Do Social-Welfare Policies Reduce Poverty?

"Do Social-Welfare Policies Reduce Poverty? A Cross-National Assessment"
Lane Kenworthy
Social Forces, vol. 77, no. 3, 1999, pp. 1119-39

Abstract
Most social scientists, policy makers, and citizens who support the welfare state do so in part because they believe social-welfare programs help to reduce the incidence of poverty. Yet a growing number of critics assert that such programs in fact fail to decrease poverty, because too small a share of transfers actually reaches the poor, or because such programs create a welfare/poverty trap, or because they weaken the economy. This study assesses the effects of social-welfare policy extensiveness on poverty rates across 15 affluent industrialized nations over the period 1960-91, using both absolute and relative measures of poverty. The results strongly support the conventional view that social-welfare programs reduce poverty.

Data set
Click here to access the data set. It is in Microsoft Excel 97. The data cover 15 nations over the period 1960 to circa 1991. For variable definitions and data sources, see Tables 1, 2, and 3 of the article. The variables are:
NATION     Nation (including the year in which the poverty rate is measured)
PVABPO50   Posttax/posttransfer absolute poverty rate circa 1991, using 50%
           of the U.S. median as the poverty line
PVABPO40   Posttax/posttransfer absolute poverty rate circa 1991, using 40%
           of the U.S. median as the poverty line
PVABPO30   Posttax/posttransfer absolute poverty rate circa 1991, using 30%
           of the U.S. median as the poverty line
GOVTRANS   Government transfers as % of GDP, 1960 to circa 1991
DECOMMOD   Esping-Andersen's decommodification index, 1980
SOCWAGE    Social wage, 1960 to circa 1991
GDPPC60    GDP per capita, 1960
PVABPR50   Pretax/pretransfer absolute poverty rate circa 1991, using 50%
           of the U.S. median as the poverty line
PVABPR40   Pretax/pretransfer absolute poverty rate circa 1991, using 40%
           of the U.S. median as the poverty line
PVABPR30   Pretax/pretransfer absolute poverty rate circa 1991, using 30%
           of the U.S. median as the poverty line
PVRLPO40   Posttax/posttransfer relative poverty rate circa 1991, using 40%
           of the median within each country as the poverty line
PVRLPR40   Pretax/pretransfer relative poverty rate circa 1991, using 40%
           of the median within each country as the poverty line
Additional variables used in ancillary analyses are available on request.