Imagine a policy that could cut the U.S. poverty rate in half. lirns out we already have one: it's called Social Security. Between the late '50s and mid-Vos, the poverty rate dropped from 22% to 11%, mostly because of a decrease in the destitute elderly. In 2010, just 9% of Americans 65 and older were poor, the lowest rate for any age group. Last year, the eamed-income tax credit, which boosts the pay of low-wage workers, lifted 5.4 million people, including 3 million children, out of poverty. Economists Yonatan Ben-Shalom, Robert Moffitt and John Karl Scholz calculate that programs like cash assistance, food stamps and unemployment and disability insurance reduce the rate of poverty and near poverty by 14 percentage points a year.
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机译：想象一下一项可以将美国贫困率降低一半的政策。弄清楚我们已经有了一个：叫做社会保障。在上世纪50年代末至美国之音中期，贫困率从22％下降至11％，这主要是由于贫困人口的减少。 2010年，美国65岁及以上的老年人中只有9％的贫困人口，这是所有年龄组中最低的。去年，提高收入的低收入工人的税收抵免额税收抵免，使540万人（其中包括300万儿童）摆脱了贫困。经济学家约纳坦·本·沙洛姆（Yonatan Ben-Shalom），罗伯特·莫菲特（Robert Moffitt）和约翰·卡尔·舒尔茨（John Karl Scholz）计算得出，现金援助，食品券，失业和残疾保险等计划每年可将贫困率和接近贫困率降低14个百分点。
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