Reduction in child poverty

[jimbogumbo]

https://www.cbpp.org/press/statements/in-pandemics-second-year-government-policies-helped-drive-child-poverty-rate-to-a

[mahagonny]

Jump for joy. Did anyone think to factor in 8% inflation, ongoing, and more rate hikes?

The expanded Child Tax Credit alone kept 5.3 million people above the annual poverty line and helped drive a stunning reduction in child poverty to a record low.

'Stunning' strikes me as not neutral language; more like spin. Do these people work for the democratic party too? Now that we know the republican party is a threat to our freedom, I guess all kinds of new things are now justified.

[jimbogumbo]

From the article:

"Indeed, we find that it is also the lowest back to 1967, analyzing historical data from researchers at Columbia University and adjusting 2021's poverty threshold backward for inflation."

[mahagonny]

Sure, backward...I was thinking of 'going forward.'

[jimbogumbo]

I understand your thinking. Wages went up significantly, so the adjustment is supposed to offset that I think.

Not a lot of interest in discussing this, so I won't be posting anything else. For me the  historical aspect was really significant, as well as the fact that while wages had gone up many were still out of work or underemployed. Maybe adds some more justification for a UBI, IMO.

Just hope Sen. Manchin noticed.

[mahagonny]

I understand your thinking. Wages went up significantly, so the adjustment is supposed to offset that I think.

Not a lot of interest in discussing this, so I won't be posting anything else. For me the  historical aspect was really significant, as well as the fact that while wages had gone up many were still out of work or underemployed. Maybe adds some more justification for a UBI, IMO.

Just hope Sen. Manchin noticed.

Not surprising. Most of the people on the forum voted us into this situation. The less said the better.

[kaysixteen]

Hmm, vs., say, Jan 1, 2021, how many people here have experienced a significant increase in their wages/ salary, at least to the level of the inflation since then?   How many nationally?   

[nebo113]

I understand your thinking. Wages went up significantly, so the adjustment is supposed to offset that I think.

Not a lot of interest in discussing this, so I won't be posting anything else. For me the  historical aspect was really significant, as well as the fact that while wages had gone up many were still out of work or underemployed. Maybe adds some more justification for a UBI, IMO.

Just hope Sen. Manchin noticed.

I don't pretend to understand UBI.  If you have insight/knowledge, might you explain.  And we will ignore ......

[dismalist]

I understand your thinking. Wages went up significantly, so the adjustment is supposed to offset that I think.

Not a lot of interest in discussing this, so I won't be posting anything else. For me the  historical aspect was really significant, as well as the fact that while wages had gone up many were still out of work or underemployed. Maybe adds some more justification for a UBI, IMO.

...

I don't pretend to understand UBI.  If you have insight/knowledge, might you explain.  And we will ignore ......

This is a perfectly reasonable article about a fall in child poverty attributable to transfer payments triggered by the Covid problem. It is descriptive, and as far as I can tell correct. The article even recognizes that the official poverty measure, on its own terms, grossly overestimates poverty.  Inflation is a red herring, for the poverty measure is recalculated every year in nominal terms.

Yes, money wages have gone up, but because of inflation, real wages have declined. So, this time around wage growth has not contributed.

Public discussion of aid to the poor focuses on "how much" to give, how much is fair, and so on. Some want for others to get more, some want to give less. This discussion is human, understandable, and omits something important. What is relevant for incentives is not the money one receives, but the money one loses when one works. With all the benefit losses upon earning one dollar more through means testing, the poor face marginal tax rates that would make the rich blush.

The idea of a UBI, a Universal Basic Income, or Negative Income Tax, is to substitute all the particular benefits the poor are entitled to with a single transfer. If they work more, they would pay some reasonable tax rate on each extra dollar they earned, not lose all their means tested benefits.

The child credit has a lot of the characteristics of the UBI -- if one works more, one doesn't lose the benefit. However, it leaves an incentive to have more children, though that may well be smaller than under the current system.

My guess is that a reform of the welfare system to the UBI would promote additional work more than it would promote having additional children.

