welfare trap
welfare trap noun: a situation where the welfare system discourages people who receive government public assistance payments from entering low-paid work because such work does not produce a significant income increase.
Noun
welfare trap (plural welfare traps)
- A situation where the welfare system discourages people who receive government public assistance payments from entering low-paid work because such work does not produce a significant income increase.
- Mr. Hayakawa said there was "a class of able-bodied persons who would rather collect public assistance than take jobs". . . . Cutting off food stamp benefits to these people, he said, would remove a disincentive to work, "close off one of the doors into the welfare trap."1982 August 23, Robert Pear, “Getting tougher on work rules for food stamps”, in New York Times, retrieved 09 Nov 2015
- Synonyms:
- unemployment trap
Synonyms of welfare trap
Forms of welfare trap
| plural | welfare traps |
|---|
Questions about welfare trap
- What does welfare trap mean?
- Welfare trap means a situation where the welfare system discourages people who receive government public assistance payments from entering low-paid work because such work does not produce a significant income increase.
- What part of speech is welfare trap?
- Welfare trap is a noun.
- What is the plural of welfare trap?
- The plural of welfare trap is welfare traps.
Words near welfare trap in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: welfare trap (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-welfare trap.ogg.
Cite this entry: “welfare trap.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/welfare_trap. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.