Heins, A. James. 1970. "The Negative Income Tax, Head Grants, and Public Employment Programs: A Welfare Analysis." Journal of Human Resources 5(3):298-303.

This article uses traditional excess burden analysis to make comparative welfare judgments about the three general types of poverty programs noted in the title. Its central conclusions are: (1) a given welfare increase can be achieved at lower cost with head grants than with either of the other programs; (2) the relative cost of an employment program and a negative income tax which would generate a given increase in welfare depends on the preference pattern of the poor as between income and leisure; and (3) while it is clear that a work-subsidizing employment program would increase inducements for the poor to work, it is not clear that the resulting increase in value of product would be as great as the value of the subsidy required to generate its forthcoming./p>

The author is Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois. The idea for this paper was conceived while he was a visiting staff member at the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin.

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US ISSN 0022-166X

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