[mahagonny]

I understand your thinking. Wages went up significantly, so the adjustment is supposed to offset that I think.

Not a lot of interest in discussing this, so I won't be posting anything else. For me the  historical aspect was really significant, as well as the fact that while wages had gone up many were still out of work or underemployed. Maybe adds some more justification for a UBI, IMO.

...

I don't pretend to understand UBI.  If you have insight/knowledge, might you explain.  And we will ignore ......

This is a perfectly reasonable article about a fall in child poverty attributable to transfer payments triggered by the Covid problem. It is descriptive, and as far as I can tell correct. The article even recognizes that the official poverty measure, on its own terms, grossly overestimates poverty.  Inflation is a red herring, for the poverty measure is recalculated every year in nominal terms.

Yes, money wages have gone up, but because of inflation, real wages have declined. So, this time around wage growth has not contributed.

Public discussion of aid to the poor focuses on "how much" to give, how much is fair, and so on. Some want for others to get more, some want to give less. This discussion is human, understandable, and omits something important. What is relevant for incentives is not the money one receives, but the money one loses when one works. With all the benefit losses upon earning one dollar more through means testing, the poor face marginal tax rates that would make the rich blush.

The idea of a UBI, a Universal Basic Income, or Negative Income Tax, is to substitute all the particular benefits the poor are entitled to with a single transfer. If they work more, they would pay some reasonable tax rate on each extra dollar they earned, not lose all their means tested benefits.

The child credit has a lot of the characteristics of the UBI -- if one works more, one doesn't lose the benefit. However, it leaves an incentive to have more children, though that may well be smaller than under the current system.

My guess is that a reform of the welfare system to the UBI would promote additional work more than it would promote having additional children.

I always wonder this when I read someone who knows a lot about taxes: how could the tax code be tweaked to incentivize fathers to live with their children instead of taking off? Or to incentivize mothers to work harder to keep the man of the house around. Maybe not much if the people affected don't earn enough to pay tax....?
The best way for mothers to raise money is be part of a team. And fewer and fewer are.

[dismalist]

I understand your thinking. Wages went up significantly, so the adjustment is supposed to offset that I think.

Not a lot of interest in discussing this, so I won't be posting anything else. For me the  historical aspect was really significant, as well as the fact that while wages had gone up many were still out of work or underemployed. Maybe adds some more justification for a UBI, IMO.

...

I don't pretend to understand UBI.  If you have insight/knowledge, might you explain.  And we will ignore ......

This is a perfectly reasonable article about a fall in child poverty attributable to transfer payments triggered by the Covid problem. It is descriptive, and as far as I can tell correct. The article even recognizes that the official poverty measure, on its own terms, grossly overestimates poverty.  Inflation is a red herring, for the poverty measure is recalculated every year in nominal terms.

Yes, money wages have gone up, but because of inflation, real wages have declined. So, this time around wage growth has not contributed.

Public discussion of aid to the poor focuses on "how much" to give, how much is fair, and so on. Some want for others to get more, some want to give less. This discussion is human, understandable, and omits something important. What is relevant for incentives is not the money one receives, but the money one loses when one works. With all the benefit losses upon earning one dollar more through means testing, the poor face marginal tax rates that would make the rich blush.

The idea of a UBI, a Universal Basic Income, or Negative Income Tax, is to substitute all the particular benefits the poor are entitled to with a single transfer. If they work more, they would pay some reasonable tax rate on each extra dollar they earned, not lose all their means tested benefits.

The child credit has a lot of the characteristics of the UBI -- if one works more, one doesn't lose the benefit. However, it leaves an incentive to have more children, though that may well be smaller than under the current system.

My guess is that a reform of the welfare system to the UBI would promote additional work more than it would promote having additional children.

I always wonder this when I read someone who knows a lot about taxes: how could the tax code be tweaked to incentivize fathers to live with their children instead of taking off? Or to incentivize mothers to work harder to keep the man of the house around. Maybe not much if the people affected don't earn enough to pay tax....?
The best way for mothers to raise money is be part of a team. And fewer and fewer are.

