ABSTRACT
In 1990, Americans spent more than $131 billion on federal programs aimed at poor families with children, much of it in the form of income transfers to parents. Yet despite these expenditures, one in five American children was in poverty in 1990, the same ratio as in 1965. Further, one in four families was headed by a lone woman, and 37% of these families were in poverty. Smeeding (1989) estimates that in 1986, welfare programs reduced the child poverty rate in the United States by only 1.9% compared to reductions of 7.4%, 6.4% and 20.5% in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, respectively.1
