Exactly How Many Programs Do People Benefit From?
Often people qualify for multiple assistance programs. Their children might be on Medicaid and receiving free school lunches. At the same time, the household may be receiving food stamps. Additionally, if the parent or parents work, they may be receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Additional Child Tax Credit. We just listed five programs that welfare families typically receive.
And there are more programs. If the family has young children under five, they could receive food packages from the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. Additionally, the family may be receiving childcare assistance, Section 8 rental assistance, and/or energy assistance.
Now you might think that we have a dataset somewhere telling us the total number of welfare programs families are benefiting from. If you assumed that we do, you would be wrong. No such dataset exists.
The reason? First, the welfare system is disjointed. There is no single agency or dataset that can tell us the total number of programs people are on. Even Georgia’s award winning Gateway, which is one of the better integrated eligibility systems in the country, cannot tell you. While the Gateway can tell us about food stamps, Medicaid, WIC, TANF, and subsidized childcare services, it is missing the refundable tax credits, free school lunches breakfasts, Section 8 rental assistance, and other welfare programs not listed.
Second, statistical sources do not include all welfare programs in their questionnaires and have other limitations, such as serious time lags. For example, the American Community Survey asks about food stamps, Medicaid, and Supplemental Security Income but practically none of the other programs, making a statistical inference for the complete picture impossible.
The Survey of Income and Program Participation gets us closer, giving us childcare assistance, WIC, energy assistance, and public housing, among others. However, it is still missing the refundable tax credits, including the EITC which is one of the big three welfare programs. Worse, SIPP is structured for longitudinal studies that makes the survey totally impractical for monitoring program participation on a regular and timely basis.
Adopting Dependency Metrics in Georgia
Dependency metrics would improve our ability to measure success, and state leaders should consider implementing them in Georgia.
Georgia would do a better job than the federal government with dependency metrics. The Gateway houses the data for critical programs, enabling Georgia to produce monthly estimates, more timely estimates, and for more programs. In contrast, the Feds apparently cannot meet its obligation in producing annual reports, provides only national data for only three programs, and there are significant time lags. The most recent Federal report came out on May 4, 2018, with 2015 and some 2016 data.
Once implemented at the state level, dependency metrics will improve over time. If and when further integration, consolidation, and streamlining of eligibility systems occur, as recommended by GCO, dependency metrics will become more complete and more useful.
However, they are not the sole answer. There is another way to measure success that would complement well dependency metrics. This will be the topic of my next blog.
In the meantime, do you have ideas on how we can measure success in welfare programs? We would love to hear them. Be sure to put them down in the comments below.