Trends in the Level and Distribution of Income Support

Robert Moffitt and John Scholz

No 15488, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Means-tested and social insurance programs in the U.S. have been transformed over the last 25 years, with expansions in Medicare and Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Supplemental Security Income, and with contractions in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. We examine the effect of these changes on benefits received by families. We find that transfer program expenditures in total rose from 1984 to 2004 but the increase was spread unevenly across different demographic groups and income classes. Very poor elderly, disabled, and childless families received greatly increased expenditures, mostly arising from Social Security, SSDI, SSI, and the health programs. Very poor single parent and two-parent households experienced declines in expenditures, driven largely by lower recipiency rates, benefit receipt, or both in the AFDC/TANF and Food Stamp programs. For example, AFDC-TANF participation for one-adult families with children and market income below 50 percent of the poverty line fell from 62 percent in 1984 to 24 percent in 2004. However, expenditures received by one- and two-parent households further up the income scale increased, largely because of expansions of the EITC. Thus there was a redistribution of income from the very poor to the near-poor and nonpoor for these one- and two-parent households, as well as an overall relative redistribution from them to the elderly, disabled, and childless.

JEL-codes: H53 I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv
Note: CH PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Published as Trends in the Level and Distribution of Income Support , Robert Moffitt, John Karl Scholz . in Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 24 , Brown. 2010

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15488.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Trends in the Level and Distribution of Income Support (2010)
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:nbr:nberwo:15488

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15488

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().