New York City’s welfare caseloads are expanding again—a deliberate and predictable outcome of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s policies, as Manhattan Institute’s Steve Eide points out in his new “Poverty and Progress in New York” report today.

Two key findings:

  • New York City ended 2014 with more people on welfare than it began. Midyear, the Human Resources Administration (HRA) announced major changes to the city’s public assistance program; by the end of 2014, enrollment had grown by about 16,000 since the HRA announcement.
  • This increase has come during a time of relative prosperity for the local economy, which added more than 90,000 jobs in 2014. Significant growth came in low-wage industries likely to hire welfare recipients. Throughout New York City’s history, the general tendency has been for welfare enrollment to decline as job numbers grow.

The trend is the opposite of projections in Governor Cuomo’s state financial plan, as illustrated below. The governor assumes the number of welfare recipients statewide will decline steadily over the next four years.

screen-shot-2015-03-10-at-10-12-14-am-7019807

To be sure, the state budget numbers are, as usual, slightly inflated: for example, average total welfare recipients through the first nine months of fiscal 2015 were 566,000, about 14,000 less than projected in the budget, according to data from the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance.

The city trend, wherever it leads, is likely to dominate the direction of welfare dependent and its impact on the state budget in the future. As noted here last year, a bigger caseload will mean higher expenditures.

After an enormous drop between 1996 and 2012, the number of welfare recipients remains very low by historical standards, Eide said. In addition, the number of city residents receiving federally funded Supplemental Nutritional Assistance (i.e., Food Stamp) benefits has declined in the past year.

You may also like

New York’s pricey hospitals draw pushback from labor

A City Council hearing in Manhattan on Thursday promises a rare scene in New York politics: hospitals playing defense. The council is debating whether to establish a watchdog agency focused on the high price of hospital care in New York, with a goal of helping the city and other employers contain the rapidly rising cost of health benefits for workers. Read More

On College Readiness, Comptroller Asks Wrong Question, Delivers Flawed Answer 

Graduation rates are rising while standards for graduation are falling. It begs the question: What number of graduating students are college ready? Read More

A Look at Covid Learning Loss in NYC

New York City set an example worthy of approbation and emulation by publishing their grade 3-8 test results in math and English language arts. Read More

Judge, Jury and … CFO?

A state court judge at a hearing this morning will consider whether to interfere with New York City authority over its own budget by ordering a preliminary injunction that ices a portion of Gotham’s recently enacted FY 23 city budget. Read More

NY’s jobs recovery now strongest downstate

The Empire State's private-sector employment gains over the past year have been increasingly concentrated in New York City. Read More

NYC’s out-migration fueled NY state’s record population drop in 2020-21

A huge outflow of residents from New York City accounted for nearly all of New York State's record single-year population loss following the Covid-19 outbreak Read More

As a Supreme Court Ruling Loomed, Cuomo Bent His Own Rules on COVID ‘Clusters’

In the midst of the constitutional showdown over his pandemic policies, Governor Cuomo made changes to a disputed Brooklyn 'cluster zone' that seemed to contradict his own declared guidelines. Read More