Cash Is Better Than Food Stamps in Helping Poor: Edward Glaeser

Newt Gingrich has been castigated for referring to President Barack Obama as the “best food-stamp president in American history.” I, too, dislike the former House speaker’s inflammatory phrasing.

Yet I am also troubled by the more than $100 billion designated for “food and nutrition” in the president’s 2013 budget. The current dominance of in-kind transfer programs, such as food stamps, Medicaid and housing support, relative to cash- based welfare programs, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and Temporary Aid to Needy Families, is based on politics rather than economics. A consolidated cash-based program could more efficiently deliver assistance and more effectively encourage employment.

Redistribution has costs -- direct ones that are paid by taxpayers and indirect ones, by discouraging earnings and savings -- but it also has benefits, particularly by creating a society with less painful poverty.

The amount of redistribution that you think is appropriate depends on your attitudes toward inequality and paying for equality. I’m not a preacher, a philosopher or a politician, and I won’t try to convince you that the U.S. should do more or less for its poorer citizens. I am interested in a better-designed welfare system

More