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Working Paper

Work, Poverty, and Social Benefits Over the Past Three Decades

Understanding the evolving interactions between employment, social benefits, and families' well-being is key to designing better policies to both protect families and foster economic growth. Employment both overall and among those living in low-income families has been on a downward trajectory across the last three decades. One notable exception is that low-income women with children were increasingly likely to work between 1992 and 1999 in the aftermath of large changes to social safety net programs to provide more incentives and rewards for work. Since then, low-income women with children have been more likely to be employed than childless women. Over time, payments from social benefits programs have made up a larger share of income among low-income families with children and relatively higher earnings. Among low-income families without children, social benefits have not changed much over time.

This paper has been published in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and is available at:
Barrow, Lisa, Diane W. Schanzenbach, and Bea Rivera. 2024. “Work, Poverty, and Social Benefits over the Past Three Decades.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 711 (1): 100–120. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162241290105.

Working Papers of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment on research in progress. They may not have been subject to the formal editorial review accorded official Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland publications. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Federal Reserve System.


Suggested Citation

Barrow, Lisa, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, and Bea Rivera. 2024. “Work, Poverty, and Social Benefits Over the Past Three Decades.” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper No. 24-22. https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-wp-202422