Government Spending and Welfare Employment

Authors

Martin D. Lowenthal, Boston College

Abstract

One of the persistent issues which welfare policy makers and analysts confront in western industrial nations, particularly in the United States, is the appropriate relationship between public assistance payments and employment. There is a great deal of debate over whether welfare recipients should work or be required to take jobs and whether the government should emphasize training or placement services or create jobs directly. Relatively little concern and attention have been given to the 'roblem of the number of jobs that are actually available in the private sector for recipients who want to work. Although the federal government will plan its spending levels with an eye to the impacts on the employment situation in the country, there has been little effort to examine how various types of spending affect the employment prospects of specific population groups. This paper makes an initial attempt to analyze the differential employment impacts of various kinds of federal spending as they affect the population on welfare. Based on research on the employment characteristics of recipients population and the application of an input-output model developed by the Department of Labor, estimates of increased welfare employment are derived for increases in particular types of federal spending.

Recommended Citation

Lowenthal, Martin D. (1977) "Government Spending and Welfare Employment," The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 4: Iss. 8, Article 6.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15453/0191-5096.1231
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol4/iss8/6