TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ellwood,David T.
AU  - Summers,Lawrence H.
TI  - Poverty in America:  Is Welfare the Answer or the Problem?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 1711
PY  - 1985
Y2  - October 1985
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1711
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1711.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David T. Ellwood
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-1121
Fax: 617/496-9053
E-Mail: david_ellwood@harvard.edu

Lawrence H. Summers
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-9322
Fax: 617/495-0436
E-Mail: lhs@harvard.edu
AB  - This paper reviews the current policies for fighting poverty and explores the impact they have had. We begin by reviewing trends in poverty, poverty spending and economic performance. It is immediately apparent that economic performance is the dominant determinant of the measured poverty rate over the past two decades. Government assistance programs expanded greatly over this period, but the growth in cash assistance was too modest to have major effects, and the large growth in in-kind benefits could not reduce measured poverty since such benefits are not counted as income. Next we focus on three groups: the disabled, female family heads, and unemployed black youth. We find little evidence that government deserves the blame for the problems of each group, and suggest that the broad outlines of current policies are defensible on economic grounds.
ER  -