The principal family programs that exclude poor people are the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit, and the head of household filing status. Additionally, nonrefundable tax credits like the child and dependent care credit, as well as itemized deductions broadly, provide little to no benefit to poor people. Even the standard deduction, which ensures that poor people do not owe any income tax, provides less tax savings to poor people than it does to people with higher incomes.

The primary consequence of excluding poor people is to lessen the poverty reduction effects of welfare programs. Poverty, and in particular child poverty, is substantially higher than it would be if poor people were not excluded.

The exclusion of poor people is typically justified on the basis that it will encourage work.

No, some programs do not exclude poor people. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), for instance, are targeted at poor people. These programs, however, are far more paternalistic and stigmatizing: they require in-person or phone interviews, interrogations of income sources and spending patterns, work requirements, complicated benefit formulas, limitations on what the benefit can be spent on (unlike the EITC and CTC's cash benefit), and onerous restrictions on the amount of money that can be saved. See pages Administrative Burdens and Asinine Asset Tests for more.