Via Crooked Timber comes an interesting profile in The Guardian of David Brady, a sociologist currently at Duke who has made a career of examining just what it is that makes poverty levels vary throughout the developed world. (I’m not familiar with Brady’s work but his book Rich Democracies, Poor People sounds pretty cool and even though I already have roughly 45 things on my Kindle that I intend to read, I’ve snatched it up too.) What’s piqued my interest in Brady is how the Guardian describes his views on means-testing, opposition to which has become somewhat of a pet issue of mine.
[Brady] sides with the universalists rather than the means-tested lobby when it comes to welfare reforms. “Universal benefits allow people to experience less risks, and when they do they are mitigated,” he stresses.
His research also shows that means-testing assistance for the most needy people proves the least effective. “Despite the hunch people have that if you target welfare at the poorest you’re going to reduce poverty more by avoiding leakage to the middle classes, there is strong evidence that countries that target the most, such as the US, have the worst records at reducing poverty,” he says.
Another point in Brady’s favor is his recognition that, on the individual level, having a job is not in and of itself a solution to economic strife (something Ned Resnikoff has emphasized before) while, on the national level, high rates of growth are similarly misrepresented as a panacea to inequality:
Brady’s work also demonstrates that to alleviate poverty a strong welfare state has to go hand in hand with strong union movements and strong social democratic political parties. “You could draw a direct line from a weakening of unions to weaker social policy to greater poverty,” he says.
So isn’t there a danger that social policy simply subsidises poor wages in a flexible, insecure job market such as Britain’s?
“Getting a job does help people to reduce poverty, but if you think that once you’ve got work the problem is solved, you are mistaken,” he replies, pointing out that some jobs don’t pay enough for a family to support itself.
He’s also got some interesting things to say about taxation and whether or not it’s right for left-of-center folks to view it as a shibboleth of equality. If you take this sparknotes version of his politics of poverty seriously, it’s hard not to conclude that liberals in the US aren’t merely losing the war, they may be fighting the wrong battles.
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