Stimulus Keeping 6 Million Americans Out of Poverty in 2009, Estimates Show

[babylonsister]

Must be more by now; this is from September but I just found it.

Stimulus Keeping 6 Million Americans Out of Poverty in 2009, Estimates Show

PDF of this Report (16pp.)

By Arloc Sherman


Although meant chiefly to help the broad economy, the stimulus plan Congress enacted earlier this year (the American Recovery and Re-Investment Act of 2009, or ARRA) had the important secondary effect of significantly ameliorating the recession’s impact on poverty.

This analysis, which comes one day before the Census Bureau will release updated poverty figures (for 2008), examines seven of the recovery act’s provisions — two improvements in unemployment insurance, three tax credits for working families, an increase in food stamps, and a one-time payment for retirees, veterans, and people with disabilities — and finds that they alone are preventing more than 6 million Americans from falling below the poverty line and are reducing the severity of poverty for 33 million more. Those 6 million people include more than 2 million children and over 500,000 seniors. This analysis includes state-specific estimates for California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois.

These estimates are conservative. They do not include the poverty impact of many of the stimulus bill’s provisions for direct assistance to households — such as increases in funding for medical services, Pell grants, child support collection, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and assistance to homeless individuals. Nor do they reflect the degree to which bill is ameliorating the increase in poverty by creating and preserving private- and public-sector jobs. According to a March CBO estimate, the recovery legislation “will increase employment by 0.9 million to 2.3 million jobs by the fourth quarter of 2009.”

The estimates presented here are based on annual Census data, updated to better match recent economic conditions. To estimate poverty effects, we simulate each survey family's taxes and after-tax income in 2009, with and without the seven stimulus provisions in place, and compare its income with the poverty line. Because the government’s official measure of poverty considers only cash income and would therefore miss many of the tax-based and non-cash income supplements in the stimulus bill, the analysis uses a broader poverty measure recommended by the National Academy of Sciences and favored by a wide array of analysts. We also correct the tendency of the Census data to undercount receipt of certain public benefits. <1>

more...

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2910

[AllentownJake]

1. Those provisions are all good

but please let us not call that stimulus.

[babylonsister]

2. Tell that to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; they wrote this. nt

[AllentownJake]

7. Public welfare payments do not increase economic growth

They are a good thing to do when the private sector fails however there are three ways to produce economic growth:

1) Grow it with agriculture and sell it
2) Mine it or extract it and sell it
3) Take raw materials and manufacture it into a finished product.

The energy provisions of the bill do that. These are transfer payments.

[madrchsod]

8. first chapter of econ101

is`t education the 4th?...i can`t remember because it`s been 40years since i had econ101 :dunce:

[AllentownJake]

10. Education will also provide economic growth

depending on what the education is involved in. If you create smarter people to do the 3 growth activities, you will create ways to make such activities more efficient and produce better results.

Particularly in manufacturing.

[deaniac21]

3. Not to mention a bizzlion jobs saved!

[JonQ]

6. Saved or created

you have to add the 'or created', it makes it sound like new jobs are appearing without actually saying that (so no one can argue against it).

[JonQ]

4. I wonder how much it would have cost us to merely

cover the "two improvements in unemployment insurance, three tax credits for working families, an increase in food stamps, and a one-time payment for retirees, veterans, and people with disabilities" only, and not all the other stuff.

Hell we could have been far more generous in those areas if we'd been a little more rational on the bank bailouts and all the other areas of spending that have nothing to do with helping people.

[AllentownJake]

9. You could have also taken that money

and built a high speed rail system connecting every city over 200,000 in the country. I just read a study that building and maintaining public transportation infrastructure provides the most jobs per dollar.

Of course Detroit and the Airline industry would have a panic attack over that idea. Even though GM, GE, and Boeing could be brought on to build the trains.

[cutlassmama]

5. With one in 5 people still out of work there needs to be a second stimulus

to create jobs now