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

这项研究将利用密歇根州一项独特的福利改革政策，研究失去获得福利(现金援助)的影响，该政策迅速和出人意料地将数万个家庭的资格从贫困家庭临时援助计划(TANF)中取消。该项目将从密歇根州卫生与公众服务部(MDHHS)收集有关福利接受者及其家庭的详细行政数据，并将其与大型信用局数据联系起来，用于调查。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。关于直接援助对社会经济、教育和健康结果的影响的经验证据仍然没有定论。这项研究的结果将提供更多数据驱动的证据，说明直接现金援助对几个结果的影响，这是一个重要的主题，因为人们呼吁对其他社会福利计划进行类似的改革，如SNAP。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。这一研究项目的结果还可能帮助美国在支持贫困家庭的政策方面确立全球领先地位。2011年密歇根州TANF政策变化的突如其来和武断性质，为确定失去现金福利的因果影响提供了一个自然的实验。该提案使用三种策略来调查这一政策变化的因果影响。首先，新规则不同程度地影响了各县，因此PI将使用差异回归来研究这一政策变化对劳动力市场的广泛影响。其次，该政策在TANF累积的月份和剩余的月份之间强加了一种扭曲的关系。使用回归扭结设计，研究人员将测试结果中类似的扭结。最后，这项政策根据2011年家庭最小孩子的年龄产生了不同的影响，这为因果推断提供了另一个差异来源。这个项目直接对劳动经济学文献做出贡献；特别是研究政府援助和劳动力供应之间的关系。这项研究的结果为这一领域提供了两个关键贡献-使用新的证据和在新的(较新的)环境下重新评估现金援助，本文着眼于失去援助的影响，而不是获得援助的影响。这一研究项目的结果可能有助于将美国确立为支持贫困家庭政策的全球领导者。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.