Volume 16, Number 1 (Winter) 1981
Gottschalk, Peter. 1981. "Transfer Scenarios and Projections of Poverty into the 1980s." Journal of Human Resources 16(1):41-60.
Previous projections of poverty have had to make implicit assumptions, often unstated, about the future growth of transfers, the target efficiency of these transfers, and their impact on the labor supply of the poor. This paper develops a methodology that takes these factors explicitly into account. Projections of the proportion of households with earnings below the poverty line (the earnings poor) and the proportion with total incomes below the poverty line (the posttransfer poor) are made. These projections suggest that unless steps are taken to change the structure of labor markets facing the poor, the 1980s will either be another decade of growing real transfers per capita or a time during which there will be limited reductions in poverty.
The author is Assistant Professor of Economics, Bowdoin College.
* The author wishes to acknowledge Sheldon Danziger's help in obtaining some of
the data. George Cobb, William Hogan, John Palmer, Robert Plotnick, Tim Smeeding,
and anonymous referees offered useful comments.
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US ISSN 0022-166X