Rethinking antipoverty policy

Steven Pressman

Chapter 21 in A Modern Guide to Rethinking Economics, 2017, pp 402-422 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Policymakers have adopted two main antipoverty approaches in the United States. First, they have emphasized developing human capital, enabling workers to earn higher wages. Second, transfer programmes have provided a safety net for low-income citizens. This chapter advocates an alternative approach: using social insurance programmes to reduce poverty without creating negative incentives. It then looks at programmes focusing on three different age groups: (1) child allowances and paid parental leave, (2) unemployment and disability insurance and (3) old-age pensions. It finds these programmes effective in reducing poverty throughout the developed world, especially in Nordic countries with generous social insurance benefits.

Keywords: Economics and Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781784717209.00032.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:16503_21

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().