A new study finds that the Democratic ticket has put forward or endorsed a set of proposals that, taken together, could add up to the biggest anti-poverty plan in decades. The Columbia research team used 2018 as a baseline "normal" year to measure the permanent effects of these proposed poverty alleviation policies.
But this analytical choice might underrate the potential of the Biden presidency to reduce poverty. The CARES Act, Congress's first economic stimulus response to the Covid-19 crisis, had a profound impact on poverty. Bruce Meyer and Jeejoon Han of the University of Chicago and James X. Sullivan of Notre Dame found poverty actually fell after Covid-19 hit due to CARES.