Word.ws English Dictionary

welfare traps

welfare traps is the plural of welfare trap.

Meaning of welfare trap

Noun

welfare trap (plural welfare traps)

  1. (US) 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

Questions about welfare traps

What is welfare traps the plural of?
Welfare traps is the plural of welfare trap.

Words near welfare traps in the dictionary

  1. welfare stater
  2. welfare staters
  3. welfare states
  4. welfare statism
  5. welfare trap
  6. welfare traps
  7. welfare-to-work
  8. welfared
  9. welfares
  10. welfariat
  11. welfaring

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: welfare traps (page history and authors); 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.

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