Enough to Spend
The Change in Poverty from 1995 to 2016 Among Single Parent Families
Kevin Corinth, Bruce Meyer & Derek Wu
NBER Working Paper, March 2022
Abstract:
This paper is the first to examine changes in poverty over time using a comprehensive set of linked survey and administrative data, implementing recommendations of the Interagency Technical Working Group on Evaluating Alternative Measures of Poverty. Using the Comprehensive Income Dataset (CID), we correct for measurement error in survey-reported incomes, focusing on single parent families from 1995 to 2016. Our preferred estimates indicate that single parent family poverty declined by 62% over time, while it fell by only 45% using survey data alone. Moreover, survey-reported deep poverty among single parent families increased over time, while it fell using the CID.
The Benefits and Costs of a U.S. Child Allowance
Irwin Garfinkel et al.
NBER Working Paper, March 2022
Abstract:
We conduct a benefit-cost analysis of a U.S. child allowance, based on a systematic literature review of the highest quality available causal evidence on the short- and long-term effects of cash and near-cash transfers. In contrast to the previous studies we synthesize, which tend to measure a subset of benefits and costs available in a particular dataset, we establish a comprehensive accounting of potential effects and secure estimates of each. We produce core estimates of the benefits and costs per child and per adult of increasing household income by $1,000 in one year; these can be applied to value any cash or near-cash program that increases household income. Using microsimulation, we then apply these estimates to determine net aggregate benefits of three child allowance policies, including the expanded Child Tax Credit as enacted for the year 2021 in the American Rescue Plan (ARP). Our estimates indicate that making that expansion permanent would cost $97 billion per year and generate social benefits with net present value of $982 billion per year. Sensitivity analyses indicate that our estimates are robust to alternative assumptions and that all three child allowance policies we evaluate produce very high net returns for the U.S. population.
Effects of the Expanded Child Tax Credit on Employment Outcomes: Evidence from Real-World Data from April to December 2021
Elizabeth Ananat et al.
NBER Working Paper, March 2022
Abstract:
Studies have established that the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), which provided monthly cash payments to most U.S. families with children from July to December 2021, substantially reduced poverty and food hardship. Other studies posit, however, that the CTC payments may generate negative employment effects that could offset its potential poverty-reduction effects. Scholars have simulated employment scenarios assuming various labor supply elasticities, but less work has empirically assessed how the monthly payments affected employment outcomes using real-world data. To evaluate employment effects, we apply a series of difference-in-differences analyses using data from the monthly Current Population Survey and the Census Pulse, both from April through December 2021. Across both samples and several model specifications, we find very small, inconsistently signed, and statistically insignificant impacts of the CTC both on employment in the prior week and on active participation in the labor force among adults living in households with children. Further, labor supply responses to the policy change do not differ for households for whom the CTC’s expansion eliminated a previous work incentive. Thus, our analyses of real-world data suggest that the expanded CTC did not have negative short-term employment effects that offset its documented reductions in poverty and hardship.
Reductions In Hospitalizations Among Children Referred To A Primary Care–Based Medical-Legal Partnership
Andrew Beck et al.
Health Affairs, March 2022, Pages 341-349
Abstract:
Medical-legal partnerships integrate legal advocates into health care settings to address health-related social needs. However, their effect on health outcomes is unclear. This retrospective cohort study examined the effect of referral to a medical-legal partnership on hospitalization rates among urban, low-income children in Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, between 2012 and 2017. We compared 2,203 children referred to a pediatric primary care–based medical-legal partnership with 100 randomly selected control cohorts drawn from 34,235 children seen concurrently but not referred. We found that the median predicted hospitalization rate for children in the year after referral was 37.9 percent lower if children received the legal intervention than if they did not. We suspect that this decrease in hospitalizations was driven by the ability of legal advocates to address acute legal needs (for example, threat of eviction and public benefit denial) and, when possible, to confront root causes of ill health (for example, unhealthy housing conditions). Interventions such as those provided through a medical-legal partnership may be important components of integrated, value-based service delivery models.
The Association of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Units and Reports of Child Abuse and Neglect
Meghan Shanahan et al.
American Journal of Preventive Medicine, forthcoming
Methods:
Data were from the 2005‒2015 National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program database. Generalized estimating equations were conducted in 2021 to calculate rate ratios and 95% CIs, adjusting for relevant confounders.
Results:
At the state level, ≥25 compared with <25 Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program units per 100,000 population was associated with a lower rate of overall child maltreatment (i.e., neglect and physical abuse; rate ratio=0.96, 95% CI=0.93, 0.99), neglect (rate ratio=0.96, 95% CI=0.94, 0.99), and physical abuse (rate ratio=0.96, 95% CI=0.93, 1.00) reports. Similarly, at the county level, ≥1 compared with 0 Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program units per 100,000 population was associated with a lower rate of overall child maltreatment (rate ratio=0.94, 95% CI=0.92, 0.97), neglect (rate ratio=0.96, 95% CI=0.93, 0.98), and physical abuse (rate ratio=0.94, 95% CI=0.91, 0.98) reports.
The effect of aging out of Women, Infants, and Children on food insecurity
Seung Jin Cho
Health Economics, April 2022, Pages 664-685
Abstract:
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) are designed to increase food security and reduce hunger for children from low-income households. Since the cutoff age for WIC is five, and school enrollment is required for receiving free or reduced-price NSLP, some children from low-income households cannot receive both WIC and free or reduced-price NSLP. Using data from the Current Population Survey, the partial identification method developed in this paper addresses the problems of self-selection into WIC and systematic underreporting of program participation. Due to this loophole in food assistance programs for children, aging out of WIC is found to increase child food insecurity by at least 1.1 percentage points. This result indicates that the prevalence of child food insecurity would decline by 15% if WIC extended its cutoff age until children enroll in kindergarten.
Low Socioeconomic Status Is Associated with a Greater Neural Response to Both Rewards and Losses
Stuart White, Robin Nusslock & Gregory Miller
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Low socioeconomic status (SES) has been associated with distinct patterns of reward processing, which appear to have adverse implications for health outcomes, well-being, and human capital. However, most studies in this literature have used complex tasks that engage more than reward processing and/or retrospectively studied childhood SES in samples of adults. To clarify how SES relates to the development of reward processing tendencies, we measured income-to-poverty ratio (IPR) in 172 youth who subsequently underwent functional MRI while completing a passive avoidance task to assess neural responses to reward and loss information. Participants were 12–15 years old (mean = 13.94, SD = .52; 65.7% female) from a sample broadly representative of the Chicago area in terms of SES (IPR range = 0.1–34.53; mean = 3.90; SD = 4.15) and racial makeup (40.1% European-American; 30.8% Black; 29.1% Hispanic). To the extent they had lower IPR, children displayed a trend toward worse behavioral performance on the passive avoidance task. Lower IPR also was associated with a greater response in attention brain regions to reward and loss cues and to reward and loss feedback. Lower IPR also was associated with reduced differentiation between reward and loss feedback in the ventromedial prefrontal and parietal cortex. The current data suggest that both increased salience of reward/loss information and reduced discrimination between reward and loss feedback could be factors linking SES with the development of human capital and health outcomes.