Conf Board on living standards

Brad De Long delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Sat Jul 1 12:14:45 PDT 2000



>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>Not flawed, exactly, but incomplete. It speaks to the distribution
>>of market income, and forgets that we do have a feeble and
>>anemic--but effective (even if in some ways less effective than it
>>used to be)--social insurance state.
>
>You mean the EITC? But, as the article went on to say, the poverty
>definition also excludes payroll (and sales) taxes. And as the
>article didn't say, the poverty line is an absolute rather than
>relative one, and so reports absurdly low poverty rates.
>
>Doug

If you got kids, the EITC dominates at the low income end. As to the "absolute" vs. "relative" poverty standard, that's a hard and different question--I favor a bunch of different absolute poverty lines (poor by 1960 standards, poor by 1920 standards, poor by 2000 standards, et cetera).

Brad DeLong, looking for a place to get his brand new American Profile Poster framed cheaply...



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