 Who Uses the Social Safety Net? Trends in Public Benefit Use among American Households with Children, 1980–2020Margot I. Jackson and Ester Fanelli The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2023, vol. 706, issue 1, 16-36 Abstract: Research suggests that child development is positively affected when families can access overlapping, simultaneous forms of public assistance. Universal participation in social safety net programs is rare among eligible populations, though, and assessing the dynamics of multiple benefits use is particularly complex: which households with children receive multiple benefits, which combinations of benefits are most common, and which households are most likely to access benefits as the safety net expands in some ways and contracts in others? We use almost 40 years of data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine trends in both the number of public benefits accessed by American households with children and the types and combinations of benefits that households access. We find that the percentage of households with children using at least two benefits has increased, but the beneficiaries of increasing benefit use have been disproportionately higher-educated, White, and married households with incomes above the poverty line. Keywords: safety net; public benefit; inequality; children (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:706:y:2023:i:1:p:16-36 DOI: 10.1177/00027162231200305 Access Statistics for this article More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science |
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