Head Start is a federal antipoverty program that provides free childcare, preschool, and related services to disadvantaged families. Research on has focused almost exclusively impacts among children. Using data from the Impact Study, nationally representative field experiment, authors estimate treatment effects maternal employment, economic hardship, depression. The find admission generates som...

This article recasts the debate over employment status of gig economy workers as a question about power municipal governance. Gig employers are challenging urban regulatory regimes through their disavowal an relationship and refusal to obtain taxi licenses. As recent literature argues, there has been resurgence driven by labor-antipoverty coalition. One might view economy’s independent contract...

T hat people with few financial resources tend to be poorly educated, unhealthy, and malnourished has been often observed and frequently bemoaned but rarely tackled head-on. In the case of an antipoverty program in Mexico, however, policymakers chose a comprehensive—and ultimately successful—approach to address the basic causes of social problems (including health) facing many of the country’s ...

The economic recovery that began in 1983 has been unusual in both its length and its modest antipoverty impact. The official poverty rate, which peaked at 15.2 percent in 1983, had by 1987 fallen only to 13.5 percent. Poverty in 1987 was well above the 11.7 percent rate of 1979, even though median family income in 1987 was about the same as in 1979. The recovery has been marked by a widening ga...

Antipoverty policies in developing countries often assume that targeting poor households will be reasonably effective in reaching poor individuals. We question this assumption. Our comprehensive assessment for Sub-Saharan Africa reveals that undernourished women and children are spread quite widely across the distribution of household wealth and consumption. While the expected positive househol...

This paper analyzes three bills to reform the food stamp program: S.2451, sponsored by Senators McGovern and Dole; S.2537, the Administration's proposal; and S.1993, sponsored by Senator Buckley. The most important provisions of these reform bills are summarized and evaluated, emphasizing proposed income maximums for eligibility and changes in benefit levels. Then the impacts of each bill on se...

The paper reviews some research on urban poverty in China. This topic began to attract academic attention in mid1990s. In the marketization, the old socialist system in China, which included full employment and comprehensive social welfare for urban citizens, has been replaced by an emerging labor market and a socialized and partially privatized social security. The time lag between the old and...

We examined the effects of macroeconomic performance and social policy on the extent and depth of poverty in America using state-level panel data from the 1981-2000 waves of the Current Population Survey. We found that a strong macroeconomy at both the state and national levels reduced both the number of families who were living in poverty and the severity of poverty. The magnitude and source o...