Overview

Children from poor families generally do a lot worse than children from affluent families. They are more likely to develop behavioural problems, to score lower on standard tests, and to become adults in need of public assistance. This book asks whether income directly affects children's life chances, or if the factors that cause parents to have a low income also impede their children's life chances. The question of causation is explored, comparing the value of income from different sources, to determine if the value of a dollar from welfare is as high as the value of a dollar from wages. Parents' income after an event, such as teenage childbearing, is also investigated in order to establish whether it can predict that event, if so this suggests that income is a proxy for unmeasured characteristics that affect both income and the event. The author also compares children living in states that pay high welfare benefits to those with low benefits.

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Everyone involved in 'welfare reform' could usefully read What Money Can't Buy , a study by economist Susan Mayer of the University of Chicago. Its message is somber: as a society, we are fairly helpless to correct the worst problems of child poverty. This is not a new insight, but by confirming it, Mayer discredits much of the welfare debate's overwrought rhetoric. Welfare reform' may raise or lower poverty a bit (we can't say which), but neither its supposed virtues nor its alleged vices are powerful enough to alter the status quo dramatically. What's impressive about Mayer's study is that it contradicts both her politics and her history...[and] demolishes much of the welfare debate's rhetorical boilerplate, liberal and conservative. -- Robert J. Samuelson Newsweek

A major accomplishment that merits and will almost certainly receive the attention of social scientists, policymakers, and the general public. Mayer has identified a central policy issue and examined it carefully and without flinching from many angles. It is not likely to be the last word on the relationship between family income and children's outcomes...Like most important books, it will redefine the terms of the debate about the effects of family income on child outcomes. Whether one agrees with its conclusions or not, they cannot be ignored.--Saul D. Hoffman Contemporary Sociology

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