The Benefits of the Safety Net, Part 2
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/the-benefits-of-the-safety-net-part-2/
I have talked about the “greatest good for the greatest number” before (that blog entry is more or less a link to here). It is my firm belief that a robust (which we lack at the moment) safety net is critical to the long-term health and welfare of society, but the information discussed in the article above makes it clear that the benefits of the safety net actually extend forward in generations. Infants (indeed, even fetuses) that are supported by the safety net are actually less likely to grow up needing any of the benefit of the net than those who lack access to it! Not counter intuitive to me, but a bit surprising that there is enough data upon which to produce such a conclusion. What is clear, though, is that there is an opposite effect of what the hard-core ‘conservative’ (how is it ‘conservative’ to want to condemn your fellow citizens to a life of poverty simply because they had the bad luck to be born into it?) whereby providing the safety net does not produce extended dependency.
