Meet the Other 1% — Welfare recipients

Last edited Fri Oct 19, 2012, 11:55 AM - Edit history (1)

The federal government has never had a welfare program for able-bodied childless people. The program generally known as "welfare" was Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) which was replaced, in 1996, by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

In 2010, at the absolute worst of the great recession, the number of TANF recipients "zoomed" up to 4,375,022 from the 2008 low of 3,795,007. The whole economy fell apart and the total number of additional welfare recipients was only 600,000, which is kind of amazing.

In 2010 the number of Millionaires in the USA was 3,068,000. The number of people on welfare was 4,375,022.

And the majority of those people ar children.

There are way more millionaires than here are adults on welfare. (And, unlike being a millionaire, being on welfare today has stringent work requirements.)

TANF is not the only form of government assistance, of course. There are programs for the disabled, for impoverished elderly people in nursing homes... for people who cannot plausibly be expected to work. And there is a very large agricultural price support program often referred to as food stamps (SNAP) administered by the Agriculture department, not by HHS.

But the fact that TANF recipients are only about 1.5% of the population is striking.

And most of them are children.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Assistance_for_Needy_Families
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire