Designing a Social-Welfare Safety Net that Supports Low-Income Workers

In 1996, the United States eliminated the entitlement to cash assistance for low-income citizens with the passage of historic welfare reform. With the institution of time-limits on cash assistance, the policy goals of the socialwelfare system shifted from “income support” to “work support” and the welfare rolls decreased substantially. Although policy goals changed, the service-delivery structures providing public benefits to low-income workers remained largely untouched. Cash and near-cash benefits, such as tax credits or food support, employment services, and other social services, have continued to be delivered through complex and fragmented systems built for another era. The operation of social-welfare systems continues to focus on documenting program eligibility through reams of paperwork, delivering employment services through a maze of contracts, and providing other services through piecemeal public investments that need to be supplemented with charitable efforts. To improve upon these antiquated systems of social-welfare delivery, new practices of public governance that use a purposeful approach to system design, relying upon careful analysis and deployment of networks of public and private organizations, need to be employed to address important societal problems.1 In this article, I use such a purposeful approach to think through viable design options for social-welfare