The lefty Center on Budget and Policy Priorities looked at a range of federal programs to see which one lifted more US children above the poverty line. Social Security was second only to the Earned Income Tax Credit.
[In the graph, 'disposable income' is a person's income after taxes, including any government income assistance, food stamps, school lunch, housing benefits, or energy assistance.]
This magpie would have guessed that welfare (TANF) would have come in near the top. As the CBPP figures show, welfare brought fewer than half the number of children out of poverty that Social Security did.
Here are some more of the CBPP's findings:
- Nationwide, Social Security benefits lifted one million children under 18 above the poverty line in 2002.
- Social Security reduced the number of children whose families had disposable incomes below the poverty line in 2002 from 10.3 million (when Social Security is not counted) to 9.3 million (when Social Security is counted), a reduction of one-tenth.
- In half of the states, Social Security lifts more than 10,000 children our of poverty. These state data cover the period 2000-2002.
Moreover, when both the breadth and severity of children?s poverty are considered, Social Security does more to reduce child poverty than any other program, including the earned income tax credit. One combined measure of the breadth and severity of children?s poverty is the aggregate child poverty gap: the cumulative dollar amount by which the incomes of all poor families with children fall short of the poverty line. Social Security reduced the child poverty gap by 21 percent in 2002 ? slightly more than the reduction achieved by the EITC (20 percent) or food stamps (15 percent).
It's interesting that we haven't heard much mention of how Social Security payments benefit children in the ongoing discussion of 'saving' the program. Democrats? Are you paying attention?