This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

20 years ago, back in 1996, a crowd of reporters and politicians gathered in the White House

Rose Garden.

Thank you, Mr Mr Vice President.

President Bill Clinton stepped up to the podium and announced that he was signing a landmark bill.

It would dramatically redesign welfare.

The 16 billion dollar government program that millions of poor Americans

relied on for basic support.

In this as well as in other press conferences Clinton made it clear that a central

tenant to his redesign was the idea of welfare to work.

First and foremost it should be about moving people from welfare to work.

This new reform said that in order to collect welfare, recipients would need to work at a job.

To transform a broken system that traps too many people in a cycle of dependence to one that emphasizes

work and independence.

To give people on welfare a chance to draw a paycheck, not a welfare check. This whole idea of a paycheck, not a welfare check, work not welfare.

It's relatively familiar to us now.

But there's a complicated backstory behind how it came to be at the center of the reforms that President

Clinton passed that day in 1996, reforms that still affect many people today.

Over the last 20 years, the number of families living in deep poverty on less than $2 a day is

rising, and most of them don't receive welfare.

That's Chrissy Clark, the senior correspondent for Marketplace's

Wealth and Poverty Desk. She has been researching the history of welfare reform for

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