Welfare spending and poverty: cutting back produces more poverty, not less

The 'New Consensus' on welfare expresses the idea that the major problem in social welfare is dependency, not poverty. Much of the evidence for this perspective has come from trend line data indicating that over time poverty did not evaporate in the face of increases in social welfare spending. Using various measures of the 'dependent' poor, the empirical analysis presented suggests that reducing welfare expenditures relative to need does not produce less poverty and dependency.