IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jpolmo/v32yi6p719-732.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Welfare programs and the state economy

Author

Listed:
  • McDonald, Bruce D.
  • Miller, D. Ryan

Abstract

Welfare policy has been controversial and support is often drawn along political affiliation lines, the economic return of investment in welfare programs is frequently cited as a justification for new and expanded policies. To investigate the direct and indirect effects of welfare programs on economic performance, the authors develop a multilink approach, through employment and investment. The relationship is then tested with data from each of the United States from 1976 to 2006. Findings show welfare programs have no direct effect on a state's economy. Indirectly, welfare has a negative effect through investment, though the effect on employment is minimal.

Suggested Citation

  • McDonald, Bruce D. & Miller, D. Ryan, 2010. "Welfare programs and the state economy," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 719-732, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jpolmo:v:32:y::i:6:p:719-732
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161-8938(10)00073-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. H. Ahmed & SM. Miller, 2000. "Crowding‐out and crowding‐in effects of the components of government expenditure," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 18(1), pages 124-133, January.
    2. Geweke, John & Meese, Richard, 1981. "Estimating regression models of finite but unknown order," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 162-162, May.
    3. Robert M. Solow, 1956. "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 70(1), pages 65-94.
    4. Hansson, Par & Henrekson, Magnus, 1994. "A New Framework for Testing the Effect of Government Spending on Growth and Productivity," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 81(3-4), pages 381-401, December.
    5. John McCallum & André Blais, 1987. "Government, special interest groups, and economic growth," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 54(1), pages 3-18, January.
    6. N. Gregory Mankiw & David Romer & David N. Weil, 1992. "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 407-437.
    7. T. W. Swan, 1956. "ECONOMIC GROWTH and CAPITAL ACCUMULATION," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(2), pages 334-361, November.
    8. Phelps, Edmund S, 1994. "Low-Wage Employment Subsidies versus the Welfare State," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 54-58, May.
    9. Lindbeck, Assar, 1994. "The Welfare State and the Employment Problem," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 71-75, May.
    10. Romer, Paul M, 1990. "Endogenous Technological Change," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 71-102, October.
    11. Miller, Stephen M & Russek, Frank S, 1997. "Fiscal Structures and Economic Growth: International Evidence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(3), pages 603-613, July.
    12. Peter K. Clark, 1979. "Investment in the 1970s: Theory, Performance, and Prediction," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 10(1), pages 73-124.
    13. Alicia H. Munnell, 1990. "How does public infrastructure affect regional economic performance?," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 34, pages 69-112.
    14. Daniel Landau, 1985. "Government expenditure and economic growth in the developed countries: 1952–76," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 459-477, January.
    15. Barbara L. Wolfe, 2002. "Incentives, challenges, and dilemmas of TANF: A case study," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(4), pages 577-586.
    16. Mofidi, Alaeddin & Stone, Joe A, 1990. "Do State and Local Taxes Affect Economic Growth?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(4), pages 686-691, November.
    17. Michael B. Devereux & Allen C. Head & Beverly J. Lapham, 2000. "Government Spending and Welfare with Returns to Specialization," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 102(4), pages 547-561, December.
    18. Ljungqvist, Lars & Sargent, Thomas J, 1995. "Welfare States and Unemployment," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 6(1), pages 143-160, June.
    19. repec:bla:scandj:v:102:y:2000:i:4:p:547-61 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1994. "Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 600-621, June.
    21. Lindbeck, A. & Molander, P. & Persson, T. & Paterson, O. & Sandmo, A. & Swedenborg, B. & Thygesen, N., 1993. "Options for Economic and Political Reform in Sweden," Papers 540, Stockholm - International Economic Studies.
    22. J. Maurice Clark, 1917. "Business Acceleration and the Law of Demand: A Technical Factor in Economic Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(3), pages 217-217.
    23. David N. Figlio & James P. Ziliak, 1999. "Welfare Reform, the Business Cycle, and the Decline in AFDC Caseloads," JCPR Working Papers 77, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
    24. repec:rre:publsh:v:33:y:2003:i:1:p:40-60 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. J. F. Li & Z. X. Lin, 2016. "Social benefit expenditures and stagflation: evidence from the United States," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(55), pages 5340-5347, November.
