Intersection Homology of Toric Varieties and a Conjecture of Kalai

We prove that the intersection homology Poincare' polynomial P(X) of an affine toric variety X is bounded below by the product P(Y)P(X/Y), where Y is the closure of any orbit in X and X/Y is a slice transverse to the orbit. This proves a combinatorial conjecture of Kalai for rational polytopes.