No means
George Borjas
Research in Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 made fundamental changes in the federal system of public assistance in the United States, and specifically limited the eligibility of immigrant households to receive many types of aid. Many states chose to protect their immigrant populations from the presumed adverse effects of welfare reform by offering state-funded assistance to these groups. I exploit these changes in eligibility rules to examine the link between welfare and poverty rates in the immigrant population. My empirical analysis documents that the welfare cutbacks did not increase poverty rates. The immigrant families most affected by welfare reform responded by substantially increasing their labor supply, thereby raising their family income and slightly lowering their poverty rate. In the targeted immigrant population, therefore, welfare does not reduce poverty; it may actually increase it.
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Wealth and Welfare: Divergent Moral Reactions to Ethical Consumer Choices
Jenny Olson et al.
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines perceptions of low-income consumers receiving government assistance and the choices they make, showing that this group is viewed differently than those with more resources, even when making identical choices. A series of five experiments reveal that ethical purchases polarize moral judgments: whereas individuals receiving government assistance are perceived as less moral when choosing ethical (vs. conventional) products, income earners, particularly high-income individuals, are perceived as more moral for making the identical choice. Price is a central component of this effect, as equating the cost of ethical and conventional goods provides those receiving government assistance some protection against harsh moral judgments when choosing ethically. Moreover, earning one's income drives perceptions of deservingness, or the right to spend as one desires. Those who receive assistance via taxpayer dollars are under greater scrutiny (frequently resulting in harsher moral judgments) by others. In addition to influencing perceptions of individual consumers, the results demonstrate that such attributions extend to groups who make ethical choices on others' behalf, and that these attributions have real monetary consequences for non-profit organizations.
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Ronald Simons et al.
Social Science & Medicine, February 2016, Pages 192-200
Methods: Structural equation modeling and longitudinal data from a sample of 100 Black, middle-aged women residing in the United States was used to investigate the effect of income on a recently developed epigenetic measure of biological aging. This measure can be used as a "biological clock" to assess, at any point during adulthood, the extent to which an individual is experiencing accelerated or decelerated biological aging.
Results: Low income displayed a robust association with accelerated aging that was unaffected after controlling for other SES-related factors such as education, marital status, and childhood adversity. Further, our analyses indicated that the association between income and biological aging was not explained by health-related behaviors such as diet, exercise, smoking, alcohol consumption, or having health insurance. Rather, in large measure, it was financial pressure (difficulty paying bills, buying necessities, or meeting daily expenses) that accounted for the association between low income and accelerated aging.
Conclusions: These findings support the view that chronic financial pressures associated with low income exerts a weathering effect that results in premature aging.
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Abhijit Banerjee et al.
Harvard Working Paper, December 2015
Abstract:
Targeted transfer programs for poor citizens have become increasingly common in the developing world. Yet, a common concern among policy makers - both in developing as well as developed countries - is that such programs tend to discourage work. We re-analyze the data from 7 randomized controlled trials of government-run cash transfer programs in six developing countries throughout the world, and find no systematic evidence that cash transfer programs discourage work.
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Dylan Jackson
Journal of Criminal Justice, March 2016, Pages 13-20
Method: Data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Birth Cohort are employed, which includes a large, nationally representative sample of twin pairs. DeFries-Fulker (DF) analysis is used to test the current hypothesis.
Results: The results suggest that poor quality nutrition during preschool increases the extent of antisocial behavior during elementary school after the influence of genes and the shared environment are taken into account.
Conclusions: The relationship between poor quality nutrition and subsequent behavioral problems is robust to shared environmental and genetic influences, with variation in eating behaviors between twins predicting their relative likelihood of exhibiting antisocial behaviors.
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SNAP Recency and Educational Outcomes
Anna Gassman-Pines & Laura Bellows
Duke University Working Paper, November 2015
Abstract:
The largest food assistance program in the U.S. and an important part of the U.S. safety net, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides cash-like benefits to low-income individuals and families to use only for purchasing food. Understanding how SNAP benefit receipt affects children and families is crucial to both research and policy efforts aimed at supporting the healthy development of low-income children. This paper links the timing of SNAP benefit receipt to children's end-of-grade (EOG) achievement test scores in North Carolina (NC). Using administrative data from the NC Departments of Public Instruction and Health and Human Services, we analyze the recency of SNAP benefit transfer and children's test scores for over 148,000 SNAP-receiving public school students. Results indicate differences in students' EOG performance in both reading and math based on the recency of SNAP benefit transfer. Although the relationship is stronger for reading than for math, the relationship between students' test scores and SNAP receipt appears to be roughly curvilinear. Test scores peak in the third week following benefit transfer.
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Bill Wright et al.
