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EQUIVALENCE SCALES AND THE WELFARE OF CHILDREN: A COMMENT ON “IS THERE BIAS IN THE ECONOMIC LITERATURE ON EQUIVALENCE SCALES?”
Author(s) -
Bojer Hilde,
Nelson Julie A.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4991.1999.tb00364.x
Subject(s) - equivalence (formal languages) , welfare , poverty , economics , incentive , econometrics , public economics , positive economics , mathematics , economic growth , microeconomics , pure mathematics , market economy
In a recent issue of this journal, M. Luisa Ferriera, Reuben C. Buse, and Jan‐Paul Chavas argue that the equivalence scales implicit in the official U.S. poverty line and in public welfare programs overcompensate parents for their children, with resulting negative distributional and incentive effects. We show that their analysis is based on a very particular, and ethically unappealing, assumption about the importance of children's well‐being.