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Study: Public Assistance Programs Lessen Poverty

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the at-what-cost dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Yahoo Finance reports

Poverty-alleviation programs like food stamps (SNAP), Social Security, and other "welfare" programs are broadly effective at reducing poverty, a new study from University of Chicago researchers found.

The study, performed by researchers Bruce Meyer and Derek Wu, conducted a more comprehensive analysis than most studies, because it used administrative data from the programs' payment records, not just survey data of recipients from the Census Bureau.

[...] For the elderly, Wu said the research found that Social Security benefits "single-handedly slashes poverty by 75%." Social Security's overall effect on all poverty is also enormous, responsible for by far the largest poverty reduction among all these programs, the study said.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 29 2018, @02:51PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 29 2018, @02:51PM (#685633) Journal

    So basically, you are saying that providers' greed is what keeps certain fraction of population in permanent poverty?

    My interpretation of this would be that you're increasing the money supply and money velocity without increasing the value of what that money can purchase. Greed isn't involved, but monetary inflation is.

  • (Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Tuesday May 29 2018, @05:36PM (1 child)

    by Osamabobama (5842) on Tuesday May 29 2018, @05:36PM (#685740)

    Greed isn't involved, but monetary inflation is.

    These can look the same from a certain perspective. I think it's the same thought process that gives us "angry storm clouds" and the idea of a wildfire's insatiable appetite. Anthropomorphizing things' behavior can help us understand them, but only superficially. Such a model usually breaks down trying to explain anything beyond what we see on the surface.

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    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 30 2018, @12:45AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 30 2018, @12:45AM (#686022) Journal

      These can look the same from a certain perspective.

      In which case a different perspective is needed.

      Anthropomorphizing things' behavior can help us understand them, but only superficially.

      OTOH, peoples' behaviors are complex and thus, for anyone with limited mental capabilities (which is all of us, incidentally) anthropomorphizing is a great way to understand that complexity (and not necessarily superficially either).

      Further, consider the situation. The posters were anthropomorphizing the behavior of groups of people in an economic system. Anthropomorphizing people usually works fairly well. The problem instead was that they assumed the worst. Human greed is not the only emotion at work in an economy and much gets done without any emotion at all.