Health Affairs, January 2016, Pages 20-27
Abstract:
The provision of supportive housing is often recognized as important public policy, but it also plays a role in health care reform. Health care costs for the homeless reflect both their medical complexity and psychosocial risk factors. Supportive housing attempts to moderate both by providing stable places to live along with on-site integrated health services. In this pilot study we used a mixture of survey and administrative claims data to evaluate outcomes for formerly homeless people who were living in a supportive housing facility in Oregon between 2010 and 2014. Results from the claims analysis showed significantly lower overall health care expenditures for the people after they moved into supportive housing. Expenditure changes were driven primarily by reductions in emergency and inpatient care. Survey data suggest that the savings were not at the expense of quality: Respondents reported improved access to care, stronger primary care connections, and better subjective health outcomes. Together, these results indicate a potential association between supportive housing and reduced health care costs that warrants deeper consideration as part of ongoing health care reforms.
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Marianne Bitler & Hilary Hoynes
Journal of Labor Economics, January 2016, Pages S403-S444
Abstract:
Much attention has been given to the large increases in safety net spending during the Great Recession. We examine the relationship between poverty, the safety net, and business cycles historically and test whether there has been a significant change in this relationship. We find that post-welfare reform, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families did not respond during the Great Recession and extreme poverty is more cyclical than in prior recessions. Food Stamps and Unemployment Insurance are providing more protection - or no less protection - in the Great Recession, and there is some evidence of less cyclicality for 100% poverty.
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Health Selection into Neighborhoods Among Families in the Moving to Opportunity Program
Mariana Arcaya et al.
American Journal of Epidemiology, 15 January 2016, Pages 130-137
Abstract:
Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing was a randomized experiment that moved very low-income US families from high-poverty neighborhoods to low-poverty neighborhoods starting in the early 1990s. We modeled report of a child's baseline health problem as a predictor of neighborhood outcomes for households randomly assigned to move from high- to low-poverty neighborhoods. We explored associations between baseline health problems and odds of moving with the program upon randomization (1994-1997), neighborhood poverty rate at follow-up (2002), and total time spent in affluent neighborhoods and duration-weighted poverty. Among 1,550 households randomized to low-poverty neighborhoods, a smaller share of households reporting baseline child health problems (P = 0.004) took up the intervention (38%) than those not reporting a health problem (50%). In weighted and covariate-adjusted models, a child health problem predicted nearly 40% lower odds of complying with the experimental condition (odds ratio = 0.62, 95% confidence interval: 0.42, 0.91; P = 0.015). Among compliers, a baseline child health problem predicted 2.5 percentage points' higher neighborhood poverty at take-up (95% confidence interval: 0.90, 4.07; P = 0.002). We conclude that child health problems in a household prior to randomization predicted lower likelihood of using the program voucher to move to a low-poverty neighborhood within the experiment's low-poverty treatment arm and predicted selection into poorer neighborhoods among experimental compliers. Child morbidity may constrain families attempting to improve their life circumstances.
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Jin Huang & Ellen Barnidge
Social Science & Medicine, February 2016, Pages 8-14
Abstract:
Assessing the impact of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) on household food insufficiency is critical to improve the implementation of public food assistance and to improve the nutrition intake of low-income children and their families. To examine the association of receiving free/reduced-price lunch from the NSLP with household food insufficiency among low-income children and their families in the United States, the study used data from four longitudinal panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP; 1996, 2001, 2004, and 2008), which collected information on household food insufficiency covering both summer and non-summer months. The sample included 15,241 households with at least one child (aged 5-18) receiving free/reduced-price lunch from the NSLP. A dichotomous measure describes whether households have sufficient food to eat in the observed months. Fixed-effects regression analysis suggests that the food insufficiency rate is 0.7 (95%CI: 0.1, 1.2) percentage points higher in summer months among NSLP recipients. Since low-income families cannot participate in the NSLP in summer when the school is not in session, the result indicates the NSLP participation is associated with a reduction of food insufficiency risk by nearly 14%. The NSLP plays a significant role to protect low-income children and their families from food insufficiency. It is important to increase access to school meal programs among children at risk of food insufficiency in order to ensure adequate nutrition and to mitigate the health problems associated with malnourishment among children.
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The Effect of Public Transportation Accessibility on Food Insecurity
Deokrye Baek
Eastern Economic Journal, Winter 2016, Pages 104-134
Abstract:
I examine whether access to public transportation reduces the probability of food insecurity for households. The data set combines information from the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement and the National Transit Database from 2006 to 2009. I address a potential endogeneity problem using the changes in federal governmental transportation funding as instruments. I find evidence of a negative causal effect of public transportation accessibility on food insecurity. An extra bus-equivalent vehicle per 10,000 people decreases the probability of food insecurity of households by 1.6 percentage points. In particular, the impact of public transit is more prominent among poor households and poor African-American households.