The Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy recently published The Dignity Project, an initiative combining policy proposals, data, and storytelling around a central claim: West Virginia’s historically low labor force participation rate is driven in significant part by policy barriers and safety net disincentives, and solving it is a moral imperative rooted in the state’s identity.
The Cardinal Institute also commissioned a 765-person registered voter poll through Targoz Market Research (October–November 2023, MOE ±3.47%) to support the project’s framework. The topline findings were selectively featured in the Dignity Project’s public materials. But the full dataset — the marginals and party crosstabs — tells a substantially different story than the one the Cardinal Institute chose to tell.
This article examines both the project’s policy arguments and the full polling data behind them.
What the Project Claims
The Dignity Project builds its case on a stark data point: West Virginia’s labor force participation rate (LFPR) sits below 55%, compared to a national average above 62%. Federal data confirms this — FRED data from the St. Louis Fed showed the state’s LFPR at 54.6% as of December 2025, and the Joint Economic Committee ranked it last among all states.
The project links this gap to a cascade of social outcomes — overdose deaths leading the nation, over 35,000 children raised by grandparents, and diabetes and COPD mortality rates exceeding the national average by more than 50%. These statistics check out:
* CDC mortality data records West Virginia’s drug overdose death rate at 81.9 per 100,000 — the highest in the country, though KFF analysis notes opioid death rates fell 46% between 2023 and 2024.
* WVSU Healthy Grandfamilies documents over 35,000 children living in the primary custody of grandparents, with some estimates as high as 43,000.
* America’s Health Rankings placed West Virginia 46th overall in its 2025 report, with only 38.3% of adults reporting their health as “very good or excellent” — the lowest in the nation.
The project attributes the LFPR gap to three categories of policy failure:
* Occupational licensing and credentialing barriers that prevent willing workers — particularly those with criminal records — from entering professions
* Overly generous material assistance that creates disincentives to seek employment
* Benefit cliffs and program fragmentation where income gains are outstripped by losses in assistance, and where safety net and workforce programs operate in silos
Where the Analysis Holds Up
Several of the project’s supply-side observations are well-supported in the policy literature.
* Occupational licensing reform has bipartisan backing nationally. A Brookings Institution study found that licensing has significant effects on wages, employment, and prices, and that less restrictive alternatives often achieve the same public safety goals. The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has similarly documented how excessive licensing disproportionately burdens low-income workers and those with criminal records.
* Benefit cliffs are real and measurable. A worker earning $15/hour who loses Medicaid, childcare subsidies, and SNAP simultaneously upon crossing an income threshold can face an effective marginal tax rate exceeding 80%. The Cardinal Institute’s own poll found 56% of voters support efforts to address the benefits cliff, 82% support a gradual benefits reduction model, and 79% support a grace period to smooth transitions off assistance.
* Program fragmentation is a known barrier. When workforce development, TANF, SNAP, and Medicaid operate on separate eligibility tracks with no shared case management, individuals fall through gaps. A “One Door” model drawn from Utah’s approach earned 83% support in the poll.
These are areas where the Dignity Project contributes constructively to the conversation.
What Their Own Poll Actually Found
This is where the project’s credibility fractures. The Cardinal Institute highlights the findings that support its thesis. The full dataset undermines it.
West Virginians Don’t Blame the Safety Net
The poll asked respondents to evaluate nine potential factors contributing to the state’s low LFPR. The Dignity Project centers its argument on safety net disincentives. But “generous welfare or unemployment benefits” ranked 5th out of 9 factors — behind substance abuse, lack of good jobs, childcare costs, and discouraged workers:
The top three factors voters identified — substance abuse, job scarcity, and childcare — are structural, demand-side problems. The Dignity Project’s framework addresses none of them as primary concerns.
Voters Want More Assistance, Not Less
The Dignity Project describes programs as offering “overly generous material assistance, providing a clear disincentive for work”. The poll asked voters directly whether the government provides too much or too little:
* 42% — Should provide more assistance
* 21% — About the right amount
* 18% — Should provide less
* 19% — Not sure
More than twice as many voters want increased assistance as want reductions. The “overly generous” characterization reflects the view of fewer than 1 in 5 West Virginians surveyed — in the Cardinal Institute’s own research.
The Majority Says Benefits Help
The project implies assistance creates dependency. The poll says otherwise:
* 51% say benefits “give poor people a chance to stand on their own two feet and get started again”
* 38% say benefits “make poor people dependent and encourage them to stay poor”
* 11% not sure
The majority view, by 13 points, is that public assistance helps people rather than trapping them. Separately, 79% agree that West Virginia should offer public assistance programs to residents, with only 12% disagreeing.
Recipients Say Assistance Is Crucial, Not Cushy
Among the 54% of respondents who had personally received public assistance in the past three years:
* 85% agree “the assistance was crucial to my family’s well-being”
* 69% were satisfied with the support provided
* Only 61% found the application process “straightforward” — 33% found it difficult to access
The people actually using these programs aren’t describing a hammock. They’re describing a lifeline that’s hard to reach.
Occupational Licensing: Their Own Voters Are Skeptical
Occupational licensing reform is a pillar of the Dignity Project. But when voters were asked whether licensing requirements contribute to people remaining on public assistance:
* 41% — Major or Moderate role
* 49% — Minor or No role
* 10% — Not sure
A plurality of the Cardinal Institute’s own respondents reject the premise that occupational licensing is a significant driver of people staying on public assistance.
