The Albanian Ndihma Ekonomike is one of the first poverty reduction programs launched in transitional economies. Its record has been judged positively during the recession period of the 1990s and negatively during the more recent growth phase. This paper reconsiders the program using a...

Assessing whether distributional changes are pro-poor has become increasingly widespread in academic and policy circles. Starting from relatively general ethical axioms, this paper proposes simple graphical methods to test whether distributional changes are indeed pro-poor. Pro-poor standards...

Variations in aggregate poverty indices can be due to differences in average poverty intensity, to changes in the welfare distances between those poor of initially unequal welfare status, and/or to emerging disparities in welfare among those poor of initially similar welfare status. This note...

In most OECD countries the gap between rich and poor has widened over the past decades. This paper analyzes whether and to what extent taxes and social transfers have contributed to this trend. Has the redistributive power of different social programs changed over time? The paper contributes to...

In any welfare state subsidies are provided to maintain income support for a minimum subsistence level by providing basic necessity to the low income groups. The aim is to stimulate economic growth by sectoral development for safeguard of domestic supply and provision of accessing basic living...

This paper develops estimates of lifetime money's worth and redistributional outcomes under the Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program for all past, present, and future birth cohorts affected by the program through the cohort born in 2100. The estimates presented in this study...

This paper considers causal inference and sample selection bias in non-experimental settings in which: (i) few units in the non-experimental comparison group are comparable to the treatment units; and (ii) selecting a subset of comparison units similar to the treatment units is difficult because...

The purpose of human service agencies to serve vulnerable populations such as abused and neglected children derives from the common law doctrine of parens patriae, embodying the inherent role of the state as parent of the country. However, along with this foundational purpose, the parens patriae...

We study the problem of unemployment benefit provision when the family is also a provider of social insurance. As a benchmark, a simple model is presented where risk-sharing motives govern intra-family transfers and more generous unemployment benefits, provided by the State, crowd out family...