Are the poor different? Nov 7, 2014

Anti-poverty policies Give money (Negative Income Tax) Jobs Changing demand for unskilled work Role for government Poverty as culture? Implications The poor and the “underclass” Growth of the “underclass”?

Views-1 “It may be that social policy, by itself, is not capable of eradicating deeply entrenched patterns of child rearing and social interaction that pass on personal incapacity—criminal violence, promiscuous sexuality, early unwed childbearing, academic failure—from one generation to the next.... the moral life of the hard core urban poor will have to be transformed before some of these most marginalized souls will be able to seize such opportunity as may exist.” Glenn Loury

Views-2 “Professor Loury... says that it will do no good to offer jobs to people who have become unfit for work. I say that it will do not good to tell the same people that they should become fit for work when there are no jobs to be had. Both of these assertions can be correct….” Robert Solow