Who Has Benefited from Economic Growth in the United States Since 1969? The Case of Children

Christopher Jencks, Susan Mayer and Joseph Swingle
Additional contact information
Christopher Jencks: Harvard U
Joseph Swingle: Wellesley College

Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government

Abstract: One can use the Census Bureau's income statistics to show either that low-income children were considerably worse off or considerably better off in 1999 than in 1969. Likewise, one can use Census statistics to show that middle-income children gained very little or a great deal between 1969 and 1999. Resolving these disagreements requires agreeing on the best price index, the best adjustment for changes in household size, and the best treatment of noncash benefits. In addition, one must reconcile discrepancies between trends in income and consumption. Since there is no consensus on any of these matters, we investigate trends in children's well-being using more direct measures of material well-being, such as housing conditions, neighborhood safety, motor vehicle ownership, telephone service, regular medical checkups, and food consumption. Almost all these measures suggest that low-income children's material well-being rose between the early 1970s and the late 1990s. This finding implies that traditional price indices such as the CPI-U overstated inflation.

Date: 2004-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=119

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:ecl:harjfk:rwp04-017

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().