Cash builds on parents’ existing strengths, resilience, and capacities to meet their and their children’s needs. Cash avoids the paternalistic nature of some public benefit programs by empowering parents to invest in their children as they see fit. Cash enables parents to act and spend in their children’s best interest.Providing cash income to families with low incomes can complement the safety net by providing a floor of predictable income.
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By themselves, current safety net programs do not free up enough net household income to supplement shortfalls in earned income or other sources of income, especially when jobs pay little or have unpredictable hours, and are not designed to be immediately responsive to financial emergencies.
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safety net alone is insufficient to ensure parents have the full range of economic resources to raise healthy children. safety net is highly effective in meeting many needs of children and families, such as food (through SNAP) and medical care (through Medicaid).
(It focuses on why cash is important, not which policy option is the optimal mechanism for distributing cash to families.) This paper provides three reasons why giving cash to families with low incomes is a sound policy investment for families and children. Cash can enhance the returns of direct child and adult supports and services, and do so in ways that harness the family’s primary roles and responsibilities. Cash plays a unique role in enabling parents to support children’s healthy development.ĭirect investments in adults (such as jobs training programs) and in communities (such as reliable public transportation) are also important complements to providing cash directly to families, particularly given volatility and uncertainty in the labor market and political landscape. While beneficial, these policies and programs to fill specific needs arising from poverty are companions, not substitutes, for cash income. It has also been a rationale for policies that help families with low incomes meet material needs (such as food, health insurance, and housing). The fact that children flourish when their material needs are met and they have nurturing and stimulating relationships with consistent caregivers has fueled public investments in early education, public schools, and parenting programs to ensure children experience quality caregiving. While child poverty imposes high costs on society, cash support to families can yield large future benefits, ameliorating the impact of poverty on individuals’ productivity and health as well as reducing crime, child maltreatment, and homelessness. Indeed, each additional year of eligibility for public programs such as SNAP (food stamps) during early childhood is estimated to produce positive returns on subsequent health.
Studies demonstrate, over and over again, that poverty harms children’s development and that providing families with low incomes with financial resources can improve children’s development, including through increased birth weight, improved school achievement, reductions in juvenile crime and psychiatric disorders, and increased earnings and lower risk of heart attacks and strokes in adulthood.
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