Republicans like to claim that they're not coldhearted, they just want to cut anti-poverty programs like food stamps because those programs don't work and Republican ideas would be better. Never mind that Republican ideas mostly just involve less help to people who need it, people who those same Republicans have blocked from getting a minimum wage increase or paid sick leave. But anti-poverty programs do work. We know that, and now, thanks to a new study, we know that they work even better than we thought.

The study, by University of Chicago economist Bruce Meyer and CERGE-EI's Nikolas Mittag, looks at actual government data rather than people's self-reports about how much assistance they get. Because people don't always want to admit that they're in programs Republicans have done such a good job stigmatizing, the numbers are pretty different:



They found that more than a third of people getting housing assistance, 40 percent of people getting food stamps, and 60 percent of people getting TANF or state-based General Assistance didn't say so when surveyed for ASEC. And even people who said they got assistance underestimated how much they were getting, by 6 percent for food stamps, 40 percent for TANF/General Assistance, and 74 percent for housing assistance. [...] ... from 2008 to 2011 in New York, the average poverty rate before taking these programs into account was 13.6 percent. According to the survey data, food stamps/welfare/housing assistance dropped that down to 10.8 percent. But according to the more accurate administrative data, those programs actually cut the rate to 8.3 percent. Using the right numbers, in other words, nearly doubles the poverty-fighting power of these programs. The differences for "deep poverty" — that is, the share of households living on 50 percent of the poverty line or less — are a bit smaller, but for "near poverty" (the share of households living on 150 percent of the poverty line or less) they're even bigger, as the above chart suggests.

This finding echoes lots of earlier data showing real effects of War on Poverty programs in reducing poverty . The U.S. still has a lot of work to do—work that, again, Republicans are blocking on multiple fronts, constantly working to slash these programs that are working and to prevent legislation that would help the many, many government assistance recipients who have jobs that still leave them in or near poverty. But when those same Republicans tell you that the things the government is doing now don't work ... don't believe them.