The Partisan Lens
The party crosstabs reveal that the Dignity Project’s framing tracks closely with Republican and conservative opinion — not the electorate as a whole:
Even among Republicans, only 26% want less assistance, while 34% want more. The “overly generous” framing doesn’t even command majority support within the Cardinal Institute’s natural constituency.
What Voters Actually Prioritize
When asked to choose their top three proposals for improving public assistance — a forced ranking that reveals real priorities — voters spread their choices broadly:
One Door leads, but the 2nd, 5th, and 6th most popular proposals involve maintaining or increasing benefits — individualized assessment, grace periods, and inflation indexing. Voters want a smarter safety net. The Dignity Project highlights the reforms that imply dependency while burying the ones that imply inadequacy.
The Economic Backdrop the Project Ignores
The poll captured a portrait of structural economic distress that supply-side policy tweaks cannot solve:
* 50% rate local economic opportunities as poor or very poor
* 55% say opportunities are worse than 10 years ago
* 60% say it is difficult to find a job that pays a living wage
* 57% say they are economically worse off than a year ago
* Only 13% rate economic opportunities as excellent or good
These are the Cardinal Institute’s own respondents describing an economy that doesn’t have enough good jobs — the very demand-side crisis the Dignity Project declines to address.
Where the Analysis Falls Short
Beyond the polling disconnect, three structural gaps weaken the project’s policy framework.
Demand-Side Silence
The Dignity Project is almost entirely a supply-side document. It asks why people aren’t working. It does not seriously ask whether adequate work exists where they live.
West Virginia’s coal mining sector employed approximately 64,000 people in the 1970s; by 2021 that figure had fallen below 12,000 — the fewest since 1890. TIME’s reportingdocumented that the state now produces 60% of the coal it did a decade ago, with communities losing not just jobs but the tax revenue that funded local services. The WV Center on Budget and Policy’s 2025 report showed that prime-age workers (25–54) actually participate at 78.3% — it is older workers at 29.4% who drag down the state average, suggesting age and disability matter more than motivation.
Rural counties across the southern coalfields face employer deserts. West Virginia’s broadband plan acknowledged that approximately 27% of rural residents lacked access to basic broadband as recently as 2019, though the state has since received $224 million in BEAD funding to begin closing that gap.
Causation Reversal on Health Outcomes
The project presents health crises as “downstream effects” of low LFPR. The evidence runs the other direction. CDC provisional data still puts West Virginia among the highest overdose death rates nationally. The BLS’s 2025 alternative measures report found West Virginia’s broadest labor underutilization measure (U-6) at 7.1% — actually below the national 8.0% — suggesting that among those in the labor market, the state’s workers are less underutilized than the country as a whole. The problem isn’t lazy workers. It’s people who can’t enter the market at all.
The “Overly Generous” Claim Without Evidence
West Virginia’s TANF cash benefit for a family of three maxes out at $542 per month — just 25% of the federal poverty level, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty. A 50-state NCCP comparison places this near the national median. Benefits are limited to 60 months by both federal and state law. The project asserts generosity without providing the data to support it — and its own poll shows 42% of voters want more assistance.
Recommendations for a More Honest Framework
A workforce strategy built on the Cardinal Institute’s fulldataset — not just the convenient parts — would look different:
* Retain supply-side reforms where the data supports them. Continue licensing reform, benefit cliff smoothing, and One Door coordination. These have genuine bipartisan support.
* Lead with what voters actually identified. Substance abuse (81%), job scarcity (75%), and childcare (73%) are the top three causes voters named. Policy should follow.
* Add demand-side investment. Target infrastructure, broadband (BEAD deployment is a start), and economic development to counties where 60% of residents say a living-wage job is hard to find.
* Sequence health before work. Expand addiction treatment capacity, fund rural primary care, and maintain Medicaid coverage. America’s Health Rankings data shows the scale of what we’re dealing with.
* Adopt the reforms voters actually prioritize. Individual circumstances adjustments (42%), grace periods (38%), and inflation indexing (37%) all polled within striking distance of One Door (48%). These are benefit-protective reforms — include them.
* Measure honestly. Track not just LFPR movement but job quality, wage levels, health outcomes, and family stability. A person pushed off benefits into a $10/hour job with no insurance has not gained dignity.
The Cardinal Institute commissioned a rigorous, well-designed poll — then built a policy framework around its 5th-ranked finding while burying the top three. It describes benefits as “overly generous” when 42% of its own respondents want more and only 18% want less. It makes occupational licensing a centerpiece when 49% of its respondents say it plays a minor or no role. It wraps these selective readings in the language of moral urgency — “rekindling a sense of purpose within our people” — and presents a partisan interpretation of the data as though it were consensus.
The full data makes a stronger case for investment, health intervention, and job creation than it does for the safety-net-skeptical framework the Dignity Project advances. West Virginians told the Cardinal Institute exactly what they believe. The Cardinal Institute chose not to listen.
West Virginians have never needed a think tank to locate their dignity. What they need is policy that matches the complexity of their reality — and research institutions willing to follow their own data wherever it leads.
The polling data cited throughout comes from the Cardinal Institute’s own commissioned research, conducted by Targoz Market Research among 765 registered West Virginia voters (Oct.–Nov. 2023, MOE ±3.47%).
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