ABSTRACT
The New Jersey experiment in income maintenance was unique in several respects. The experiment was conducted at a time when the public and policy-makers alike increasingly were concerned about the cost of growing welfare rolls and the alleged impact of the welfare system on the incentives of the poor to lift themselves out of poverty. The negative income tax idea was advanced, first, to improve the traditional welfare system by providing a minimum, non-taxable allowance to all families; and, second, to maintain the work incentives of the poor who were able to work by permitting them to keep a significant fraction of their earnings. The conference sponsored by the Brookings Panel on Social Experimentation on 29 and 30 April, 1974, focused on these and related issues of importance to national policy. The chapter summarises the formal papers presented at the conference, as well as portions of the discussion that followed.
