Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Professor Butler
Political science 1
June 28, 2015
Safety Net Programs
Safety net means the broad range of programs that protects the families and individuals
living at the minimum standards. The programs protect against, unemployment, income loss and
poverty, physical and mental illness and disability, family disintegration and old age. Safety Net
Programs can be divided into two basic groups that are Social Insurance and Means-Tested.
Social insurance can be characterized into Social Security and Medicare. In social insurance,
individuals are contributed to an insurance trust fund by the payroll tax on their salaries and
receive benefits afterwards. Another one is called Means-tested. In means-tested, benefits are
given out to who those who can show that their income is low enough to qualify. General income
tax revenues funded this type of program. Food stamp programs are good example of federal
grant-in-aids to the local government to provide and support the very poor. Total federal
spending for this safety net programs was $2.5 million in 2012. The budget was mostly spent on
social insurance. Means-tested programs are much smaller compared to the social insurance
programs. The article called U.S. poverty rate decreased over past half-century thanks to safetynet programs written by Zachary A. Goldfarb stated that safety net programs helped reduce the
poverty percentage of the Americans from 26 percent in 1967 to 16 percent in 2012. Christopher
Wimer of Columbia Population Research Center said that poverty percent of people in America
would have risen by five or six percent from 2007 to 2012 if there werent any types of safety net
programs.
Works Citied
Goldfarb, Zachar. "Study: U.S. Poverty Rate Decreased over past Half-century Thanks to Safetynet Programs." Washington Post. December 9, 2013. Accessed June 29, 2015.
Porter, Eduardo. "Income Inequality Is Costing the U.S. on Social Issues." The New York Times.
April 28, 2015. Accessed June 29, 2015.