This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. Journal of Economic Perspectives
  4. Spring 2000
  5. Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government: Fighting Poverty: Lessons from Recent U.S. History

Journal of Economic Perspectives

ISSN 0895-3309 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7965 (Online)

Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government: Fighting Poverty: Lessons from Recent U.S. History

  • Rebecca M. Blank
Journal of Economic Perspectives
vol. 14, no. 2, Spring 2000
(pp. 3–19)
Download Full Text PDF
(Complimentary)

Abstract

Welfare reform efforts in the 1990s aimed at reducing welfare dependence and moving women into work. Public assistance use fell and labor force participation among mothers rose at a stunning rate over the decade. Poverty declined, but at a slower rate. These changes are causally related to the strong macroeconomy, welfare reform efforts, and other policy changes, especially the EITC and minimum wage expansions. This paper concludes that all of these effects reinforced each other, producing very large behavioral changes. It is too early to predict the effects of these changes on long-term family well-being.

Citation

Blank, Rebecca, M. 2000. "Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government: Fighting Poverty: Lessons from Recent U.S. History." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14 (2): 3–19. DOI: 10.1257/jep.14.2.3

JEL Classification

  • I38 Welfare and Poverty: Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
  • I32 Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
There are no comments for this article.
Login to Comment