Welfare Enrollment – New York City

Welfare rolls grow in city, but increase is modest, By Julie Bosman, December 16, 2009, New York Times: “As the number of New Yorkers applying for food stamps, enrolling in Medicaid and checking into homeless shelters climbed last year, the welfare rolls presented something of a riddle: they continued to fall. But last month, nearly 355,000 people in the city received welfare payments, a 4 percent increase over the year before, according to city officials, who predict that if the economy does not recover, the growth will continue for at least 18 months. City welfare officials and advocates for the poor disagree on why it took so long for the rolls to grow – the rise began in the summer – but the trend is a reflection of the national welfare reform of the 1990s, which also may be a factor in why the growth has been so slow. Even with the increases, the caseloads are still 23 percent lower than when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office in 2002 and are just a third of the number at the enrollment peak in 1995…”