    2. Alessandro Crociata & Massimiliano Agovino & Donatella Furia & Giacomo Osmi & Nicola Mattoscio & Massimiliano Cerciello, 2020. "Impulse and time persistence of disaggregate welfare expenditure on growth in the EU," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 37(1), pages 13-38, April.
    3. Barbetta, Gian Paolo & Colombo, Luca & Turati, Gilberto, 2015. "Regulating European grant-making foundations. Lessons from the USA experience?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 763-781.
    4. Alina Cristina Nuta & Florian Marcel Nuta & Viorica Chirila & Angela Roman & Andy Corneliu Pusca, 2015. "Testing the Relationship between Public Expenditure and Economic Growth in Romania," Acta Universitatis Danubius. OEconomica, Danubius University of Galati, issue 11(4), pages 86-102, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Norman Gemmell, 2001. "Fiscal Policy in a Growth Framework," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2001-84, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Roman Arjona & Maxime Ladaique & Mark Pearson, 2001. "Growth, Inequality and Social Protection," OECD Labour Market and Social Policy Occasional Papers 51, OECD Publishing.
    3. Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & Mehmet Ugur & Siew Ling Yew, 2017. "Does Government Size Affect Per-Capita Income Growth? A Hierarchical Meta-Regression Analysis," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 93(300), pages 142-171, March.
    4. Richard Kneller, 2000. "The Implications of the Comprehensive Spending Review for the Long-Run Growth Rate: a View From the Literature," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 171(1), pages 94-105, January.
    5. Roman Arjona & Maxime Ladaique, 2003. "Mark Pearson Growth, Inequality and Social Protection," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 29(s1), pages 119-140, January.
    6. Hammed Adetola Adefeso, 2016. "Productive Government Expenditure and Economic Performance in sub-Saharan Africa: An Empirical Investigation," Zagreb International Review of Economics and Business, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, vol. 19(2), pages 1-18, November.
    7. Durlauf, Steven N. & Quah, Danny T., 1999. "The new empirics of economic growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 235-308, Elsevier.
    8. Sefa Awaworyi & Siew Ling Yew, 2014. "Government Transfers and Growth: Is there Evidence of Genuine Effect?," Monash Economics Working Papers 40-14, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    9. Federica Calidoni, 2004. "Aggregate and Disaggregate Analysis of the Effects of Government Expenditure on Growth," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 160, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    10. Dakpogan, Arnaud & Smit, Eon, 2018. "The effect of electricity losses on GDP in Benin," MPRA Paper 89545, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Kalle Kukk, 2007. "Fiscal Policy Effects on Economic Growth: Short Run vs Long Run," Working Papers 167, Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration, Tallinn University of Technology.
    12. Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Violeta Vulovic & Yongzheng Liu, 2011. "Direct versus Indirect Taxation: Trends, Theory, and Economic Significance," Chapters, in: Emilio Albi & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (ed.), The Elgar Guide to Tax Systems, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Poot, Jacques, 1999. "A meta-analytic study of the role of government in long-run economic growth," ERSA conference papers ersa99pa171, European Regional Science Association.
    14. Celal Kucuker, 2003. "Türkiye Ýktisat Kongresi Büyüme Stratejileri Çalýþma Grubu," Working Papers 2003/5, Turkish Economic Association.
    15. Hibrahim Limi Kouotou & Boniface Ngah Epo, 2022. "Duration of heads of state in power and economic growth: a Sub-Saharan African tale," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(2), pages 1153-1170.
    16. Chhavi Tiwari & Sankalpa Bhattacharjee & Debkumar Chakrabarti, 2020. "Investigating Regional Inequalities in India: Are Indian Districts Converging?," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(5), pages 684-716, July.
    17. Markus Eberhardt & Francis Teal, 2011. "Econometrics For Grumblers: A New Look At The Literature On Cross‐Country Growth Empirics," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 109-155, February.
    18. Kneller, Richard & Bleaney, Michael F. & Gemmell, Norman, 1999. "Fiscal policy and growth: evidence from OECD countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 171-190, November.
    19. Aniket, Kumar, 2018. "Solow-Swan growth model with global capital markets and congestible public goods," MPRA Paper 87844, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Sin-Yu Ho & Bernard Njindan Iyke, 2020. "The Determinants of Economic Growth in Ghana: New Empirical Evidence," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 21(3), pages 626-644, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jpolmo:v:32:y::i:6:p:719-732. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505735 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.