"Welfare makes people lazy"is an intellectual pillar of conservative economic theory,which recommends cutting programs like Medicaid and cash assistance,partly out of a fear that self-reliance degenerates in the face of government assistance.Many economists have for decades argued that this orthodoxy is simply wrong.Welfare isn"t just a moral imperative to raise the Iiving standards of the poor.lt"s also a critical investment in the health and future careers of low-income kids.However,a core mission of the Republican Party is to reduce government aid to the poor.Many conservative economists argue that some adults might reject certain jobs or longer work hours because doing so would eliminate their eligibility for programs like Medicaid.But this concern has little basis in reality.One of the latest studies on the subject found that Medicaid has"little if any"impact on employment or work hours.In research based in Canada and the U.S.,the economist Ioana Marinescu has found that even when basic-income programs do reduce working hours,adults don"t typically stay home to,say,play video games;instead,they often use the extra cash to go back to school or hold out for a more desirable job.But the standard conservative critique of Medicaid and other welfare programs is wrong on another plane entirely.It fails to account for the conclusion of a 2015 paper:Anti-poverty programs can work wonders for their youngest recipients.According to the paper,American adults whose families had access to prenatal coverage under Medicaid have lower rates of obesity,higher rates of high-school graduation,and higher incomes as adults than those from similar households in states without Medicaid."Welfare helps people work"may sound like a strange and counterintuitive claim to some.But it is perfectly obvious when the word people in that sentence refers to low-income children in poor households.Poverty and lack of access to health care is a physical,psychological,and vocational burden for children.Poverty is a slow-motion trauma,and impoverished children are more likely than their middle-class peers to suffer from chronic physiological stress and exhibit antisocial behavior.It"s self-evident that relieving children of an ambient trauma improves their lives and,indeed,relieved of these burdens,children from poorer households are more likely to follow the path from high-school graduation to college and then full-time employment,Republicans have a complicated relationship with the American Dream.Conservative politicians praise the virtues of hard work and opportunity.But when they use these virtues to strongly criticize welfare programs,they ignore the overwhelming evidence that government aid relieves low-income children of the psychological and physiological stresses that get in the way of embracing those very ideals.Welfare is so much more than a substitute for a paycheck.It is a remedy for the myriad burdens of childhood poverty,which gives children the opportunity to become exactly the sort of healthy and striving adults celebrated by both political parties. The author holds that Republicans