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Child Poverty

Better Essays

Princeton University

Child Poverty Can Be Reduced Author(s): Robert D. Plotnick Source: The Future of Children, Vol. 7, No. 2, Children and Poverty (Summer - Autumn, 1997), pp. 72-87 Published by: Princeton University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1602388 . Accessed: 16/05/2013 10:19
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The article by Devaney, Ellwood, and Love in thisjournal issue discusses the mitigation strategy,and the article by Currie examines the relative desirability of the two broad approaches. This discussion of policies to prevent or reduce child poverty has three parts. The first reviewsprograms for increasing the earnings of parents with low market skills and thereby preventing pretransfer poverty. 'The second discusses the three types of income supplementation-public cash transfers to families with children, private cash child support payments from absent parents, and tax credits--and how successful they are in reducing poverty.2 Part three provides international comparisons of policies to reduce child poverty and discusses lessons from abroad for U.S. policy.

Market Incomes Increasing Pretransfer to Prevent Poverty
Pretransfer poverty among children rose from 20.0% in 1979 to 24.2% in 1995.3The principal cause of this increase is that real earnings and wage rates among fathers with 12 or feweryearsof schooling fell in absolute terms over the past two decades, while they have at best been stagnant for similarlyeducated mothers. Even many workers with some postsecondary schooling have had problems earning more than the povertyline in recent years. (See the articlesby Corcoran and Chaudryin this

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