Are current policies on poverty, welfare, and work effective? Why?

Question

Is poverty declining? Are more people working? What factors might be affecting the trends?

Answer 1

Poverty is a relative to the acceptable standard of living so what means to be poor changes over time, and from country to country. Compared to to what poor meant 100 or even 50 years ago when substantial number of people were malnourished we have made enormous progress. Poverty numbers are in part due to students who are living away from home as well as people suffering from illness, family break up, sudden job loss, drug and alcohol abuse etc, which are often temporary but new people enter poverty every day, so we will never be able to eradicate poverty.

The biggest factor on they year to year change in the poverty level is the changes in the economy that effect the job creation rate and the unemployment rate. The number potential workers on welfare is only a littler over 1% of the labor force so whether or not some fraction of them got jobs would not be apparent in the aggregate numbers for the whole country.

From what I have read on the results of welfare reform , there is a decline in the welfare rolls, but most of the decline is due to decrease in the number of new applicants,

Answer 2

No they are not. You might well ask the authorities running these policies what [if any] efficiency and effectiveness evaluations of their programs are conducted, how they are done and what the policy implications are. This will test their skills in analysis and program and policy formulation. Good luck- I would expect the results to be dismal.

Answer 3

if the policies were effective would you still be here asking this question?

Answer 4

no, if they were there would be no poverty or welfare