All modern societies face the issue of how to best support its children when labor and capital markets fail to produce adequate levels of income for their parents. Public and private means of economic and social support are mixed in rich nations to provide for both a minimally adequate level of...

The purpose of this paper is to review the recent evidence on the antipoverty effectiveness and other characteristics of income maintenance systems for the elderly in the rich nations of the world. As we move toward Social Security reform in the United States, we do so knowing that a...