Welfare reform: the US experience

Robert Moffitt

No 2008:13, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: The reform of the cash-based welfare program for single mothers in the US which occurred in the 1990s was the most important since its inception in 1935. The reforms imposed credible and enforceable work requirements into the program for the first time, as well as establishing time limits on lifetime receipt. Research on the effects of the reform have shown it to have reduced the program caseload and governmental expenditures on the program. In addition, the reform has had generally positive average effects on employment, earnings, and income, and generally negative effects on poverty rates, although the gains are not evenly distributed across groups. A fraction of the affected group appears to have been made worse off by the reform.

Keywords: Welfare reform; Poverty; Single mothers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2008-05-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ifau.se/upload/pdf/se/2008/wp08-13.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.ifau.se/upload/pdf/se/2008/wp08-13.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.ifau.se/upload/pdf/se/2008/wp08-13.pdf)

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:hhs:ifauwp:2008_013

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy IFAU, P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ali Ghooloo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).