Volume 3, Number 3 (Summer) 1968
Albin, Peter S., and Bruno Stein. 1968. "The Constrained Demand for Public Assistance." Journal of Human Resources 3(3):300-311.
Public assistance is treated here as a transaction with a demand and a supply side. The theory of demand is explored under a hypothetical condition of free choice to individuals between wage income and relief income. Then, more realistic situations are examined in which able-bodied individuals are required to seek work if work is available at some social minimum wage rate. The work requirement is treated as one of several existing constraints upon choice. To this are added the various disutilities that, in effect, lower the value of relief income to the recipient and further alter his choice. The analysis suggests that welfare authorities (the supply side) can and do vary the constraints and disutilities so as to change the magnitude of the demand for public assistance. Administrative behavior, then, becomes a variable in the determination of the number of recipients, serving as a force that equilibrates demand with supply.
The authors are Associate Professors of Economics at New York University. This paper is part of an ongoing study of public assistance at New York University's Institute of Labor Relations.
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