Fifty-four percent of people polled in a January 2008 Pew Research Center survey said they did not agree with the statement that "poor people have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return." They instead sided with the statement that the lives of poor people are more difficult because government benefits aren't adequate to meet their needs. However, 34 percent said they did agree with the "poor people have it easy" point of view — an indication of the need for more education about how federal aid programs actually work and the damage done to our social safety net in the past decade.