Noel King: I have always gotten the impression that this rhetoric about working, working if you want an entitlement, works because it sounds like it's going to work. But when you look back at what's happened since the 90s, when work requirements were put into welfare programs, there is very little evidence that any of it has had much broad success on moving the needle," he says. Clark: The average earnings of program participants generally stayed very low and was not enough to move most of them above the poverty line.