Framing The Safety Net, Part One

Over the next few days or so, I'm going write about how to frame the anti-poverty safety net. While a great deal of research has been done on how to frame issues around programs that expand economic opportunities, much less attention has been given to the safety net. I wanted to explore the ways groups frame the safety net now, critique them, and make some suggestions for new ways forward. And being that I'm a relative newcomer to the anti-poverty world, I'd appreciate your comments and thoughts as I try to make sense of very complex stuff with a long history.

I thought I would start by critiquing the "work supports" frame, the most common way anti-poverty folks frame safety net policy. Sometimes, work support language justifies policy in the context of meeting basic needs and promoting family well-being. The National Center for Childen in Poverty defines work supports as follows:

“Work support” benefits—such as earned income tax credits, child care subsidies, health insurance, and food stamps—can help families close the gap between low earnings and basic expenses.

Let's break this down a bit. NCCP is defining the problem as inadequate income. The solution is to raise incomes or lower the cost of basic expenses. The payoff is that families will get to meet basic needs. So where's the value statement? No mention is made of the values that shape our understanding of income- like security, opportunity and independence. Rather, meeting basic needs seems to be an implicit placeholder for child and family well-being. I plan on returning to this topic later, but for now, let's leave it at the point that neither the term nor its definition leads with any of these values.

There is also no attempt to explain who or what is responsible for the gap between earnings and expenses. There’s no reference to the economy, the institutions that produce racial inequality, or even barriers to work. Neither is there any mention of the values that assign responsibility to the public for addressing social problems, like interdependence and public responsibility. I’m speculating here, but the political message I take from it is that society is not responsible for creating the problem, nor will it gain anything by solving it. We're compelled to support solutions out of compassion and generosity. It is, in sum, the “sympathy for the poor” frame that generally does badly in focus groups.

Work also legitimizes the safety net - it supports work by either “making work pay” or enabling and encouraging people to go to work. I’ll address this in my next post.