Download or read book Means Tested Transfer Programs in the United States written by National Bureau of Economic Research and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-10-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few United States government programs are as controversial as those designed to aid the poor. From tax credits to medical assistance, aid to needy families is surrounded by debate—on what benefits should be offered, what forms they should take, and how they should be administered. The past few decades, in fact, have seen this debate lead to broad transformations of aid programs themselves, with Aid to Families with Dependent Children replaced by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the Earned Income Tax Credit growing from a minor program to one of the most important for low-income families, and Medicaid greatly expanding its eligibility. This volume provides a remarkable overview of how such programs actually work, offering an impressive wealth of information on the nation's nine largest "means-tested" programs—that is, those in which some test of income forms the basis for participation. For each program, contributors describe origins and goals, summarize policy histories and current rules, and discuss the recipient's characteristics as well as the different types of benefits they receive. Each chapter then provides an overview of scholarly research on each program, bringing together the results of the field's most rigorous statistical examinations. The result is a fascinating portrayal of the evolution and current state of means-tested programs, one that charts a number of shifts in emphasis—the decline of cash assistance, for instance, and the increasing emphasis on work. This exemplary portrait of the nation's safety net will be an invaluable reference for anyone interested in American social policy.
Download or read book Income Transfer Programs how They Tax the Poor written by and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The compendium was compiled and edited by Robert I. Lerman.
Download or read book Economics of Means Tested Transfer Programs in the United States Volume I written by Robert A. Moffitt and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-11-16 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "These two volumes update the earlier Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States with a discussion of the changes in means-tested government programs and the results of new research over the past decade. A number of these programs have seen substantial increases in expenditures, including Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and subsidized housing programs. For each program, the contributors describe its origins and goals, summarize its history and current rules, and discuss recipients' characteristics and the types of benefits they receive."--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Designing Fiscal Redistribution The Role of Universal and Targeted Transfers written by Mr.David Coady and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2020-06-26 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a growing debate on the relative merits of universal and targeted social assistance transfers in achieving income redistribution objectives. While the benefits of targeting are clear, i.e., a larger poverty impact for a given transfer budget or lower fiscal cost for a given poverty impact, in practice targeting also comes with various costs, including incentive, administrative, social and political costs. The appropriate balance between targeted and universal transfers will therefore depend on how countries decide to trade-off these costs and benefits as well as on the potential for redistribution through taxes. This paper discusses the trade-offs that arise in different country contexts and the potential for strengthening fiscal redistribution in advanced and developing countries, including through expanding transfer coverage and progressive tax financing.
Download or read book A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-09-16 with total page 619 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.
Download or read book Conditional Cash Transfers written by Ariel Fiszbein and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs aim to reduce poverty by making welfare programs conditional upon the receivers' actions. That is, the government only transfers the money to persons who meet certain criteria. These criteria may include enrolling children into public schools, getting regular check-ups at the doctor's office, receiving vaccinations, or the like. They have been hailed as a way of reducing inequality and helping households break out of a vicious cycle whereby poverty is transmitted from one generation to another. Do these and other claims make sense? Are they supported by the available empirical evidence? This volume seeks to answer these and other related questions. Specifically, it lays out a conceptual framework for thinking about the economic rationale for CCTs; it reviews the very rich evidence that has accumulated on CCTs; it discusses how the conceptual framework and the evidence on impacts should inform the design of CCT programs in practice; and it discusses how CCTs fit in the context of broader social policies. The authors show that there is considerable evidence that CCTs have improved the lives of poor people and argue that conditional cash transfers have been an effective way of redistributing income to the poor. They also recognize that even the best-designed and managed CCT cannot fulfill all of the needs of a comprehensive social protection system. They therefore need to be complemented with other interventions, such as workfare or employment programs, and social pensions.
Download or read book The World Bank Research Observer written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Targeting Poverty written by Peter G. Warr and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poverty reduction has been adopted as the official objective of many multilateral and bilateral development institutions. This paper argues that this focus needs to be clarified, especially the distinction between absolute and relative poverty. It argues that reduction of absolute poverty should be one of the objectives of foreign assistance, but not the sole objective. First, measures of absolute poverty are highly limited in scope. Second, the resources of foreign aid are fungible when recipient governments reallocate their own resources in response to the aid. Third, bilateral aid should reflect all the foreign policy objectives of the donor country.
Download or read book Just Give Money to the Poor written by Joseph Hanlon and published by Kumarian Press. This book was released on 2012-03 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * Argues strongly for overlooked approach to development by showing how the poor use money in ways that confound stereotypical notions of aid and handouts * Team authored by foremost scholars in the development field Amid all the complicated economic theories about the causes and solutions to poverty, one idea is so basic it seems radical: just give money to the poor. Despite its skeptics, researchers have found again and again that cash transfers given to significant portions of the population transform the lives of recipients. Countries from Mexico to South Africa to Indonesia are giving money directly to the poor and discovering that they use it wisely “ to send their children to school, to start a business and to feed their families. Directly challenging an aid industry that thrives on complexity and mystification, with highly paid consultants designing ever more complicated projects, Just Give Money to the Pooroffers the elegant southern alternative “ bypass governments and NGOs and let the poor decide how to use their money. Stressing that cash transfers are not charity or a safety net, the authors draw an outline of effective practices that work precisely because they are regular, guaranteed and fair. This book, the first to report on this quiet revolution in an accessible way, is essential reading for policymakers, students of international development and anyone yearning for an alternative to traditional poverty-alleviation methods.
