The decline of welfare benefits in the U.S.: the role of wage inequality
提出新假说：美国自1970年代中期以来福利待遇的长期下降，可能与劳动力市场工资不平等加剧及底层实际工资下降有关，并用1969-1992年州级面板数据验证了该假说。
Welfare benefits in the U.S. have experienced a much-studied secular decline since the mid-1970s. We explore a new hypothesis for this decline related to the increase in wage inequality in the labor market and the decline of real wages at the bottom of the distribution: we posit that voters prefer benefits which are tied to low-skilled wages. We test the hypothesis using a 1969–1992 panel of state-level data. An additional contribution of our analysis is the use of General Social Survey data on voter preferences for welfare which we combine with Current Population Survey data to determine the voter in each state who has the median preferred welfare benefit level. Our analysis reveals considerable evidence in support of a role for declining real wages in the decline of welfare benefits.