TY  - JOUR
T1  - Expanding the Discourse on Antipoverty Policy: Reconsidering a Negative Income Tax
JF  - Journal of Poverty
Y1  - 2015
A1  - Jessica Wiederspan
A1  - Elizabeth Rhodes
A1  - H. Luke Shaefer
KW  - economic well-being
KW  - poverty alleviation
KW  - public policy
KW  - social welfare policy
AB  - This article proposes that advocates for the poor consider the replacement of the current means-tested safety net in the United States with a Negative Income Tax (NIT), a guaranteed income program that lifts families’ incomes above a minimum threshold. The article highlights gaps in service provision that leave millions in poverty, explains how a NIT could help fill those gaps, and compares current expenditures on major means-tested programs to estimated expenditures necessary for a NIT. Finally, it addresses the financial and political concerns that are likely to arise in the event that a NIT proposal gains traction among policy makers.
VL  - 19
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10875549.2014.991889
ER  - 

TY  - JOUR
T1  - Rising extreme poverty in the United States and the response of means-tested transfers.
JF  - Social Service Review
Y1  - 2013
A1  - H. Luke Shaefer
A1  - Edin, K.
AB  - This study documents an increase in the prevalence of extreme poverty among US households with children between 1996 and 2011 and assesses the response of major federal means-tested transfer programs. Extreme poverty is defined using a World Bank metric of global poverty: \$2 or less, per person, per day. Using the 1996–2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we estimate that in mid-2011, 1.65 million households with 3.55 million children were living in extreme poverty in a given month, based on cash income, constituting 4.3 percent of all nonelderly households with children. The prevalence of extreme poverty has risen sharply since 1996, particularly among those most affected by the 1996 welfare reform. Adding SNAP benefits to household income reduces the number of extremely poor households with children by 48.0 percent in mid-2011. Adding SNAP, refundable tax credits, and housing subsidies reduces it by 62.8 percent.
VL  - 87
UR  - http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/671012
IS  - 2
ER  -