Poverty, Safety Net Programs, and African Americans' Mental Health

African Americans' poverty and deep-poverty rates are higher than those of Whites, and African Americans' poverty spells last longer. Furthermore, nonpoor African Americans are especially likely to slip into poverty, and over the course of a lifetime, very many African Americans will experience poverty. Accordingly, African Americans are disproportionately likely to be assisted by safety net programs providing income support and health and social assistance. When mental health-related outcomes are assessed, U.S.-focused and international studies of safety net programs sometimes find that adults and children show a decline in symptoms of mental illness after participating. All things being equal, these improvements can disproportionately benefit African Americans' mental health. Safety net programs' mental health-related impact should be routinely assessed when evaluating the programs' economic and social outcomes and the impact they have on African Americans' mental health. Policy research of this kind can help us to understand whether these very large interventions show society-wide mental health-related improvement in the disproportionately large number of African Americans who participate in them.