We use three conventional inequality indices—the Gini, the coefficient of variation of income, and the relative mean deviation of income—and the Atkinson index to examine the effect of income tax rates, the minimum wage, and all the major government welfare and transfer programs on the evolution of income inequality for rural and urban areas by state from 1981 to 1997. We find that these progra...

the effects of social welfare programs on poverty and income inequality in China in 1989 and 2009. The findings indicate that social welfare programs have played an important role in poverty reduction, reducing poverty rates by approximately 32%. The effects on income inequality, however, were reversed. For example, the ratio of top to bottom income quintiles grew after government transfers, su...

PURPOSE This study compared the official poverty rate for adults aged 65 years and older with alternative measures that portray the true resources and needs of older adults. DESIGN AND METHODS The analysis used data from the 2004 Health and Retirement Study on income, assets, in-kind transfers, and out-of-pocket medical expenses. It also incorporated the effects of federal and state income ta...

For over twenty years work has been a prominent issue in the national debate over welfare policy. Most Americans seem to agree that adults who are capable of working should if possible contribute to the support of themselves and their dependents. But substantial disagreement arises over the way, if any, this obligation should be imposed by society and the extent to which those who are not self-...

This is the first of two articles that will examine the effect that the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI--Social Security) and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs have in maintaining the income of poor and near poor families with children at a level that is at least equal to the poverty threshold. The articles also will evaluate the extent to which these programs ...

Given how much money was spent on the negative income tax experiments, what can be learned about social, as opposed to economic, behavior seems remarkably skimpy. Nevertheless, something interesting can be learned from a consideration of why the experiments tell us so little about the people who were their subjects. I may have a vested interest in making this assertion, since when the experimen...

This is the latest in a series of reports of the same title that have been published intermittently since the early 1960’s. The term social security is popularly used in the United States to refer to the basic national social insurance program-old-age, survivors, disability, and health insurance. The term is used here in a broader sense to describe all types of social insurance, social assistan...

There are a wide variety of issues related to how controlled income maintenance experiments should be interpreted. This paper addresses a single question: If an experiment of limited duration is conducted under "ideal" conditions, what can be inferred from the experimental results about individual behavior in a world where a negative income tax is adopted permanently? Part I of the paper summar...

What are the consequences of a nationwide reform transfer system based on means-testing toward one unconditional transfers? I answer this question with quantitative model to assess general equilibrium, inequality, and welfare effects substituting current US income security universal basic (UBI) policy. To do so, develop an overlapping generations idiosyncratic risk that incorporates intensive e...