Robert Doar: Cash Alone Won’t Solve Child Poverty

When I entered the policy world in the middle of the 1990s, I wanted to reduce poverty, encourage independence, and expand opportunity. And for more than 20 years, working in the social services departments of New York State and New York City, I helped implement reforms to achieve those goals. In so doing, we increased employment, reduced child poverty, and improved the lives of millions of New Yorkers.

We achieved these successes by establishing the expectation that recipients of government aid needed to seek employment, financial independence, and a path to self-sufficiency. And if they did, we would help with government-provided benefits that rewarded their efforts.

The successes of these welfare reforms are widely recognized. In the years after welfare reform, New York City’s cash welfare caseload dropped by almost 1 million recipients, labor force participation among never married mothers (the group most likely to be in poverty) rose by more than 20 percentage points, and child poverty was nearly cut in half. Similar trends occurred all across the country. Nevertheless, everyone acknowledges we still have work to do—myself included.