This Paper examines poverty in the United States from 1960 through 2005. We investigate how poverty rates and poverty gaps have changed over time, explore how these trends differ across family types, contrast these trends for several different income and consumption measures of poverty, and...

In this paper, I first summarize how the U.S. Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) operates and describe the characteristics of recipients. I then discuss empirical work on the effects on hours of work and marriage, and problems of compliance with the tax system. I then simulate the effects of the...

This paper examines income and consumption based measures of poverty for those 65 and over between 1972 and 2004. This study contributes to the existing literature on poverty in several ways. First, we construct consumption based measures of poverty that improve upon measures used in previous...

We examine the distributional consequences of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) payroll tax. Applying the ability-to-pay principle of equity, the UI payroll tax is quite regressive, while applying the benefits principle makes the UI program look quite good. We then simulate a revenue-neutral...

This paper examines the measurement of poverty in the United States from 1972 through 2004. We investigate how poverty rates and poverty gaps have changed over time, explore how these trends differ across demographic groups, and contrast these trends for several different income and consumption...

In the U.S., analyses of poverty rates and the effects of anti-poverty programs rely almost exclusively on income data. In earlier work (Meyer and Sullivan, 2003) we emphasized that conceptual arguments generally favor using consumption data to measure the wellbeing of the poor, and, on balance,...

We determine the prevalence of disability and examine how a wide range of outcomes change with disability. The outcomes we examine include employment, hours, earnings, income and consumption. We have five main findings. First, disability rates are high. We find that nearly one-fifth of male...

This paper examines unemployment duration and the incidence of claims following a 36 percent increase in the maximum weekly benefit in New York State. This benefit increase sharply increased benefits for a large group of claimants, while leaving them unchanged for a large share of claimants who...

In this paper, I first summarize how the U.S. Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) operates and describe the characteristics of recipients. I then discuss empirical work on the effects of the EITC on poverty and income distribution, and its effects on labor supply. Next, I discuss a few policy...

There is an extensive literature on the extent to which public health insurance coverage through Medicaid induces less private health insurance coverage. However, little is known about the effect of other components of the health care safety net in crowding out private coverage. We examine the...