How many people receive entitlements

The use of entitlement begins at an early age for many Americans, the survey finds. Taken together, the six programs tested in this survey generate the vast majority of federal spending on what is often called the social safety net. But each one has a different purpose and target population. For more details on each of the programs, see the appendix, which begins on page Unemployment benefits, food stamps, welfare and Medicaid target lower-income Americans or those facing a short-term economic hardship such as the loss of a job.

In contrast, Social Security and Medicare primarily—though not exclusively—serve older adults of all income levels. Blacks are more likely than whites to have benefited from one of the four economic hardship programs, but the survey suggests there are no statistically significant differences by race in participation over time in Social Security and Medicare.

Predictably, adults 65 and older are far more likely than other age group to have received Social Security and Medicare. These programs do not have income eligibility requirements: the fact that a larger share of recipients are at the lower end of the income scale reflects the fact that older adults tend to have lower incomes than the general public. Taken together, these results indicate that about seven-in-ten households contain at least one member who has benefited at some point in his or her life from an entitlement program.

In terms of utilization, unemployment benefits and Social Security top the list of the six entitlement programs that are the focus of this analysis. The beneficiaries of entitlements span the social, political and economic spectrum. But some group differences do emerge. Case in point: Additional food assistance provided by the Recovery Act in kept 1 million people out of poverty.

Conservatives decry spending increases on these entitlement programs. Yet upswings in Americans falling into poverty through no fault of their own during certain periods such as the Great Recession of as well as growing income inequality in the long term are at the root of more spending on basic public benefits programs. Moreover, most other forms of targeted, noncash benefits programs such as low-income housing and energy assistance as well as higher education assistance are not entitlements.

Their funding, decided on a yearly basis, tends to help only a small portion of those who qualify. But other programs not specifically designated for the elderly reach a significant number of them as well as Americans with disabilities. The biggest programs demonstrate this point. Among those Americans receiving food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, 36 percent of households have an elderly or disabled person.

When it comes to Medicaid, in , 65 percent of payments were for those 65 and over, blind, or disabled. To minimize spending on poverty-related entitlement programs, we could let more people go hungry or deprive them of life-sustaining medical insurance—steps that some conservatives fully embrace. Many of these efforts fortunately have been fruitless. Alternatively, we could aggressively act to reduce poverty, which in turn would reduce the number of people in need of basic needs assistance.

This would require a dramatic shift in priorities. Over the past 30 years, spending on education, training, employment, and social services remained a consistently small part of the overall federal budget, hovering around 3 percent. The hard facts are that more federal money is being spent on basic-needs entitlements, while the share of spending going toward programs that would best reduce poverty education, training, employment, and social services have largely remained the same from one year to the next.

Because dramatic poverty reduction and growth in the middle class fails to occur, those needing help with basic needs such as food continues to grow. To combat these distortions, progressives not only need to present accurate information about these programs but also must focus more attention on issues that should be at the heart of our national conversation.

This will help align good policy decisions with bedrock American values. Average total expenditures of families receiving means-tested assistance were less than half those of families not receiving assistance. For families receiving assistance, food, housing, and transportation accounted for Among one-parent families receiving assistance, The sample used in this analysis consisted of families with at least one child under Additional analysis of families receiving assistance was made by comparing single-parent and dual-parent families.

The benefit programs in which sample families participated include housing assistance provision of public housing and housing subsidy payments ; Medicaid, the joint federal-state program that pays for medical care for low-income persons; and public assistance cash assistance from state and local government welfare programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families TANF , and short-term emergency help. Also included are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program SNAP and the SSI program that provides monthly benefits to disabled adults and children, and to those 65 and older who have limited income and assets but are not disabled.

Participation in any of these programs is determined by information provided by survey respondents. Consumer Expenditure Survey CE data show that in , 5 there were Among families receiving assistance, Average family size was the same 3. Among families receiving assistance, however, one-parent families averaged 3. See table 1. Families not receiving assistance averaged 1. More than 86 percent of the sampled families had a reference person who was White, Asian, or all other than Black or African-American, in this case races.

This proportion ranged from Nearly 14 percent of all families had a reference person who was Black or African-American. This proportion ranged from 9. See table 1 and chart 1. The reference person was Hispanic or Latino in See table 1 and chart 2. Among one-parent families receiving assistance, female household heads predominated In all families with children under 18, This proportion ranged from 6.

In families not receiving assistance, See table 1 and chart 3. As such, we assume that these benefits are split evenly among all members of each household in order to determine the value of benefits per individual. We selected the welfare programs analyzed in this brief based on the availability of survey data that estimate the cash value of the benefit per individual recipient. These welfare programs constitute the majority of federal transfer spending.

Naturalized Americans are those born abroad who have since become naturalized U. Noncitizen children have not naturalized. The CPS is the most commonly used source of data for analyzing immigrant and native welfare use, and MEPS is the only survey that provides the estimated dollar value of medical programs.

In particular, respondents to these surveys underreport public benefit use. Estimates of the extent of underreporting across programs range between 10 percent in the case of Social Security retirement benefits and 40 percent for SNAP. An alternative survey data source, the Survey of Income and Program Participation SIPP , is less subject to the underreporting of welfare use and benefit levels.

The relative difference between immigrant and native welfare use rates and the dollar value of benefits received is so similar in both the CPS and SIPP that our results would not change if we used the latter survey. Figures 1 and 2 display the average welfare costs per person per program by nativity. We calculated these figures by multiplying the immigrant and native use rates by the value of benefits they consumed.

Figure 1 compares all immigrants with all natives. Table 1 presents a more detailed breakdown of welfare use rates for natives, immigrants, naturalized citizens, and noncitizens for adults age 19 and older.

Naturalized immigrants are more than three times more likely than noncitizen immigrants to use Medicare and Social Security but less likely to use cash assistance, SNAP, and Medicaid.