Children and the US Social Safety Net: Balancing Disincentives for Adults and Benefits for Children

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Anna Aizer, Brown University; Hilary Hoynes, University of California-Berkeley; Adriana Lleras-Muney, UCLA

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
FamilySpending.csv	text/csv	201.7 KB	02/02/2022 06:30:AM
Figure1.do	text/plain	3.8 KB	03/29/2022 09:05:AM
PovertyRate.csv	text/csv	90.8 KB	01/31/2022 09:32:AM
README Children and the US Safety Net.pdf	application/pdf	260 KB	03/29/2022 10:33:AM
Welfare.xls	application/vnd.ms-excel	134 KB	01/31/2022 09:32:AM
cbpp_historical_spm_trends_tables.xlsx	application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet	16.1 KB	02/02/2022 06:27:AM
figure2.do	text/plain	4 KB	01/31/2022 10:43:AM
figure4_apptable.do	text/plain	14.7 KB	02/01/2022 05:47:AM
tables for readme file.xlsx	application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet	10.8 KB	02/02/2022 06:43:AM

Project Citation:

Aizer, Anna, Hoynes, Hilary, and Lleras-Muney, Adriana. Children and the US Social Safety Net: Balancing Disincentives for Adults and Benefits for Children. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2022. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2022-05-02. https://doi.org/10.3886/E163181V1

Project Description

Summary: Economic research on the safety net has evolved significantly over time, moving away from a near exclusive focus on the negative incentive effects of means-tested assistance on employment, earnings, marriage and fertility to include examination of the potential positive benefits of such programs to children. Initially, this research on benefits to children focused on short run impacts, but as we accumulated knowledge about skill production and better data became available, the research evolved further to include important long run economic outcomes such as employment, earnings and mortality. Once the positive long-run benefits to children are considered, many safety net programs are cost-effective. However, the current government practice of limiting the time horizon for cost-benefit calculations of major policy initiatives reduces the influence of the most current economic research on the long run benefits. We conclude with a discussion of why the rate of child poverty in the US is still higher than most OECD countries and how research on children and the safety net can better inform policy-making going forward.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Safety Net; welfare; child poverty

JEL Classification:
      I32 Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
      I38 Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
      J12 Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
      J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

Geographic Coverage: US and OECD countries

Methodology

Data Source: Figure 1 OECD data

OECD (2022), Family benefits public spending (indicator). doi: 10.1787/8e8b3273-en (Accessed on 29 March 2022)

OECD (2022), Poverty rate (indicator). doi: 10.1787/0fe1315d-en (Accessed on 29 March 2022)

Figure 2 poverty trends data
Unpublished data provided by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Provided by authors as part of this replication package.

Figure 4 and Appendix Table 1 data collected and provided by authors.

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Published Versions

V1 [2022-05-02]

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