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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2022
How will the social policies of Barack Obama go down in the history books? The answer to this question depends on whether the unit of analysis is time or space. This conclusion seeks to address two sub-questions. First, how does the Obama administration compare with other presidencies in terms of antipoverty efforts? Second, does the US remain a welfare laggard, an outlier in comparison to other developed nations? Obama's social policies stand out principally because of a strong political and philosophical commitment to affordable health care. A cross-national perspective shows that the US still performs quite badly in terms of antipoverty policies compared to other Western nations.
A historic antipoverty record
In strictly domestic terms, the argument can be made that the Obama administration's policies are on a par with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA, 2017: 186) reported that ‘Under President Obama, the Federal investment in reducing inequality has increased by about 0.8% of potential GDP [gross domestic product], more than any previous President since the Great Society’. Jason Furman gave the following characterization of the administration's record on poverty:
“If you look at the poverty rate after taxes and transfers from 2007 to 2010, it went up 0.2 percentage points. That is amazing because we lost over 10 trillion dollars of wealth. We basically prevented the poverty rate from rising with both the existing safety net plus the ways in which we expanded the safety net. I think on the low-income side, maybe one could have done a little bit more, but not a lot more. In some sense, I think we achieved our goal there.”
Federal spending on low-income programs was 51% higher in 2015 than in 2008 (Spar and Falk, 2016). The share of health care in total federal obligations on low-income programs grew dramatically (by 77%), mainly as a result of increased funding for Medicaid. Spending for non-health low-income programs rose by 33% between 2008 and 2015. Nutrition aid (food stamps) was by far the largest source of federal spending on non-health schemes for the poor, followed by cash aid (Earned Income Tax Credit [EITC], Supplemental Security Income [SSI] and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF]).
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