This proposal involves the establishment of ‘welfare accounts’ for every person in a country. There are four accounts: a retirement account (covering pensions), an unemployment account (covering unemployment support), a human capital account (covering education and training), and a health...

We demonstrate that there is a nexus between land transfers and human capital formation. A sequence of land redistributions enables the beneficiaries to educate their children and thus to escape from poverty and to overcome child labour. We find that open access to land markets should be...

This paper investigates the effect of the devolution of power to the village level government on the household-level allocation of poverty alleviation programs drawing upon National Sample Survey data and the Election Commission's election data. First, greater inequality in land-holdings and...

In his book _Growing Public_ (Cambridge University Press), Peter H. Lindert argues that the welfare state is a “free lunchâ€, i.e. has no negative effect on growth, and he uses Sweden to explain this finding, which he calls the free lunch puzzle. In this comment, I claim that Lindert...

This paper examines the effect on hours worked of the income-based phase-out of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). It discusses earlier literature on the subject. While the effects on labor force participation of EITC have been thoroughly studied, producing a consensus that the program...

In this reply to Paul Trampe’s comment, “The EITC Disincentive: The Effects on Hours Worked from the Phase-Out of the Earned Income Tax Credit,†Econ Journal Watch 4(3): 308-320, I discuss several omissions, errors in interpretation, and problems with his empirical analysis.

In the September issue Dr. Hilary Hoynes replies to my paper “The EITC Disincentive: The Effect on Hours Worked of the Phase-out of the Earned Income Tax Credit.†She criticizes my remarks about a figure in Eissa and Hoynes 2005, my downplaying the income effect and my not including a...

We define a new index for the collective empowerment of populations based on the capability of actors to have relationships and to enter into networks. This index, called “relational capability” (RC), is dynamic in the sense that the weights of its various components vary across time...

This paper discusses the nature and effects of social grants programmes in South Africa against the backdrop of international trends in the reform of social assistance systems. It shows that South Africa has a well-developed social assistance system that significantly reduces extreme poverty, in...

This paper reflects on the current state and likely future of the South African social assistance system, focusing specifically on its fiscal sustainability, its effectiveness as an instrument to combat poverty in a longer-term developmental sense, and its impact on the allocation of resources....