Majority of US public aid recipients are from working families

By Zaida Green
25 April 2015

A recent report by the University of California, Berkeley, shows that 73 percent of people enrolled in welfare programs are from working families, surviving on poverty-level wages. An earlier study by the UC Berkeley reported that 25 percent of all workers in the United States relied on some form of public aid.

Titled The High Public Cost of Low Wages, the study reports that of the 29 million families that depended on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) for food assistance in the period 2009- 2011, 10.3 million had working family members, but still needed assistance. Some 34.1 million workers and their family members were dependent on Medicaid for health care and did not receive health insurance from their employers. Overall, some 56 percent of combined state and federal assistance goes to working families.

The authors point out that data in the study does…