Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: The Consequences of Welfare Reform: A Case Study in Michigan

经济学博士论文研究：福利改革的后果：密歇根州的案例研究

• 批准号: 2018387
• 负责人: Michael Best
• 金额: $ 2.43万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-08-15 至 2023-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2018387&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Consequences

This research will study the effects of losing access to welfare (cash assistance) by taking advantage of a unique welfare reform policy in Michigan that swiftly and unexpectedly removed eligibility from tens of thousands of families from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. This project will gather detailed administrative data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) on welfare recipients and their families and link it to a large credit bureau data for the investigation. The focus in this research is how losing assistance affect employment, education, health, and other socioeconomic outcomes. The empirical evidence on the effects of direct assistance on socioeconomic, educational, and health outcomes remain inconclusive. The results of this research will provide more data-driven evidence on the effects of direct cash assistance on several outcomes, an important subject in the face of calls for similar reforms to other social welfare programs, such as SNAP. This research has direct policy relevance, as it provides inputs into policies to improve social support programs. The results of this research project could also help establish the US as the global leader in policies to support poor families. The sudden and arbitrary nature of the 2011 Michigan TANF policy change provides a natural experiment to identify the causal effects of losing cash welfare. This proposal uses three strategies to investigate the causal effects of this policy change. First, the new rules affected counties to varying degrees, so the PI will use a difference-in-difference regression to study the broad labor-market consequences of this policy change. Second, the policy imposed a kinked relationship between the months accumulated on TANF and the months remaining. Using a regression kink design, the researchers will test for a similar kink in the outcomes. Finally, the policy had differential effects based on the age of the family’s youngest child at 2011, which provides another source of variation for causal inference. This project contributes directly to the labor economics literature; in particular to research studying the relationship between government assistance and labor supply. The results of this research provide two key contributions to the field---reassessment of cash assistance using new evidence and under a new (more recent) setting, and this paper looks at the effects of losing – as opposed to gaining – assistance. The results of this research project could help establish the US as the global leader in policies to support poor families.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这项研究将通过利用密歇根州的独特福利改革政策来研究失去获得福利（现金援助）的影响，该政策迅速而出乎意料地消除了来自有需要家庭的临时援助（TANF）计划的成千上万家庭的资格。该项目将从密歇根州卫生与公共服务部（MDHHS）收集福利收件人及其家人的详细行政数据，并将其链接到大型信用Bugeau数据以进行投资。这项研究的重点是失去援助如何影响就业，教育，健康和其他社会经济成果。直接援助对社会经济，教育和健康成果的影响的经验证据尚无定论。这项研究的结果将为直接现金援助对几个结果的影响提供更多数据驱动的证据，这是面对与其他社会福利计划（例如SNAP）类似改革的重要主题。这项研究具有直接的政策相关性，因为它为改善社会支持计划的政策提供了投入。该研究项目的结果还可以帮助将美国作为支持贫困家庭的全球政策领导者。 2011年密歇根州TANF政策变化的突然和任意性质提供了一个自然实验，以确定失去现金福利的因果影响。该提案采用三种策略来研究该政策变化的灾难性影响。首先，新规则在不同程度上影响了县，因此PI将使用差异差异回归来研究该政策变化的广泛劳动力市场后果。其次，该政策在TANF上积累的几个月与剩下的几个月之间建立了扭结的关系。使用回归扭结设计，研究人员将在结果中测试类似的纠结。最后，该政策基于2011年家庭最小的孩子的年龄具有不同的影响，这为灾难性推断提供了另一种差异来源。该项目直接为劳动经济学文献做出贡献。特别是研究研究政府援助与劳动力供应之间的关系。这项研究的结果为该领域提供了两个关键贡献 - 使用新证据并在新的（最新）环境下对现金援助进行了重新评估，本文介绍了损失（而不是获得援助）的影响。该研究项目的结果可以帮助将美国作为支持贫困家庭的全球政策领导者。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准，被视为通过评估而被视为珍贵的支持。