The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC) with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Block Grant (TANF). TANF substitutes a block grant for the open-ended matching grants that helped...

The Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) program created by the Family Support Act (FSA) of 1988 made considerable progress in expanding opportunities for welfare recipients to go to school, train for employment, and seek work. Yet federal and state officials sought further welfare...

Shows how familiar partial equilibrium analysis of a subsidy can be extended to take account of the marginal welfare costs of raising the necessary tax revenue. Focuses on identifying the marginal social cost (MSC) of using the subsidy to expand output which, in conjunction with marginal social...

The case for income redistribution by government is frequently made in the economics literature, but the case against is rarely encountered. This article is an attempt to fill that gap by enumerating and explaining the major arguments against income redistribution. Seven arguments are discussed....

Develops a theoretical analysis of the responsiveness of tax revenue to a change in tax rates on labor income. Finds that tax revenue is likely to be less responsive to higher tax rates than previous estimates suggest.