Provisions
Unconditional cash transfers reduce homelessness
Ryan Dwyer et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 5 September 2023
Abstract:
Homelessness is an economic and social crisis. In a cluster-randomized controlled trial, we address a core cause of homelessness -- lack of money -- by providing a one-time unconditional cash transfer of CAD$7,500 to each of 50 individuals experiencing homelessness, with another 65 as controls in Vancouver, BC. Exploratory analyses showed that over 1 y, cash recipients spent fewer days homeless, increased savings and spending with no increase in temptation goods spending, and generated societal net savings of $777 per recipient via reduced time in shelters. Additional experiments revealed public mistrust toward the ability of homeless individuals to manage money and demonstrated interventions to increase public support for a cash transfer policy using counter-stereotypical or utilitarian messaging. Together, this research offers a new approach to address homelessness and provides insights into homelessness reduction policies.
Causal Effects of Mental Health on Food Security
Helen Jensen et al.
Journal of Health Economics, December 2023
Abstract:
Although mental health conditions are known to be associated with socioeconomic hardships, their causal effects remain largely unexplored. Using a sample of low-income families in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), we assess causal effects of serious mental illness (SMI) and related mental health conditions on family food security. We apply partial identification methods to account for fundamental endogeneity and measurement identification problems in a unified framework. To implement these methods, we combine a proxy measure of SMI in the NHIS with an estimate of the true rate of SMI from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. We also develop an innovative approach to approximate true prevalence rates when only self-reported prevalence rates are available. Applying relatively weak monotonicity assumptions on latent food security outcomes, we find that alleviating SMI would improve the food security rate by at least 9.5 percentage points, or 15%.
The Long-Term Effects of Income for At-Risk Infants: Evidence from Supplemental Security Income
Amelia Hawkins et al.
NBER Working Paper, September 2023
Abstract:
This paper examines whether a generous cash intervention early in life can "undo" some of the long-term disadvantage associated with poor health at birth. We use new linkages between several large-scale administrative datasets to examine the short-, medium-, and long-term effects of providing low-income families with low birthweight infants support through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. This program uses a birthweight cutoff at 1200 grams to determine eligibility. We find that families of infants born just below this cutoff experience a large increase in cash benefits totaling about 27% of family income in the first three years of the infant's life. These cash benefits persist at lower amounts through age 10. Eligible infants also experience a small but statistically significant increase in Medicaid enrollment during childhood. We examine whether this support affects health care use and mortality in infancy, educational performance in high school, post-secondary school attendance and college degree attainment, and earnings, public assistance use, and mortality in young adulthood for all infants born in California to low-income families whose birthweight puts them near the cutoff. We also examine whether these payments had spillover effects onto the older siblings of these infants who may have also benefited from the increase in family resources. Despite the comprehensive nature of this early life intervention, we detect no improvements in any of the study outcomes, nor do we find improvements among the older siblings of these infants. These null effects persist across several subgroups and alternative model specifications, and, for some outcomes, our estimates are precise enough to rule out published estimates of the effect of early life cash transfers in other settings.
Income During Infancy Reduces Criminal Activity for Fathers and Children: Evidence from a Discontinuity in Tax Benefits
Sakshi Bhardwaj
University of Illinois Working Paper, October 2023
Abstract:
This paper investigates the causal effect of providing income to low-income families just after childbirth on the criminal justice involvement of families. I employ a regression discontinuity design using the fact that children born to low-income families before year-end can be claimed as dependents on that year's tax returns, resulting in significantly larger tax refunds during the child's first year compared to families with January-born children. Utilizing linked administrative data on birth records and criminal justice involvement from a large U.S. metropolitan county, I find that eligibility for additional income during the first year of parenthood reduces the likelihood of a criminal charge for fathers by 1.2 percentage points (57%) within one year after childbirth. The effect persists for up to ten years after childbirth. The immediate decrease in criminal charges for fathers is particularly evident in income-generating offenses such as robbery, theft, as well as drug possession, and driving under the influence. The effect also extends to the criminal activity of children. Male children born before January 1 have a reduced likelihood of having any juvenile justice case during their teenage years and a reduced likelihood of incarceration in their adult years.
No evidence that social-democratic welfare states equalize valued outcomes for individuals with disabilities
Alexi Gugushvili et al.
Social Science & Medicine, December 2023
Abstract:
It is acknowledged that generous welfare states can provide better outcomes to their populations in terms of objective and subjective indicators of well-being, yet there is little comparative evidence of the role that the welfare state regime plays in lessening disability-based inequalities. Using a large comparative data set of most European societies, Tukey's honestly significant difference and generalized Hausman tests for six welfare state regimes, we examine the assumption that social-democratic countries perform better in mitigating disability-based inequalities than conservative, liberal, Southern, Eastern European, and the former Soviet Union welfare state regimes. We compare the valued outcomes for individuals with and without disabilities regarding their education, labour market participation, material well-being, and life satisfaction. The main finding of this study is that the most generous welfare states in Europe do not perform better, and in some cases, perform worse, than other less comprehensive welfare state regimes in closing the gap in valued outcomes between individuals with disabilities and the rest of the population. We discuss potential explanations of these inequalities such as the nature of expectations and changing characteristics of welfare state regimes, and difficulties related to measuring disabilities across European societies.