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Angela Rachidi

Angela Rachidi

Senior fellow and Rowe Scholar in opportunity and mobility studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), studying poverty and the U.S. social safety net.

Sep 3, 2026

15:28
I
15:29
would say, you know, I kind of highlight two, two in particular that I think are the most impactful.
15:36
One is slightly more conceptual and then the other is more, I would call it kind of mechanical or technical.
15:43
So the first one is around marriage and family formation.
15:48
And this is the one that I would say is conceptual because it's hard to understand exactly how this affects behavior around marriage.
15:59
But conceptually, if you just think of our safety net programs and how they're designed, and again, this is an appropriate way to design them in the sense that if you have the least resources, you should get the most help.
16:15
from the government.

6 MINS LATER

22:43
The state of, you know, reform discussions or the state of just kind of understanding that, hey, maybe something isn't quite working out the way that we want it to here that led into those landmark reforms 30 years ago.
8:24
But what's your take, Angela, of sort of the solutions conversation?
8:29
Yes, that's a that's a great question, because I think there's when people again, if we and I think we agree that there's general consensus that this is a problem.
8:40
So and that's that's kind of a bipartisan agreement that that benefit cliffs are a problem.
8:45
So then the real sticking point does come to solutions.
8:48
And so if we think about.
8:51
Where does that stand in terms of various organizations as well as policymakers thinking about solutions? I can very simplistically put them into two camps.
9:01
One camp is those who believe or find it acceptable to to simply increase income eligibility limits higher up the income scale so that then you can phase out benefits at a slower rate and you can overcome these cliffs from a design perspective.

20 MINS LATER

29:22
What's the first thing that comes to mind? What would you build if you could do that?

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