WEALTH AND POVERTY:

Even if worried progressives are right that the poorest of the poor are doing worse since welfare reform, that doesn’t settle the question. A life of work offers cumulative benefits: You gain good work habits and experience, which enables you to earn more money in the future, and sets an example of self-reliance for your children to follow. The experience of welfare reform suggests that welfare was enabling people to make a rational short-term decision — welfare benefits are better than working an entry-level job — that was a disastrous long-term decision, because the longer you go without working, the harder it is to get your foot on the first rung of that vocational ladder, and the less time you have to enjoy any cumulative benefits.

A government policy that helps people with bad long-term decision-making was probably not “the greatest good for the greatest number.” On the other hand, making the badly off even worse off doesn’t sound like great policy either. Which problem you think is more important is a value judgment, not an empirical question.

But what if we don’t have to choose? Scott Winship of the Manhattan Institute has just released a paper arguing that “Children — in particular, those in single-mother families — are significantly less likely to be poor today than they were before welfare reform.” How can he come to such a radically different conclusion from other authors? Because official measures of poverty aren’t very good.

Well, to be fair, they aren’t meant to be, really.