Cuts to Safety Net Would Disproportionately Affect Working-Age Adults without College Degrees

A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), Poverty Reduction Programs Help Adults Lacking College Degrees the Most, finds that 87% of working-age adults (18 to 64 years of age) lifted out of poverty by poverty-reduction and safety net programs are in families that have no members with a college degree. More than half of these adults are white. These adults and their families would be significantly and negatively impacted by cuts to these programs.

The report examined the impact of safety-net and poverty-reduction programs like Social Security, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) on poverty among working-age adults between 18 and 64 years of age. Without factoring in income from these programs, the poverty rate in 2014 was 30.4% among adults in families without a bachelor’s degree and 8.7% for those in families in which at least one person had a bachelor’s degree. If income from these programs were accounted for, the poverty rates would be 18.5% and 6.4% for adults in families without and with a bachelor’s degree, respectively.

Among working-age adults in families without a bachelor’s degree who would otherwise be in poverty, 6.2 million whites (44%), 2.8 million blacks (43%), 2.4 million Hispanics (28%), and 0.7 million adults of other races (37%) were lifted out of poverty by these programs.

Poverty Reduction Programs Help Adults Lacking College Degrees the Most is available at: http://bit.ly/2lXbrb2