IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/liswps/319.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

No Child Left Behind?

Author

Listed:
  • Timothy Smeeding

Abstract

The title of this article is taken from the inspirational slogan of President George W. Bush, whose recently passed Elementary and Sunday Education Act bears this title. In this bill, as in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, accountability won the day over federal fiscal support for low-income families. Of course, the 1996 Welfare Reform Act is a major accountability success story, with the AFDC/TANF caseloads (households) falling from over 5.0 million in 1994 and 4.5 million in 1996 to 2.2 million cases by June 2000, about one third of the 6.6 million households which benefited from the SSI program in that same year. But, what is the larger context is within which we should interpret these programmatic changes and slogans? The slogan clearly challenges us to judge a society by how well it treats its children. But when we compare the well-being of American children Canadian or European kids, can we really say that the United States has not left any of its children behind? What can we say about equality of opportunity or fair life chances for Americas children compared to their counterparts in other rich countries? This paper summarizes the poverty status of American children and then the variance in their real standard of living. Then we briefly look at the reason why low-income American children and their parents are in such straits and conclude with a few low cost policy suggestions on how to improve the living standards of poor children, so that their greater accountability and better labor market for performance is rewarded by better family outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Timothy Smeeding, 2002. "No Child Left Behind?," LIS Working papers 319, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:319
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/319.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hwanjoon Kim, 2000. "Anti-Poverty Effectiveness of Taxes and Income Transfers in Welfare States," LIS Working papers 228, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. David T. Ellwood, 2000. "Anti-Poverty Policy for Families in the Next Century: From Welfare to Work--and Worries," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 187-198, Winter.
    3. Richard B. Freeman & Robert Topel & Birgitta Swedenborg, 1997. "Introduction to "The Welfare State in Transition: Reforming the Swedish Model"," NBER Chapters, in: The Welfare State in Transition: Reforming the Swedish Model, pages 1-32, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Richard B. Freeman & Robert Topel & Birgitta Swedenborg, 1997. "The Welfare State in Transition: Reforming the Swedish Model," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number free97-1, March.
    5. Freeman, Richard B. & Topel, Robert H. & Swedenborg, Birgitta (ed.), 1997. "The Welfare State in Transition," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226261782, December.
    6. Robert Summers & Alan Heston, 1991. "The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International Comparisons, 1950–1988," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 327-368.
    7. Lane Kenworthy, 1998. "Do Social-Welfare Policies Reduce Poverty? A Cross-National Assessment," LIS Working papers 188, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    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. Lee Rainwater & Timothy Smeeding & Irwin Garfinkel, 2004. "Welfare State Expenditures and the Distribution of Child Opportunities," LIS Working papers 379, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. Kathryn Wilson & Kristina Lambright & Timothy M. Smeeding, 2006. "School Finance, Equivalent Educational Expenditure, and the Income Distribution: Equal Dollars or Equal Chances for Success?," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 1(4), pages 396-424, September.
    3. Yngwe, Monica Åberg & Fritzell, Johan & Burström, Bo & Lundberg, Olle, 2005. "Comparison or consumption? Distinguishing between different effects of income on health in Nordic welfare states," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 627-635, August.

    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. Timothy Smeeding & Gary Burtless & Lee Rainwater, 2000. "United States Poverty in a Cross-National Context," LIS Working papers 244, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. Timothy Smeeding, 2005. "Government Programs and Social Outcomes: The United States in Comparative Perspective," LIS Working papers 426, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    3. Salvatore Morelli & Timothy Smeeding & Jeffrey Thompson, 2014. "Post-1970 Trends in Within-Country Inequality and Poverty: Rich and Middle Income Countries," CSEF Working Papers 356, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    4. Timothy Smeeding, 2005. "Causes and Conditions of Social Vulnerability in Comparative Perspective: Asian Evidence from the LIS Dataset," LIS Working papers 417, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    5. Timothy Smeeding, 2002. "Sociology of Poverty," LIS Working papers 315, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    6. Kolm, Ann-Sofie & Tonin, Mirco, 2015. "Benefits conditional on work and the Nordic model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 115-126.
    7. Anping Chen & Nicolaas Groenewold, 2011. "Regional Equality and National Development in China: Is There a Trade‐Off?," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(4), pages 628-669, December.
    8. Domeij, David & Ljungqvist, Lars, 2006. "Wage Structure and Public Sector Employment: Sweden versus the United States 1970-2002," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 638, Stockholm School of Economics.
    9. Du Rietz, Gunnar & Johansson, Dan & Stenkula, Mikael, 2014. "A 150-year Perspective on Swedish Capital Income Taxation," Working Papers 2014:2, Örebro University, School of Business.
    10. Richard B. Freeman & Birgitta Swedenborg & Robert H. Topel, 2010. "Introduction to "Reforming the Welfare State: Recovery and Beyond in Sweden"," NBER Chapters, in: Reforming the Welfare State: Recovery and Beyond in Sweden, pages 1-23, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Pontus Braunerhjelm & Magnus Henrekson, 2013. "Entrepreneurship, institutions, and economic dynamism: lessons from a comparison of the United States and Sweden," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 22(1), pages 107-130, February.
    12. Olli Kangas, 2000. "Distributive Justice and Social Policy," LIS Working papers 221, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    13. Kolm, Ann-Sofie & Tonin, Mirco, 2012. "In-Work Benefits and the Nordic Model," IZA Discussion Papers 7084, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Davis, Steven J. & Henrekson, Magnus, 2005. "Wage-setting institutions as industrial policy," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 345-377, June.
    15. Alberto Alesina & Michele Battisti & Joseph Zeira, 2018. "Technology and labor regulations: theory and evidence," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 41-78, March.
    16. David Brady, 2004. "The Welfare State and Relative Poverty in Rich Western Democracies, 1967-1997," LIS Working papers 390, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    17. Darby, Julia & Hart, Robert A. & Vecchi, Michela, 2001. "Labour force participation and the business cycle: a comparative analysis of France, Japan, Sweden and the United States," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 113-133, April.
    18. Barth, Erling & Moene, Karl O. & Willumsen, Fredrik, 2014. "The Scandinavian model—An interpretation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 60-72.
    19. Steven J. Davis & Magnus Henrekson, 2010. "Economic Performance and Market Work Activity in Sweden After the Crisis of the Early 1990s," NBER Chapters, in: Reforming the Welfare State: Recovery and Beyond in Sweden, pages 225-252, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Kevin M. Murphy & Robert H. Topel, 2016. "Human Capital Investment, Inequality, and Economic Growth," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(S2), pages 99-127.

    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:lis:liswps:319. 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: Piotr Paradowski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lisprlu.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.