Volume 20, Number 1 (Winter) 1985
Weinberg, Daniel H. 1985. "Filling the "Poverty Gap": Multiple Transfer Program Participation." Journal of Human Resources 20(1):64-89.
Data from the 1979 Income Survey Development Program are used to describe multiple transfer program participation and its effect on the poverty rate and the poverty gap. Of 87.1 million U.S. families and unrelated individuals, 40 percent received some government transfer in April 1979. Further, more than 80 percent of pretransfer poor families received some transfer. The benefits received by the elderly succeeded in reducing their poverty rate from 68 to 10 percent and reducing their poverty gap by 96 percent. In contrast, government transfers reduced the poverty rate for single-parent families from a pretransfer rate of 48 percent to a posttransfer rate of 30 percent. An examination of target efficiency indicates that 82 percent of all income-conditioned transfers go to the pretransfer poor.
The author is an economist in the Office of Income Security Policy, U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services.
The author would like to thank Walton Francis, Thomas
Gustafson, Martin Holmer, Maurice MacDonald, Howard Rolston, Frank Sammartino,
Timothy Smeeding, and two anonymous referees for comments and suggestions, and
Ruth Fu, Jon Johnson, and Cheta Phang for assistance in computer programming.
The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and should not be
construed as necessarily representing the official position or policy of the
Department of Health and Human Services or any office therein.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X