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Explaining Welfare Reform: Public Choice and the Labor Market

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  • Robert Moffitt

Abstract

This paper seeks to identify factors which could plausibly have led to the contractionary welfare reform initiatives begun at the state and federal levels in the U.S. in the 1990s, initiatives concentrated on the AFDC program. A review of aggregate time series evidence, cross-section regression research, and studies of attitudes toward welfare spending and toward welfare recipients suggests a role for three types of factors. First, a major expansion of the U.S. welfare system in the late 1980s in terms of expenditures and caseloads may have led voters to desire to retrench by cutting back on the AFDC program, even though that program was not primarily responsible for the expansion. Second, declines in the relative and absolute levels of household income, wages, and employment rates among the disadvantaged population may have driven up caseloads and costs, increased the social distance of voters from the poor, heightened concern with work incentives, and may have led, more generally, to a decrease in the perceived deservingness of the poor. Third, a surge of births to unmarried mothers in the 1980s is suggested, by cross-sectional and attitudinal evidence, to have led to a reduction in voter support for the AFDC program. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1999

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  • Robert Moffitt, 1999. "Explaining Welfare Reform: Public Choice and the Labor Market," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 6(3), pages 289-315, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:6:y:1999:i:3:p:289-315
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1008782913069
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    3. Fong, Christina, 2001. "Social preferences, self-interest, and the demand for redistribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 225-246, November.
    4. Luis Ayala & Elena Bárcena-Martín & Jorge Martínez-Vázquez, 2022. "Devolution in the U.S. Welfare Reform: Divergence and Degradation in State Benefits," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(3), pages 701-726, September.
    5. Fabio Sabatini & Francesco Sarracino & Eiji Yamamura, 2014. "Social norms on rent seeking and preferences for redistribution," Econometica Working Papers wp55, Econometica.
    6. Leonard M. Lopoo & Kerri M. Raissian, 2014. "U.S. Social Policy and Family Complexity," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 654(1), pages 213-230, July.
    7. Holzner, Christian & Meier, Volker & Werding, Martin, 2010. "Workfare, monitoring, and efficiency wages," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 157-168, March.

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