These participation rates, driven primarily by rich and middle-class Americans, far exceed those of even the largest programs directed at low-income families, such as food stamps (14 percent of Americans) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (19 percent).[24]

How to understand the conservative desire to actually abolish welfare, if it is not to punish the poor? The argument that it would increase self-reliance and thus ultimately reduce poverty is dismissed as meanness

She found that the NIT didn’t reduce employment nearly as much as people feared, but there was a very unexpected spike in divorce. Poor families that were randomly selected to receive the NIT were more likely to split up.