To a large extent “welfare programs” are really jobs programs for those who in Gov’t who had administer them. And these gov’t workers skew heavily female, gay and minority. This applies to the state, country, Federal level. The federal Dept of Education and the EEOC and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are all huge jobs program for female, gay and minority.
One metric commonly applied to non-Gov charities is the amount of benefits delivered to the targeted group as a percentage of revenue. I wonder what that ratio is for the Government poverty programs. This is separate from an analysis of how much of the net delivered aid is fraudulently taken, which is also important.