Kevin Corinth

In case you missed it, @AEICosm has released Opportunity Book—a searchable catalog of policies from @AEI scholars related to opportunity. We’ll be building it up in the weeks ahead!

@AEICosm @AEI @swinshi Start exploring Opportunity Book here: cosm.aei.org/opportunity-bo…

@AEICosm @AEI I am proud to have contributed to this project, and very grateful to @swinshi for leading it and the whole @AEICosm team for supporting its development from start to end.

Today @AEICosm is releasing Opportunity Book, a database of policy ideas from @AEI scholars to expand opportunity in the United States.

@JoshuaTMcCabe @AEICosm @HUDgov Work requirements mitigate work and marriage penalties while receiving benefits, for those not currently working enough to comply. The implicit tax on earning an extra dollar may not change, but the benefit loss from earning enough more to move off the program would shrink.

@JoshuaTMcCabe @AEICosm @HUDgov Both time limits and work requirement would improve incentives for upward mobility. Time limits reduce the amount of time recipients face work and marriage penalties.

My latest @AEICosm article argues that time limits and work requirements for non-disabled working-age adults (the subject of a new @HUDgov rule) would improve subsidized housing programs. aei.org/articles/time-…

Read the full paper here. aei.org/research-produ…

The other problem is external validity. GBI pilots were conducted during abnormal times. And like all experiments they are temporary and targeted. A permanent universal basic income rolled out to the entire country would probably elicit different behavioral responses.

My new @AEICosm working paper with Hannah Mayhew asks what we can learn from the 122 Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) pilots conducted across the U.S. from 2017-2025. For one thing, close to half a billion dollars were distributed to over 40,000 participants across all pilots.

@CPopeHC That figure excludes Social Security benefits because it counts market income only. Here are poverty rates by age & race using a post-tax post-transfer income measure that includes Social Security.

@kevincorinth Am I right to read this as suggesting that the poverty rate among seniors *increased* substantially, as spending on Social Security benefits for the elderly increased from 0.2% of GDP in 1949 to 3.2% in 1973.

My new @nberpubs paper with Rich Burkhauser constructs the first consistent post-tax post-transfer measure of poverty (excluding health insurance) going back 84 years in the US. When holding the poverty line constant in real terms, poverty fell from 48.5% to 3.7% from 1939-2023.

See the full paper here. nber.org/papers/w34759

Progress prior to the War on Poverty was due almost entirely to growth in market income. Growth in government income drove progress afterward, except during welfare reform in the 1990s and during the recovery from the Great Recession.