Enabled by an historic shift in federal policy, the reduction of New York City’s once-massive welfare caseload was a landmark achievement of municipal government from the mid-1990s into the 2010s. Starting under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and continuing through the mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg, the city responded to the Clinton-era federal welfare reform by reframing its cash-benefit programs as a temporary bridge from dependency to self-sufficiency, steering needy New Yorkers to jobs as the surest route out of poverty.

The city’s welfare rolls, which peaked at 1.2 million recipients in early 1995, had plummeted to 425,000 by the time Giuliani left office at the end of 2001. During Bloomberg’s 12-year mayoralty, the number dropped further, to 346,000. In the process, hundreds of thousands of former cash assistance recipients found gainful, full-time private-sector employment. Thousands of others had simply dropped off the rolls once the city tightened its anti-fraud rules and insisted on minimal public service work as a condition for benefits. Defying naysayers, the official poverty rate was lower at the end of the Bloomberg era than it had been in the mid-1990s. ...

Following de Blasio’s lead, Mayor Eric Adams seems bent on dismantling the last vestiges of work-oriented welfare reform. Even before a recent change in state policy cracked opened the door to welfare eligibility for more illegal immigrants, the Adams administration was expanding New York City’s welfare rolls at the fastest rate in decades.