americans receive:

• They qualify for no federal cash assistance except the tiny federal Earned Income Tax Credit (averaging $300 a year) that goes to some low-wage workers who aren’t raising children. Many states used to provide modest monthly cash aid to destitute individuals in this group, but only 11 states now provide them with any cash aid unless they’re classified as seriously disabled or incapacitated.
• The federal tax system taxes more than 5 million low-wage workers in this group into, or deeper into, poverty — because their payroll and income taxes exceed whatever small Earned Income Tax Credit they can receive. They are the only people in America taxed into or deeper into poverty.
• With some exceptions, poor individuals aged 18-54 who aren’t raising dependent children and aren’t classified as disabled or incapacitated can get food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, what we used to call food stamps) for only three months when they’re not working at least 20 hours a week out of every three years.  Since searching for a job doesn’t count as a work activity, even those who look for but don’t land a job lose their benefits at the three-month point.
• Only one in five of these individuals who qualifies for federal rental assistance receives it because of the limited rental-aid funding that’s available.
• Several million of these individuals remain uninsured because they live in one of the 10 states that still has not adopted the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion.
• Low-wage workers are about half as likely to receive unemployment insurance benefits as higher-wage workers.

All of this not only disadvantages these individuals. By making it harder for them to be productive members of the workforce, their destitution also harms the nation’s economy.

More than a few policymakers and pundits insist these people should just go out and work and that more government assistance would undermine their work ethic. But extreme poverty, hunger and a lack of stable housing or medical care can make it harder for them to get and keep a job. Inadequate job training and community mental health services exacerbate the problem, especially since many in this group suffer from health ailments even if they don’t receive disability benefits.

Here’s the good news: We have significantly reduced poverty in recent decades for the elderly and children (though we need to do significantly more), and we can do so as well for non-elderly adults who aren’t raising children through a combination of a strengthened Earned Income Tax Credit for this group (which lawmakers enacted for one year in 2021), improved food and rental assistance, basic health coverage for them in all states, and a more adequate unemployment insurance system and higher federal minimum wage.

Other affluent countries generally do more to ensure that such individuals have a roof over their heads, food on the table and basic health care.  We should as well, for their benefit as well as ours as a nation.

Robert Greenstein is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project and the founder and former president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.