Institute a Universal Basic Income [Negative Income Tax] as a substitute for existing means tested welfare programs. Make the tax rate on earned income something reasonable, not the 100% it now is in certain cases.

[Anon1787]

Public discussion of aid to the poor focuses on "how much" to give, how much is fair, and so on. Some want for others to get more, some want to give less. This discussion is human, understandable, and omits something important. What is relevant for incentives is not the money one receives, but the money one loses when one works. With all the benefit losses upon earning one dollar more through means testing, the poor face marginal tax rates that would make the rich blush.

The idea of a UBI, a Universal Basic Income, or Negative Income Tax, is to substitute all the particular benefits the poor are entitled to with a single transfer. If they work more, they would pay some reasonable tax rate on each extra dollar they earned, not lose all their means tested benefits.

The child credit has a lot of the characteristics of the UBI -- if one works more, one doesn't lose the benefit. However, it leaves an incentive to have more children, though that may well be smaller than under the current system.

My guess is that a reform of the welfare system to the UBI would promote additional work more than it would promote having additional children.

UBI universalizes receiving a handout (no strings attached), which reinforces an entitlement mentality. Also, labor supply is down among men, who generally don't receive as much in welfare benefits as women. I'm concerned that the income effect of UBI will dominate among that group of younger men who are averse to work.

[dismalist]

Public discussion of aid to the poor focuses on "how much" to give, how much is fair, and so on. Some want for others to get more, some want to give less. This discussion is human, understandable, and omits something important. What is relevant for incentives is not the money one receives, but the money one loses when one works. With all the benefit losses upon earning one dollar more through means testing, the poor face marginal tax rates that would make the rich blush.

The idea of a UBI, a Universal Basic Income, or Negative Income Tax, is to substitute all the particular benefits the poor are entitled to with a single transfer. If they work more, they would pay some reasonable tax rate on each extra dollar they earned, not lose all their means tested benefits.

The child credit has a lot of the characteristics of the UBI -- if one works more, one doesn't lose the benefit. However, it leaves an incentive to have more children, though that may well be smaller than under the current system.

My guess is that a reform of the welfare system to the UBI would promote additional work more than it would promote having additional children.

UBI universalizes receiving a handout (no strings attached), which reinforces an entitlement mentality. Also, labor supply is down among men, who generally don't receive as much in welfare benefits as women. I'm concerned that the income effect of UBI will dominate among that group of younger men who are averse to work.

The margin, the margin!  UBI as a substitute for what we have now, not an addition. What we have now is a destroyer of work incentives, not because of the level of aid, but because of the conditions for aid: Earn an extra dollar and we take it away.

There is no difference in principle between aid for poor men and poor women. A practical difference results because women take care of children, and it's therefore the women who get more aid and are most affected by the means testing.

One can spend the same amount as now on aid, just changes its conditions, and no one can be worse off, while the poor will be better off.

[Dismal]

The earned income tax credit incentivizes working. The idea that you earn a dollar and your benefits fall by a dollar is literally from a different century when we had AFDC instead of TANF. 

The fact that government policy can dramatically decrease the number of children living in poverty is a big deal.

Recently there has been a couple of stories in the NYT about families in poverty - I wasn't really crazy about the feature on the father wasn't working much while he was getting an online degree in "music production," as I don't think the ROI is very high on that, but in the recent stories low-income working families are described as getting $8,000-$10,000 a year in "refundable tax credits" - that's the Earned Income Tax Credit.  Here is a story about low-income families in West Virginia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/12/us/politics/child-poverty-families-west-virginia.html

"After welfare reform, the focus of the government's anti-poverty efforts shifted from people who weren't working to people who were — and, thanks partly to the generosity of the new programs, child poverty plummeted. The size of the decline, Dana Thomson, a co-author of the study, said, "is unequaled in the history of poverty measurement."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/briefing/child-poverty-plunging-us-economy.html

[Dismal]

And someone above asked if the tax system could be tweaked to: "to incentivize mothers to work harder to keep the man of the house around.

Mothers need to WORK HARDER to keep the man of the house around? Is this really the policy problem?  My goodness, people.