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Work Requirements and Long‐Term Poverty
Author(s) -
SCHROYEN FRED,
TORSVIK GAUTE
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of public economic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.809
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1467-9779
pISSN - 1097-3923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9779.2005.00211.x
Subject(s) - workfare , consistency (knowledge bases) , work (physics) , term (time) , economics , population , poverty , range (aeronautics) , current population survey , phase (matter) , econometrics , computer science , engineering , economic growth , mechanical engineering , chemistry , physics , demography , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , aerospace engineering , sociology , welfare , market economy
We study how work requirements can be used to target transfers to the long‐term poor. Without commitment, time consistency requires all screening measures to be concentrated in the first phase of the program. We show that this increases the effectiveness of workfare; it is optimal to use work requirements for a wider range of prior beliefs about the size of the poor population, and work requirements are used more intensively. We compare these results with the optimal policy under commitment.