Download or read book Targeting of Transfers in Developing Countries written by David Coady and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2004 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a database of more than one hundred anti-poverty interventions in 47 countries, 'Targeting of Transfers in Developing Countries' provides a general review of experiences with methods used to target interventions in transition and developing countries. Written for policymakers and program managers in developing countries, in donor agencies, and in NGOs who have responsibility for designing interventions that reach the poor, it conveys what targeting options are available, what results can be expected as well as information that will assist in choosing among them and in their implementation. Key messages are: - While targeting 'works' - the median program transfers 25 percent more to the poor than would a universal allocation - targeting performance around the world is highly variable. - Means testing, geographic targeting, and self-selection based on a work requirement are the most robustly progressive methods. Proxy means testing, community-based selection of individuals and demographic targeting to children show good results on average, but with considerable variation. - Demographic targeting to the elderly, community bidding, and self-selection based on consumption show limited potential for good targeting. - There is no single preferred method for all types of programs or all country contexts. Successful targeting depends critically on how a method is implemented. The CD-ROM includes the database of interventions, an annotated bibliography (PDF) and Spanish and Russian translations of the book (PDFs).
Download or read book Making Work Pay written by Bruce D. Meyer and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2002-01-10 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its inception under President Ford in 1975, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has become the largest antipoverty program for the non-elderly in the United States. In 1998, more than nineteen million families received EITC payments, and the program lifted over four million Americans above the poverty line. Despite the rapid growth of the EITC throughout the 1990s, little has been written about how the program works or how it affects low-income families. Making Work Pay provides the first full-scale examination of the EITC, exploring its effects on income distribution, poverty, work, and marriage. Making Work Pay opens with a history of the EITC—its emergence in the 1970s as a pro-work, low-cost antipoverty program and its expansion through the 1980s and 1990s. The central chapters in the volume look at the substantial impact of the EITC on work incentives in recent years and show that the program, in combination with welfare reform and a strong economy, has led to an unprecedented increase in the employment of single mothers. In one study, researchers conclude that the EITC—with its stipulation that one family member be a wage earner—was the most important change in work incentives for single mothers between 1984 and 1996, a period when the employment rate of single mothers rose sharply. Several chapters outline proposals for reforming the program, addressing the concerns by policymakers about the work disincentives that rise as benefits fall with increasing income. Finally, Making Work Pay examines how EITC recipients view the credit and what they do with it once they get it. The contributors find that not only does EITC's lump-sum payment increase consumption but it also allows recipients to make changes in economic status. Many families use the end-of-the-year payment as a form of forced savings, enabling them to save for home improvement, a new car, or other purchases to improve their lives, and providing the extra economic cushion needed to move beyond mere day-to-day survival. Comprehensive in scope, Making Work Pay is an indispensable resource for policymakers, administrators, and researchers seeking to understand the ramifications of the country's largest programs for aiding the working poor.
Download or read book Exploring Universal Basic Income written by Ugo Gentilini and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2019-11-25 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Universal basic income (UBI) is emerging as one of the most hotly debated issues in development and social protection policy. But what are the features of UBI? What is it meant to achieve? How do we know, and what don’t we know, about its performance? What does it take to implement it in practice? Drawing from global evidence, literature, and survey data, this volume provides a framework to elucidate issues and trade-offs in UBI with a view to help inform choices around its appropriateness and feasibility in different contexts. Specifically, the book examines how UBI differs from or complements other social assistance programs in terms of objectives, coverage, incidence, adequacy, incentives, effects on poverty and inequality, financing, political economy, and implementation. It also reviews past and current country experiences, surveys the full range of existing policy proposals, provides original results from micro†“tax benefit simulations, and sets out a range of considerations around the analytics and practice of UBI.
Download or read book The Economics of Poverty Traps written by Christopher B. Barrett and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms—not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological—that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore the dynamic, complex processes by which households accumulate assets and increase their productivity and earnings potential, as well as the conditions under which some individuals, groups, and economies struggle to escape poverty. Investigating the full range of phenomena that combine to generate poverty traps—gleaned from behavioral, health, and resource economics as well as the sociology, psychology, and environmental literatures—chapters in this volume also present new evidence that highlights both the insights and the limits of a poverty trap lens. The framework introduced in this volume provides a robust platform for studying well-being dynamics in developing economies.
Download or read book 2 00 a Day written by Kathryn Edin and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2015 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a kind of poverty in America so deep that we, as a country, don't even think exists--from a leading national poverty expert who "defies convention" (New York Times)
Download or read book Ask a Manager written by Alison Green and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together
Download or read book Universal Basic Income Debate and Impact Assessment written by Maura Francese and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2018-12-10 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper discusses the definition and modelling of a universal basic income (UBI). After clarifying the debate about what a UBI is and presenting the arguments in favor and against, an analytical approach for its assessment is proposed. The adoption of a UBI as a policy tool is discussed with regard to the policy objectives (shaped by social preferences) it is designed to achieve. Key design dimensions to be considered include: coverage, generosity of the program, overall progressivity of the policy, and its financing.
Download or read book Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers written by Robin W. Boadway and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The design of intergovernmental fiscal transfers has a strong bearing on efficiency and equity of public service provision and accountable local governance. This book provides a comprehensive one-stop window/source of materials to guide practitioners and scholars on design and worldwide practices in intergovernmental fiscal transfers and their implications for efficiency, and equity in public services provision as well as accountable governance.
