🚀 go-pugleaf

Jim Pritchett (jdp@caleb.UUCP) wrote:
> In article <38ols1$fj7@farpoint.sps.mot.com>, Alan R. Weiss writes:

> > the same system we have, isn't it -- we've spent hundreds of
> > TRILLIONS of dollars on welfare since the War on Poverty - and
> > we still have poverty!

Hundreds of TRILLIONS?  Check your facts.  Start by looking at total 
GNP.  Hundreds of Trillions is off by several orders of magnitude.  
(Sounds good, though.)

> Of course we still have poverty!  We pay people to stay poor and don't
> even count the money we pay them when we determine how many people are
> "in poverty."

This is a common and oft-repeated misconception.  AFDC income is in fact
counted in determining poverty.  Food stamps and the cash value of
Medicaid are not.  "Currently the income used to determine poverty status
is family cash income from many sources including money wages or salary,
Social Security Income, Supplemental Security Income, public assistance or
welfare payments, interest income, dividends, royalties, pension income
and other sources such as alimony and child support payments.  The income
measure does not include capital gains, nor does it exclude taxes paid. 
...[N]on-cash benefits received, such as food stamps or employment related
benefits", e.g.pensions, health care, "are not counted as income in the
official poverty definition."  -- From _Poverty in the United States: 
1992_, the official Census publication. 

No state pays AFDC benefits high enough to get a family above the poverty
line, so of course it doesn't reduce poverty at a point in time.  The more
important argument is what AFDC does or doesn't do to people's long term
prospects of becoming self-sufficient on their own.  The conservative view
is that AFDC discourages work and traps people.  The liberal view is that
AFDC provides income to help people feed their kids during a crisis.  When
you actually look at the caseload data, you see both lots of recipients
who are on for a short-term after an out-of-wedlock birth or a divorce,
and recipients who stay on for 10 or more years.   

I would recommend David Ellwood's _Poor Support_ for an analysis of 
welfare which is embodied in the Clinton Plan and Larry Mead's _The New 
Politics of Poverty_ for a conservative critique of that analysis.


-- Paul A. Jargowsky (jargo @ utdallas.edu)   214-690-2992 (Voice)
   Assistant Professor of Political Economy   214-690-2735 (Fax)
   University of Texas at Dallas              *Assume Disclaimer*