The idea of a negative income tax: Past, present, and future

Robert Lampman was a seminal figure in the history of research on poverty in general and on the negative income tax (NIT) (see box, p. 2). He was also a key figure in the development of the War on Poverty, in the founding of the Institute for Research on Poverty, and in other important poverty-related events in the 1960s and early 1970s. In this essay I discuss Lampman’s writings on the NIT and, briefly, those of other early NIT advocates, and review how NIT proposals have fared in the evolving U.S. welfare system. My focus will be on the design of an optimal welfare system, one of the more important questions posed by the early NIT literature.