Full Citation
Title: The Conservative Case for a Child Allowance
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2021
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Abstract: The United States has the highest post-tax-and-transfer child poverty rate of any country in the developed world. While many factors can affect poverty, a cross-national perspective reveals the rather straightforward reason why: our relative lack of spending on children and families. The United States spends only 0.7 percent of GDP on family social expenditures, of which the share devoted to cash benefits, 0.1 percent of GDP, is the lowest of any country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The United States would need to increase cash transfers to children and families by approximately $200 billion per year to merely match the cash benefit portion of the OECD average. At the same time, the institution of American family has never looked weaker. Family formation and marriage rates have declined substantially over the last four decades, with the largest declines concentrated in the middle- and working-class- es.1 The U.S. fertility gap — the difference between desired and actual fertility — has crept steadily higher,2 at least in part due to the rising costs of core goods like
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Authors: Hammond, Samuel; Orr, Robert
Publisher: Niskanen Center
Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Family and Marriage, Fertility and Mortality, Poverty and Welfare
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