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But there is a problem: the system of social services that has been built up over past generations isn’t designed to increase poor people’s “capacity to aspire” and pursue their goals. Social services aren’t treated as part of an integrated process of human development. Just the opposite. Services are fragmented and clients are regularly shunted from agency to agency. Caseworkers serving people who are applying for public benefits don’t have the time, or the discretion, to get to know their clients, let alone brainstorm with them about problem solving.

Many Americans struggling in poverty today need more than financial assistance; they need help figuring out how to plug into a changing economy.

LIFT’s approach is grounded in the principle that change happens through relationships.

LIFT has spent more than a decade systematizing what amounts to a social technology.

They have looked closely at the human qualities required to address poverty. Above all, LIFT looks for volunteers who have demonstrated empathy.

Advocates are trained to treat clients with courtesy, to value their time, and to listen to their stories (while maintaining clear boundaries).

“Being treated politely is for many people a new experience.”

In fact, LIFT is seeing more people in the “near poor” or “newly poor” category.

Another problem which got worse during the crisis, but was growing beforehand, is suburban poverty.

As of 2008 more than a third of America’s poor live in suburbs.

The number of poor people living in the suburbs grew 53% between 2000 and 2010

The eightfold growth in the prison population from 1970 to 2010 has turned ever more poor decisions into poor lives.

Most poor children live in single-parent homes, and most families that are poor lack married parents.

The amount the federal government spends on food stamps hit a record $75.7 billion in the 2011 fiscal year—more than double the level of 2008. Enrolment in Medicaid, through which federal and state governments provide health care to low-income Americans, has grown every year since 2008, though its 2012 growth was the slowest since the recession began, and its spending grew at a lower level than enrolment because of federal and state cost-control measures. In 2011 states disbursed $113.3 billion in unemployment benefits to 9.9m recipients, as well as roughly $16.6 billion received in block grants as part of a federal programme called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

America is unusually reluctant, compared with other rich countries, about giving cash transfers to the poor.

Its benefits skew overwhelmingly toward families: the most a single person can claim is around $500, while a married couple with three or more dependent children can receive $5,000 or more. In 2010 $55 billion was paid out through the EITC, and $23 billion for the child tax credit.

In 2011, the poverty rate not including unemployment insurance or Social Security would have been 7.8 percentage points higher, and it would have been 3.1 points lower if you take food stamps and EITC into account. So all told, these four government programs reduced poverty by 10.9 percent, or 33.6 million people.

Under the Obama administration, workers with disposable income in the neighborhood of the poverty line did not, on average, see their job losses during the recession translate into significant reductions in their disposable income.

it is possible for the government to help too much

The results suggest that the government was helping too much.

the percentage of people in households with disposable income less than the poverty line was 15 percent in 2011, just as it was in 2007 before the recession began.

Erasing incentives is not the way to a civilized society but rather to an impoverished one.

As a result, the typical one-parent family with children was far better off working than on welfare, and employment rates among this group increased dramatically, due to the strong economy of the 1990s, welfare reform, and the availability of these expanded work supports

The value of these new work support programs at both the federal and state level cannot be overemphasized. The EITC alone provides roughly $4,000 a year in extra benefits to a low-wage worker with two or more children, and the children remain eligible for Medicaid. The average woman leaving welfare earns about $7 an hour, or $13,000 in after-tax income. The combined value of food stamps and the EITC, then, brings her total income up to about $19,000—enough to boost a single parent family with three or fewer children above the federal poverty line

Polls show that the public is willing to do more for those who work.

Many of these policies respond to complaints that the 1996 welfare law placed too much emphasis on reducing caseloads and not enough on reducing poverty.

The work support system serves three primary goals. First, it provides incentives for work.

A second goal of the work support system is to help ensure that parents working at low-wage jobs have enough total income to provide an adequate standard of living.

The third goal of the work support system is to insure that those who lose their jobs or cannot find work will not be destitute.

The minimum wage is not very well-targeted. Only one quarter of minimum-wage earners live in poor families.

By 2000, the federal EITC was providing over $30 billion in cash supplements to working families, making it the biggest program other than Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income that provides benefits to low-income families. And unlike nearly every other program for low-income families, it provides benefits only to families that work. It is, in short, the quintessential work support program.

States have taken two major approaches to improving work incentives. First, since enactment of the 1996 reforms, nearly every state has allowed parents who find jobs to retain more of their welfare benefit. This policy enables many families to work and continue receiving earnings supplements from welfare.

under current federal rules, working families can exhaust their five-year limit on welfare while receiving just a small supplement to their earnings. For this reason, time limits may actually discourage work

A second approach states have followed is to create their own EITC programs.

nearly all the families leaving welfare are eligible for food stamps

less than half the families leaving welfare receive the food stamp benefits to which they are entitled.