IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedder/y2000iq2p26-34.html

The effect of welfare reform and technological change on unemployment

Author

Listed:
  • Jason L. Saving

Abstract

Unemployment has fallen to its lowest level in a generation. Some welcome this development because they believe it increases the average person's ability to achieve the American dream. Others view low unemployment as a precursor to dire economic consequences. Jason Saving examines the issue of unemployment and reaches three main conclusions. First, welfare reform can significantly reduce unemployment, and the empirical evidence to date suggests the recent American welfare reform effort has caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to leave the welfare rolls and enter the labor force. Second, welfare reform can increase the official unemployment rate, but it cannot increase the number of people who are out of work. Finally, technological change can help low-skilled or disabled individuals become productive members of the labor force, and there is reason to believe it has done so during the 1990s.

Suggested Citation

  • Jason L. Saving, 2000. "The effect of welfare reform and technological change on unemployment," Economic and Financial Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Q2, pages 26-34.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedder:y:2000:i:q2:p:26-34
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/efr/2000/efr0002c.pdf
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fraker, Thomas & Moffitt, Robert, 1988. "The effect of food stamps on labor supply : A bivariate selection model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 25-56, February.
    2. Evan F. Koenig, 1998. "What's new about the new economy? : some lessons from the current expansion," Southwest Economy, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Jul, pages 7-11.
    3. Christopher A. Pissarides, 1994. "Search Unemployment with On-the-job Search," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(3), pages 457-475.
    4. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1970. "Increasing risk: I. A definition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 225-243, September.
    5. Rebecca M. Blank, 1989. "The Effect of Medical Need and Medicaid on AFDC Participation," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 24(1), pages 54-87.
    6. Jason L. Saving, 1998. "Is umemployment too low? How welfare reform and technology are creating a new employment standard," Southwest Economy, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Nov, pages 5-8.
    7. Robins, Philip K, 1986. "Child Support, Welfare Dependency, and Poverty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 768-788, September.
    8. Richard Alm & W. Michael Cox, 1995. "By our own bootstraps: economic opportunity and the dynamics of income distribution," Annual Report, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, pages 2-24.
    9. Shroder, Mark, 1995. "Games the States Don't Play: Welfare Benefits and the Theory of Fiscal Federalism," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 77(1), pages 183-191, February.
    10. Hosek, James R, 1980. "Determinants of Family Participation in the AFDC-Unemployed Fathers Program," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 62(3), pages 466-470, August.
    11. Hadar, Josef & Russell, William R, 1969. "Rules for Ordering Uncertain Prospects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(1), pages 25-34, March.
    12. Dale T. Mortensen & Christopher A. Pissarides, 1994. "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(3), pages 397-415.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bharat Trehan, 2001. "Unemployment and productivity," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue oct12.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shigeru Fujita, 2004. "Vacancy persistence," Working Papers 04-23, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    2. Arvanitis, Stelios & Post, Thierry & Potì, Valerio & Karabati, Selcuk, 2021. "Nonparametric tests for Optimal Predictive Ability," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 881-898.
    3. Hooi Hooi Lean & Michael McAleer & Wing-Keung Wong, 2013. "Risk-averse and Risk-seeking Investor Preferences for Oil Spot and Futures," Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE 2013-31, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico, revised Aug 2013.
    4. Yangxuan Liu & Michael R. Langemeier & Ian M. Small & Laura Joseph & William E. Fry & Jean B. Ristaino & Amanda Saville & Benjamin M. Gramig & Paul V. Preckel, 2018. "A Risk Analysis of Precision Agriculture Technology to Manage Tomato Late Blight," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-19, August.
    5. Guido Menzio & Shouyong Shi, 2011. "Efficient Search on the Job and the Business Cycle," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(3), pages 468-510.
    6. Grazyna Trzpiot, 2000. "Preference Relations In Ranking Multivalued Alternatives Using Stochastic Dominance: Case Of The Warsaw Stock Exchange," Computing in Economics and Finance 2000 98, Society for Computational Economics.
    7. Thomas A. Lubik & Michael U. Krause, 2004. "On-the-Job Search and Business Cycle Dynamics," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 489, Econometric Society.
    8. Markus Haas, 2007. "Do investors dislike kurtosis?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 7(2), pages 1-9.
    9. Etienne Lalé, 2025. "Search and multiple jobholding," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 80(3), pages 891-939, November.
    10. Kocourek, Pavel & Steiner, Jakub & Stewart, Colin, 2024. "Boundedly rational demand," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(4), November.
    11. Kuan Xu & Gordon Fisher, 2006. "Myopic loss aversion and margin of safety: the risk of value investing," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(6), pages 481-494.
    12. Turon, Helene & Simon Burgess, 2003. "Unemployment equilibrium and on-the-job search," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 208, Royal Economic Society.
    13. Phillips Peter J. & Pohl Gabriela, 2018. "The Deferral of Attacks: SP/A Theory as a Model of Terrorist Choice when Losses Are Inevitable," Open Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 71-85, February.
    14. Drewianka, Scott, 2006. "A generalized model of commitment," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 233-251, December.
    15. Hiroaki Miyamoto & Yuya Takahashi, 2009. "Technological Progress, On-the-Job Search, and Unemployment," ISER Discussion Paper 0734, Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of Osaka.
    16. Larry Y. Tzeng & Rachel J. Huang & Pai-Ta Shih, 2013. "Revisiting Almost Second-Degree Stochastic Dominance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(5), pages 1250-1254, May.
    17. Espen R. Moen, 2008. "Industry Dynamics and Search in the Labor Market," 2008 Meeting Papers 572, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Léné, Alexandre, 2011. "Occupational downgrading and bumping down: The combined effects of education and experience," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 257-269, April.
    19. Heller, Yuval & Schreiber, Amnon, 2020. "Short-term investments and indices of risk," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(3), July.
    20. Levy, Haim & Levy, Moshe, 2021. "The cost of diversification over time, and a simple way to improve target-date funds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedder:y:2000:i:q2:p:26-34. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Amy Chapman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbdaus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.