Recipient Value and Market Value: How They Measure Up in Counting the Poor¹

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Haber, Sheldon E.^a

Affiliations: [a] Department of Economics, The George Washington University, American Statistical Association

Note: [ 1 ] This paper is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant SES 84-01460 and SES 87-13643, “On-Site Research to Improve the Government-Generated Social Science Data Base”. The research was conducted at the U.S. Bureau of the Census while the author was a participant in the American Statistical Associationl Census Bureau Research Program, which is supported by the Census Bureau and through the NSF grant. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Census Bureau.

Abstract: Between 1965 and 1986 noncash government benefits rose from $1,492 to $2,787 billion dollars. In this study the conceptual and empirical bases of the recipient value and market value approaches to valuing these benefits are examined. The major conclusion of the paper based on empirical data provided in Bureau of the Census publications is that both approaches yield results that are sufficiently anomalous as to cast grave doubt on their usefulness for determining who is poor.

DOI: 10.3233/JEM-1990-16103

Journal: Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 41-54, 1990