Safety Net

The safety net stabilized income in the 2007-2009 recession and its aftermath, said Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. While most policies were in effect when Obama entered office, his economic-stimulus plan -- which included initiatives such as an expansion of a refundable tax credit -- helped keep households afloat, Reeves said.

Critics say that’s not enough.

Transfer payments don’t have the same quality-of-life value as earning money from work, said Mark Calabria, director of financial-regulation studies at the Cato Institute in Washington and a former Republican Senate aide. Amid low wage growth, he said, “the bottom fifth has not done well.”

Now the president is proposing measures that could do more by promoting family stability and education.

“Our job now is to make sure that every American feels that they’re a part of our country’s comeback,” he said in his Jan. 17 weekly radio address.

Sick Leave

Obama directed federal agencies to let employees take six weeks of paid leave to care for a new child or ill family member. It’s the first step in what the White House says will be a renewed campaign to expand benefits for workers, including a push for Congress to pass legislation allowing them to get seven days of paid sick leave per year.

About 43 million workers are without any sick leave, senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett said in a posting on LinkedIn.

“People with the cushiest jobs and the biggest salaries have the most flexibility at work,” said Jared Bernstein, former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden and a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. A single mom who switches her fast-food restaurant shift “can lose her job for it.”

Community College

The president has proposed free community college education for millions of students, at a cost of $60 billion over 10 years. The plan would provide about three-quarters of average tuition, with states kicking in the rest.

Forty percent of college students attend a two-year institution, according to a White House fact sheet, and as many as 9 million could benefit from the program.

Community college has kept Luis Veloz, 21, attached to higher education. Veloz left Southern Methodist University, forfeiting a full-ride scholarship, to support his family after his father fell sick in 2012. The Dallas student has been attending community college and working double-shifts in a restaurant, and his family has saved enough that he plans to return to a four-year school this fall.

Even so, he’s skeptical about free community college.

“I don’t think a lot of students get that guidance, and that mentorship, that they need” at community college, he said. “That worries me when I go into these classes -- although the teachers are amazing, a lot of the students, like myself, are working full time or have children.”