IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/10.2105-ajph.2014.302235_5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

More money, fewer lives: The cost effectiveness of welfare reform in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Muennig, P.
  • Caleyachetty, R.
  • Rosen, Z.
  • Korotzer, A.

Abstract

Objectives. We evaluated the economic benefits of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) relative to the previous program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Methods. We used pooled mortality hazard ratios from 2 randomized controlled trials-Connecticut Jobs First and the Florida Transition Program, which had follow-up from the early and mid-1990s through December 2011-and previous estimates of health and economic benefits of TANF and AFDC. We entered them into a Markov model to evaluate TANF's economic benefits relative to AFDC and weigh them against the potential health threats of TANF. Results. Over the working life of the average cash assistance recipient, AFDC would cost approximately $28 000 more than TANF from the societal perspective. However, it would also bring 0.44 additional years of life. The incremental cost effectiveness of AFDC would be approximately $64 000 per life-year saved relative to TANF. Conclusions. AFDC may provide more value as a health investment than TANF. Additional attention given to the neediest US families denied cash assistance could improve the value of TANF.

Suggested Citation

  • Muennig, P. & Caleyachetty, R. & Rosen, Z. & Korotzer, A., 2015. "More money, fewer lives: The cost effectiveness of welfare reform in the United States," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 105(2), pages 324-328.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2014.302235_5
    DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2014.302235
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302235
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302235?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Spencer, Rachael A. & Livingston, Melvin D. & Woods-Jaeger, Briana & Rentmeester, Shelby T. & Sroczynski, Nolan & Komro, Kelli A., 2020. "The impact of temporary assistance for needy families, minimum wage, and Earned Income Tax Credit on Women's well-being and intimate partner violence victimization," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    2. Son Nghiem & Nicholas Graves & Adrian Barnett & Catherine Haden, 2017. "Cost-effectiveness of national health insurance programs in high-income countries: A systematic review," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(12), pages 1-11, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2014.302235_5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.