贫困问题、劳动参与率低、中产阶级萎缩和最贫困人群所赖以生存的公共资源正在变得紧张等是当前美国所面临的主要挑战。美国虽然以市场福利国家著称，但公共支出的社会福利转移支付、私人社会福利开支和以税收优惠等形式体现的间接福利转移支付等实际上占有较高的GDP比重。实践证明，上述福利转移支付未能有效解决或者缓解上述挑战。本文对美国的福利转移支付制度进行分析，并在此基础上讨论该制度对资本和劳动力、对不同社会阶层所发挥的不同作用，以及上述差异性作用机制在经济全球化和生产自动化双重冲击之下，如何反过来加剧了美国的贫富悬殊。
Poverty，low labor participation rate，shrinking middle class，and scarce public resources affording the poorest groups all together pose great challenges to US economic recovery. Although United States is famous for “providing welfare through market mechanism”，the three types of welfare transfer-public welfare，private welfare and indirect welfare（for example taxation policy）-together account for a relatively high proportion of GDP. Nonetheless，these welfare transfers have not resolve or even reduced the above challenges. In this sense，this article will study the concrete mechanisms of US welfare transfer，and analyze their different roles on capital and labor，as well as different functions for different social class. Furthermore，under the double impact of economic globalization and production automation，they are conversely worsening the wealth disparity.
