TY  - JOUR
AU  - Moffitt, Robert A
AU  - Scholz, John Karl
TI  - Trends in the Level and Distribution of Income Support
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15488
PY  - 2009
Y2  - November 2009
DO  - 10.3386/w15488
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15488
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15488.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Robert A. Moffitt
Department of Economics
Johns Hopkins University
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD  21218
Tel: 410/516-7611
Fax: 410/516-7600
E-Mail: moffitt@jhu.edu

John Karl Scholz
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Department of Economics
1180 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Tel: 608/262-5380
Fax: 608/263-3876
E-Mail: jkscholz@facstaff.wisc.edu
M1  - published as Robert Moffitt, John Karl Scholz . "Trends in the Level and Distribution of Income Support," in Jeffrey R. Brown, editor, "Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 24" The University of Chicago Press (2010)

M3  - presented at "Tax Policy & the Economy", September 24, 2009
AB  - Means-tested and social insurance programs in the U.S. have been transformed over the last 25 years, with expansions in Medicare and Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Supplemental Security Income, and with contractions in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.  We examine the effect of these changes on benefits received by families.  We find that transfer program expenditures in total rose from 1984 to 2004 but the increase was spread unevenly across different demographic groups and income classes.  Very poor elderly, disabled, and childless families received greatly increased expenditures, mostly arising from Social Security, SSDI, SSI, and the health programs.  Very poor single parent and two-parent households experienced declines in expenditures, driven largely by lower recipiency rates, benefit receipt, or both in the AFDC/TANF and Food Stamp programs.  For example, AFDC-TANF participation for one-adult families with children and market income below 50 percent of the poverty line fell from 62 percent in 1984 to 24 percent in 2004.  However, expenditures received by one- and two-parent households further up the income scale increased, largely because of expansions of the EITC.  Thus there was a redistribution of income from the very poor to the near-poor and nonpoor for these one- and two-parent households, as well as an overall relative redistribution from them to the elderly, disabled, and childless.
ER  -