As we approach the 30th anniversary of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), the proposed One Big Beautiful Bill will reshape federal assistance in ways that could render entire communities statistically invisible.
The Arithmetic of Abandonment
Participation in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program is 11.2% (Table 1) and 15.4% for Medicaid (Table 2). However, the conversation about the burden of these programs and uptake is statistical fiction. For example, the near-zero representation of Asian, Indigenous, and Multiracial women across all age cohorts may be a signal of either exclusion from services or unseen barriers to enrollment. The number in the tables shows that entire communities may face barriers that have systematically prevented participation in federal assistance programs for vulnerable populations. Low participation rates by racial and gender groups may not reflect lack of need—but a systemic difficulty in accessing programs.
Table 1. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation, 2024
Source: Calculations by the Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race using 2024 Annual Social and Economic Supplement, Current Population Survey. www.ipmuns.umn.edu
While many may see low participation as evidence of achieving the American Dream, I’d like to offer that when entire racial groups register as statistical noise in safety net programs, we’re not looking at individual choices but at the effects of systematic exclusion.
Table 2 Mediciad Program Participation, 2024
Source: Calculations by the Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race using 2024 Annual Social and Economic Supplement, Current Population Survey. www.ipmuns.umn.edu
The Moment of Truth
The One Big Beautiful Bill will exacerbate the bureaucracy already in place for women and their families to obtain the social support services, making it more challenging to access essential services. For many, taking time from work to visit local government offices to recertify is already a burden. Now those visits will need to happen every six months, at least doubling the number of times families will be overwhelmed with the paperwork process.
The data tells us who’s already being left behind and gives insight into who will be pushed into the shadows of statistical invisibility. Moments like these remind me that every percentage point represents a real human being and that every bureaucratic barrier creates real suffering.
WISER is dedicated to ensuring that America is a country that cares for its most vulnerable members, not a country that will abandon them.
