A report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds more families are living on less than $2 per person a day since policymakers made changes to public assistance programs a decade ago.

That startling figure, $2 per person a day, is usually quoted for residents in impoverished emerging economies, but the study shows that it is the reality for some American families.

The report, "Deep Poverty Among Children Worsened in Welfare Law's First Decade," finds that the number of children in deep poverty rose from 2.1 percent to 3.0 percent between 1995 and 2005. Deep poverty is defined as those families that are living below half of the poverty line, which for an average household with a family of three is $19,000.

According to the CBPP report, which quotes from a National Poverty Center Working Paper, the number of families living on less than $2 per person a day "has more than doubled since 1996, rising 159 percent to 1.6 million households in 2011. If tax credits and non-cash benefits such as household assistance and SNAP are counted as a value, the numbers drop considerably to 613,000 families."

So what happened in 1996?

In 1996, President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Act, an initiative pushed through by the Republican-led House and Senate, part of their Contract With America. The act put limits on welfare assistance, enforced stricter conditions for food stamps eligibility and stepped up a program of work requirements.

Three assistant secretaries at the Department of Health and Human Services, Mary Jo Bane, Peter B. Edelman and Wendell E. Primus, resigned to protest the law. According to Edelman, the 1996 welfare reform law destroyed the safety net. It increased poverty, lowered income for single mothers, put people from welfare into homeless shelters and left states free to eliminate welfare entirely.

In 1995, public assistance, Aid to Families with Dependent Children kept 2.4 million children above 50 percent of the poverty line. That program served families with little or no earnings. By 2005 the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which offers less assistance for moderate-income working families, was a much smaller program, keeping only about 600,000 children out of deep poverty.

How are these effects experienced by children?

It can affect school achievement and future success and creates a life of desperation for the parents. Jason DeParle of The New York Times, after interviews with single mothers, said that they have been left without means to survive, and have turned to desperate and sometimes illegal ways to survive, including shoplifting, selling blood, scavenging trash bins, moving in with friends, and returning to violent partners, no matter how dangerous, abusive, or poorly paid.