There are seven big-dog programs that comprise much of the social safety net in the United States — Supplemental Security Income (SSI); the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF); child care subsidies supported by the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF); the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP); and public and subsidized housing.
Some, such as SSI and SNAP, are federal entitlements; others, such as TANF and housing subsidies, are a combination of federal block grants to states – given with varying conditions on how they could be used – and matching money from states.
And if these seven programs were fully funded and had full participation among all who are eligible for at least some benefit, poverty rates in the U.S and in South Carolina would drop by roughly the same amount, says Linda Giannarelli, a researcher with Urban Institute and coauthor of a report released by the nonprofit on Monday.
“The overall results for South Carolina in terms of the poverty reduction are very similar to the national results,” Giannarelli says. “If we could wave our magic wand and have full funding and 100 percent participation, overall poverty by the measure that we're using would go down by about 30 percent. And poverty among children specifically would go down by about 40 percent.”
Participation rates in these social safety net programs vary and fluctuate. What is more concrete is that in 2022, Urban Institute found that South Carolina residents living at or below the federal poverty line received about $2.8 billion in social safety net benefits across the seven programs listed above. But had the programs had peak funding and participation, including in housing programs, South Carolinians could have received as much as $6.2 billion in benefits, according to the report.
The effect of that additional level of benefit, the report concludes, could have dropped the percentage of South Carolinians living at or below the federal poverty line from 15.3 percent to 10.5 percent. For children, the shift would be larger – from 15.5 percent to 9.3 percent.
African-Americans would receive the largest boost of any demographic group under the Urban Institute’s full-funding/full-participation model. According to the report, poverty rates among Black South Carolinians overall would fall by 40 percent. Hispanic and non-Hispanic white rates would drop almost 30 percent.
Giannarelli says Urban Institute’s data were culled from the supplemental poverty measure, as opposed to the U.S. Census Bureau poverty measure, because the supplemental measure is more broad in scope.
“The official poverty measure that the Census Bureau computes and releases every year only takes into account cash [payouts],” she says. “The supplemental poverty measure and it has a much broader measure of resources.”
The Census measure does not take into account programs like SNAP, which does not pay out cash, but instead set an allowance for use.
Giannarelli calls the Urban Institute report “a thought experiment,” a kind of what-if. There is no program that has full participation, although she says that participation in programs tends to be higher among residents who would be more likely to know they qualify.
Such is the case with SNAP, she says, where participation is higher among enrollees who are poor enough to know they would get a significant benefit; less so among residents who could still qualify, but might not realize it.
“[There’s] a whole host of reasons [why],” Giannarelli says. “People not being aware of the program; being generally aware, but thinking that they wouldn't qualify; having a sense that [a program is] for people who have lower income than they do.”
The report cites stigma as another barrier that keeps qualified people from tapping into a program that could help lift them above the poverty line.
