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Did recent medicaid reforms cause the caseload explosion in the food stamp program?

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  • A. S. Yelowitz

Abstract

I examine whether changes in Medicaid eligibility for young children can help explain the caseload growth in the Food Stamp program between 1987 and 1995. Medicaid may increase food stamp participation through increased awareness about other welfare benefits. It could also reduce earnings through perverse labor supply incentives, thereby increasing food stamp participation. The Medicaid expansions enacted during the 1980s offer a unique opportunity to examine empirically Medicaid's interaction with the Food Stamp program because they conditioned eligibility on the age of the child. Households with ineligible children (based on the child's age) serve as a control group to isolate Medicaid's effect. They help to eliminate many other plausible explanations for the rise in food stamp participation, including economic fluctuations at the state and national levels. I use the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to tackle this question. It shows evidence that expanding Medicaid eligibility increased food stamp participation. The effect is quite modest, however. The expansions explain less than 10 percent of the growth in food stamps, substantially smaller than previous estimates. Moreover, its effect on food stamp participation comes entirely through increased program awareness, rather than from any change in labor supply.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty in its series Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers with number 1109-96.

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Handle: RePEc:wop:wispod:1109-96

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  1. Moffitt, Robert, 1992. "Incentive Effects of the U.S. Welfare System: A Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(1), pages 1-61, March.
  2. Lara D. Shore-Sheppard, 2008. "Stemming the Tide? The Effect of Expanding Medicaid Eligibility On Health Insurance Coverage," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 6.
  3. Currie, Janet & Gruber, Jonathan, 1996. "Health Insurance Eligibility, Utilization of Medical Care, and Child Health," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 111(2), pages 431-66, May.
  4. David M. Cutler & Jonathan Gruber, 1995. "Does Public Insurance Crowd Out Private Insurance?," NBER Working Papers 5082, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Hoynes, Hilary Williamson, 1996. "Welfare Transfers in Two-Parent Families: Labor Supply and Welfare Participation under AFDC-UP," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(2), pages 295-332, March.
  6. Yelowitz, Aaron S, 1995. "The Medicaid Notch, Labor Supply, and Welfare Participation: Evidence from Eligibility Expansions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 110(4), pages 909-39, November.
  7. Gruber, J. & Currie, J., 1994. "Saving Babies: The Efficacy and Cost of Recent Expansions of Medicaid Eligibility for Pregnant Women," Working papers 94-11, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
  8. Lara D. Shore-Sheppard, 2005. "Stemming the Tide? The Effect of Expanding Medicaid Eligibility on Health Insurance," NBER Working Papers 11091, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Moffitt, Robert & Wolfe, Barbara L, 1992. "The Effect of the Medicaid Program on Welfare Participation and Labor Supply," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(4), pages 615-26, November.
  10. Rebecca M. Blank, 1989. "The Effect of Medical Need and Medicaid on AFDC Participation," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 24(1), pages 54-87.
  11. Moffitt, Robert, 1983. "An Economic Model of Welfare Stigma," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(5), pages 1023-35, December.
  12. Case, A.C. & Katz, L.F., 1991. "The Company You Keep: The Effects Of Family And Neighborhood On Disadvantaged Younths," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1555, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
  13. Borjas, George J, 1995. "Ethnicity, Neighborhoods, and Human-Capital Externalities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 365-90, June.
  14. Borjas, George J & Hilton, Lynette, 1996. "Immigration and the Welfare State: Immigrant Participation in Means-Tested Entitlement Programs," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 111(2), pages 575-604, May.
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Cited by:
  1. Jonathan Gruber & Brigitte C. Madrian, 2002. "Health Insurance, Labor Supply, and Job Mobility: A Critical Review of the Literature," NBER Working Papers 8817, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Baicker, Katherine, 2001. "Government decision-making and the incidence of federal mandates," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 147-194, November.
  3. Lemieux, Thomas & MacLeod, W. Bentley, 2000. "Supply side hysteresis: the case of the Canadian unemployment insurance system," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1-2), pages 139-170, October.
  4. Brigitte C. Madrian, 2005. "The U.S. health care system and labor markets," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Jun, pages 137-163.
  5. Janet Currie & Aaron S. Yelowitz, 1998. "Public Housing and Labor Supply," JCPR Working Papers 52, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
  6. Janet Currie & Firouz Gahvari, 2007. "Transfers in Cash and In Kind: Theory Meets the Data," NBER Working Papers 13557, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. Henry S. Farber, 2005. "Comments on Madrian’s “The U.S. Health Care System and Labor Markets”," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Jun, pages 165-172.

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