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Maybe a good first step would be cutting SNAP benefits and forcing people to enter the labor market. A big issue we is a lack of manufacturing jobs anymore mainly due to productivity. People would be forced into restaurant work etc instead of no work but it would become socially acceptable
In the west, what we tend to see is migration from low wage work into gig work in response to welfare reductions- because Walmart gets you eligible for TANF and Medicare, uber does not.
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The post-1994 (in the US) or post-1997 (in the UK) policy of incentivising single mothers into low-paid work with their kid in subsidised daycare has succeeded. But a single parent in a low-paid job (or, for that matter, a second parent in a low-paid job) which barely covers the cost of childcare isn't directly improving their economic situation by working, only making themselves more deserving of subsidy.
To fix the incentives towards single parenthood, you need to increase the gap in standards of living between two-adult, two-income families and one-adult, one-income families. For the less-than-respectable working class, making single-parent families poorer in general means letting kids starve, but you could abolish the soft preferences for single mothers in the jackpottable parts of the welfare state (like social housing in the UK). And increasing the standard of living of low-paid couple-headed families at that level (where people are not rich enough to pay a lot of income tax) means giving them money, which gives conservatives the ick, unless it is BAH for dependas.
The working poor will not starve in the US(and I’m given to understand that groceries in the UK are cheaper, not more expensive)- rice is too cheap to meter.
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