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While looking at this question about the CalFresh food assistance program, I was looking for a tag that would apply other than the location tag, but couldn't find one. It seems to me that there should be a tag for questions about welfare benefits. I was about to create either a or tag, but then I started (over?)thinking it:

  • Is "welfare" a sufficiently internationally understood word? Is something like "public aid" a more generic term?
  • Is "welfare" too broad to be useful? I wouldn't want this tag to include questions about Social Security, Medicare, education grants, tax incentives, etc.
  • Would a tag specifically about food programs be better? If so, what should this be called? "Food Stamps"? That term seems outdated, but I'm not sure what the generic term for these types of programs would be.

Any thoughts?


Update: As @Dheer suggested below, I created the tag, with the following starter excerpt:

Questions about government-sponsored need-based welfare benefits, also known as public aid. This includes questions about government nutrition assistance programs (food stamps), housing assistance, etc. This does not include mandatory government insurance programs, such as Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, universal health care, etc., which have their own tags.

I tried to make it clear that the tag is for government welfare programs and not private charity programs, and also tried to stress that the tag is not for government insurance programs. If anybody wants to discuss the tag excerpt, feel free to do it here.

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Between or I would prefer . To me is more generic, it could also be more of well-being.

Public-Aid is also a good choice. However it may not be intuitive for OP.

Agreed Food-Stamp is more US specific and dated. In India we use "subsidy" as most grants are indirect. This may not be apt for wider use.

So my vote is for

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  • I'd go with this. While the term may be US-centric, so are many other tags. Not a problem. Oct 25, 2016 at 12:31
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    Also, make sure to point out how it is different from [social-security] in the tag wiki...
    – user
    Oct 26, 2016 at 11:27

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