A new report by RSF grantee Robert A. Moffitt in the most recent issue of Demography journal explores the changes to the welfare system across the last several decades. Moffitt argues that although the system as a whole has expanded, financial support has evolved very differently for different demographic and economic groups, which may reflect long-held societal notions of which of the poor are "deserving" of aid and which are not. The report's abstract states:

Contrary to the popular view that the U.S. welfare system has been in a contractionary phase after the expansions of the welfare state in the 1960s, welfare spending resumed steady growth after a pause in the 1970s. However, although aggregate spending is higher than ever, there have been redistributions away from non-elderly and nondisabled families to families with older adults and to families with recipients of disability programs; from non-elderly, nondisabled single-parent families to married-parent families; and from the poorest families to those with higher incomes. These redistributions likely reflect long-standing, and perhaps increasing, conceptualizations by U.S. society of which poor are deserving and which are not.

Click here to access the full article from Demography.