“Poverty programs will always be poor programs.” I’ve heard this thought many times, but the original source seems to be former HEW Secretary Wilbur Cohen. His exact words: “A program that deals only with the poor will end up being a poor program.”
Question: What is the best empirical evidence in favor of Cohen’s claim? Please include URLs in the comments.
Jan 15 2016
Update below The title above doesn't quite tell the story. It's hard to tell in just a title. That's why you need to read this post. Unless you've been living in a cave, you probably know that when economists say that there is not much urgency to acting against global warming, we are accused of being "deniers." So i...
Jan 15 2016
At the beginning of 2015, we were told that growth would pick up, because plunging oil prices were "like a tax cut." Well, they are like a tax cut, but of course demand-side tax cuts also fail to boost growth, as we saw in 2008. Growth in 2015 did not pick up, if anything it slowed. Now we are being told that plungi...
Jan 15 2016
"Poverty programs will always be poor programs." I've heard this thought many times, but the original source seems to be former HEW Secretary Wilbur Cohen. His exact words: "A program that deals only with the poor will end up being a poor program."Question: What is the best empirical evidence in favor of Co...
READER COMMENTS
yarbel
Jan 15 2016 at 2:18pm
I know you are already familiar with the stigmatizing effects of means-testing, but in any case, there is some empirical research that finds that poor-only programs are stigmatizing. This makes them, on one dimension, poor programs.
See:
Jennifer Stuber & Mark Schlesinger, Sources of Stigma for Means-Tested Government Programs, 63 SOC. SCI. MED. 933 (2006)
See also: Amartya Sen, The Political Economy of Targeting, in PUBLIC SPENDING AND THE POOR 11, 13 (Dominique van de Walle & Kimberly Nead eds., 1995): “Any system of subsidy that requires people to be identified as poor and that is seen as a special benefaction for those who cannot fend for themselves would tend to have some effects on their self-respect as well as on the respect accorded them by others.”
Tyler W
Jan 15 2016 at 3:04pm
I’m gunna be lazy and ask when I should just look it up. What is he saying? That the program will be poor in that it doesn’t work, or that it’s poor because it will be underfunded?
Charles H
Jan 15 2016 at 3:22pm
(commentary on other studies)
Daniel Hartley “Public Housing, Concentrated Poverty, and Crime,” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Economic Commentary Number 2014-19
https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publications/economic-commentary/2014-economic-commentaries/ec-201419-public-housing-concentrated-poverty-and-crime.aspx
Dangerman
Jan 15 2016 at 3:46pm
Contrast Medicaid with Medicare.
Contrast any means-tested program with Social Security Old Age & Survivors.
John Thacker
Jan 15 2016 at 5:06pm
Well, Social Security is means-tested. The bend points in the Primary Insurance Amount work like progressive marginal taxes. It’s also means-tested because the benefits themselves become taxable if you have other income.
It’s true that it’s not stigmatized like Medicaid (my grandparents are fairly poor, but have always refused to sign up for Medicaid when they qualified, but have no such concerns about Social Security.) There is, I think, a difference between benefits that are at some point phased-out and those that are only decreased, but never reach zero. If you only use mean-test to mean those programs that people become completely ineligible for, then I suppose you may be right.
As a counterexample, I’d argue that Chapter 7 is a pretty good deal, although means-tested.
Peter
Jan 23 2016 at 2:11pm
Bryan,
I think Lane Kenworthy has looked into means-tested programs versus universal programs.
Comments are closed.