The Impact of Food Stamps on US Poverty in the 1980s: A Marginal Dominance Analysis.

The relative effectiveness of the U.S. Food Stamp Program in reducing the incidence and depth of poverty is compared at a number of poverty lines across time. The analysis is based upon an extension of dominance methods for ordering poverty, recently developed statistical inference procedures, and a merged data-set that permits an unusually comprehensive measure of income. The comparative effectiveness of the Food Stamp Program in reducing headcount poverty over time is contingent on the poverty line selected. However, the reduction in poverty gaps is greater in 1990 than in 1982, regardless of the poverty line chosen. The sensitivity of the results to the income concept, equivalence scale and time period used for measuring income are also considered. Copyright 1996 by The London School of Economics and Political Science.