ECON 1110 Chapter Notes - Chapter 18: Gini Coefficient, Unemployment Benefits, Temporary Assistance For Needy Families

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October 28, 2016
Chapter 18: The Economics of the Welfare State
1. Welfare State: Collection of government programs designed to alleviate economic
hardship
a. Absorb a large share of government spending
b. Can create substantial deadweight losses
c. Currently composed of three huge programs:
i. Social Security
ii. Medicare
iii. Medicaid
2. Government Transfers: Payments by the government to individuals for which no good
or service is provided in return
a. Provide financial aid to the poor, assistance to unemployed workers, guaranteed
income for the elderly, and assistance in paying medical bills for those with large
healthcare expenses
3. Three major economic rationales for the creation of the welfare state:
a. Alleviating income inequality
i. A marginal dollar is worth more to a poor person than a rich one
ii. Modest transfers from the rich to the poor will do the rich little harm but
benefit the poor a lot
iii. Poverty Programs: Government programs designed to aid the poor
b. Alleviating economic insecurity
i. Social Insurance Programs: Government programs designed to provide
protection against unpredictable financial distress caused by retirement,
unemployment, inability to work due to injury, or large medical expenses
1. Different from in-kind transfers and monetary transfers
a. Social Security
b. Unemployment insurance
c. Medicare
c. Reducing poverty and providing access to healthcare
4. Poverty Threshold: Annual income below which a family is officially considered poor
5. Poverty Rate: Percentage of the population with incomes below the poverty threshold
6. Working Poor: Workers whose incomes fall at or below the poverty threshold
7. Gini Coefficients: Numbers that summarize a countryā€™s level of income inequality
based on how unequally income is distributed across quintiles
a. A country with a perfectly equal income distribution (one in which every
household had the same income) would have a Gini coefficient of zero
i. If all of the countryā€™s income went to one household, the Gini coefficient
would be 1
8. Mean Household Income: Average income across all households
a. The total income of all U.S. households divided by the number of households
9. Median Household Income: Income of the household lying at the exact middle of the
income distribution
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