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The Effects of Unemployment and Policy Changes on America's Poor*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Sheldon Danziger ,
Peter Gottschalk  and
Eugene Smolensky
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Abstract

First, we employ a methodology that decomposes the change in poverty into changes due to the means and variances of market and transfer incomes and to other factors which affect the shape of the income distribution. We then briefly describe the Reagan economic programme. Finally, we estimate a regression model that reflects changes in these moments of the income distribution to changes in the unemployment rates and to the Reagan programme. The regression estimates, together with the poverty rate decomposition, allow us to show that the administration's cuts in income-transfer programmes account for about 40 per cent of the recent rise in poverty and that increased unemployment accounts for about a third of the increase in poverty.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , July 1985 , pp. 313 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

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