IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uts/ecowps/23.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring the Dynamic Effects of Welfare Time Limits

Author

Abstract

This paper develops a new dynamic panel data model that can formally incorporate the dynamics of welfare participation behavior under time limits. The model is estimated using data from a policy experiment in the United States and a generalized method of moments estimator. The effects of time limits are found to be larger and more dynamical than in previous regression approaches, after comparing estimation results from several approaches using the same data. Around 40 percent of the anticipatory effect of the time limit are due to individuals depleting their stock of remaining months of welfare eligibility. The anticipatory effect is also found to be much larger among disadvantaged individuals. The results call for further assessment of the importance of time limits in explaining the low welfare caseload in the post-welfare reform era.

Suggested Citation

  • Marc K Chan, 2014. "Measuring the Dynamic Effects of Welfare Time Limits," Working Paper Series 23, Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    • Handle: RePEc:uts:ecowps:23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/edg_wp23.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marianne P. Bitler & Jonah B. Gelbach & Hilary W. Hoynes, 2006. "What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 988-1012, September.
    2. Patrick Kline & Melissa Tartari, 2016. "Bounding the Labor Supply Responses to a Randomized Welfare Experiment: A Revealed Preference Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(4), pages 972-1014, April.
    3. Marc K. Chan, 2013. "A Dynamic Model of Welfare Reform," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(3), pages 941-1001, May.
    4. Arellano, Manuel & Bover, Olympia, 1995. "Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 29-51, July.
    5. Francesca Mazzolari, 2007. "Welfare Use when Approaching the Time Limit," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 42(3).
    6. Jeffrey Grogger, 2003. "The Effects of Time Limits, the EITC, and Other Policy Changes on Welfare Use, Work, and Income among Female-Headed Families," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(2), pages 394-408, May.
    7. Christopher A. Swann, 2005. "Welfare Reform When Recipients Are Forward-Looking," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(1).
    8. Jeffrey Grogger & Charles Michalopoulos, 2003. "Welfare Dynamics under Time Limits," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 530-554, June.
    9. Marianne P. Bitler & Hilary W. Hoynes, 2010. "The State of Social Safety Net in the Post-Welfare Reform Era," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 41(2 (Fall)), pages 71-147.
    10. Marianne Bitler & Hilary W. Hoynes, 2010. "The State of the Safety Net in the Post-Welfare Reform Era," NBER Working Papers 16504, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Haider, Steven J. & Klerman, Jacob Alex, 2005. "Dynamic properties of the welfare caseload," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(5), pages 629-648, October.
    12. David C. Ribar & Marilyn Edelhoch & Qiduan Liu, 2008. "Watching the Clocks: The Role of Food Stamp Recertification and TANF Time Limits in Caseload Dynamics," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(1).
    13. Hanming Fang & Michael P. Keane, 2004. "Assessing the Impact of Welfare Reform on Single Mothers," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 35(1), pages 1-116.
    14. Rebecca M. Blank, 2001. "What Causes Public Assistance Caseloads to Grow?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 36(1), pages 85-118.
    15. Ziliak, James P, 1997. "Efficient Estimation with Panel Data When Instruments Are Predetermined: An Empirical Comparison of Moment-Condition Estimators," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 15(4), pages 419-431, October.
    16. Unknown, 2005. "Forward," 2005 Conference: Slovenia in the EU - Challenges for Agriculture, Food Science and Rural Affairs, November 10-11, 2005, Moravske Toplice, Slovenia 183804, Slovenian Association of Agricultural Economists (DAES).
    17. Jacob Alex Klerman & Steven J. Haider, 2004. "A Stock-Flow Analysis of the Welfare Caseload," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(4).
    18. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    19. Michael P. Keane & Kenneth I. Wolpin, 2002. "Estimating Welfare Effects Consistent with Forward-Looking Behavior. Part II: Empirical Results," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 37(3), pages 600-622.
    20. Anderson, T. W. & Hsiao, Cheng, 1982. "Formulation and estimation of dynamic models using panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 47-82, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Narain, Kimberly & Bitler, Marianne & Ponce, Ninez & Kominski, Gerald & Ettner, Susan, 2017. "The impact of welfare reform on the health insurance coverage, utilization and health of low education single mothers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 28-35.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gabrielle Pepin, 2022. "The effects of welfare time limits on access to financial resources: Evidence from the 2010s," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 88(4), pages 1343-1372, April.
    2. Mazzolari, Francesca & Ragusa, Giuseppe, 2012. "Time Limits: The Effects on Welfare Use and Other Consumption-Smoothing Mechanisms," IZA Discussion Papers 6993, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Hamish Low & Costas Meghir & Luigi Pistaferri & Alessandra Voena, 2018. "Marriage, Labor Supply and the Dynamics of the Social Safety Net," NBER Working Papers 24356, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Julia Shu-Huah Wang, 2021. "State TANF Time Limit and Work Sanction Stringencies and Long-Term Trajectories of Welfare Use, Labor Supply, and Income," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 42(4), pages 650-696, December.
    5. Melanie Guldi & Lucie Schmidt, 2017. "Taxes, Transfers, and Women’s Labor Supply in the United States," Working Papers 2017-01, University of Central Florida, Department of Economics.
    6. Snarr, Hal W. & Burkey, Mark L., 2006. "A Preliminary Investigation of Welfare Migration Induced by Time Limits," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 36(2), pages 1-16.
    7. Rolf Aaberge & Ugo Colombino, 2014. "Labour Supply Models," Contributions to Economic Analysis, in: Handbook of Microsimulation Modelling, volume 127, pages 167-221, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    8. Jeounghee Kim, 2010. "Welfare-to-Work Programs and the Dynamics of TANF Use," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 198-211, June.
    9. Marc K. Chan, 2017. "Welfare Dependence and Self-Control: An Empirical Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(4), pages 1379-1423.
    10. Chris Herbst, 2013. "Welfare reform and the subjective well-being of single mothers," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(1), pages 203-238, January.
    11. Hayashi, Masayoshi, 2014. "Forecasting welfare caseloads: The case of the Japanese public assistance program," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 105-114.
    12. Hsiao, Cheng & Hashem Pesaran, M. & Kamil Tahmiscioglu, A., 2002. "Maximum likelihood estimation of fixed effects dynamic panel data models covering short time periods," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 107-150, July.
    13. Chris Herbst & David Stevens, 2010. "The Impact of Local Labor Market Conditions on Work and Welfare Decisions: Revisiting an Old Question Using New Data," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 29(4), pages 453-479, August.
    14. Maurice J.G. Bun & Sarafidis, V., 2013. "Dynamic Panel Data Models," UvA-Econometrics Working Papers 13-01, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Dept. of Econometrics.
    15. Calderon Cesar Augusto & Chong Alberto & Loayza Norman V., 2002. "Determinants of Current Account Deficits in Developing Countries," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-33, March.
    16. Marianne Bitler & Hilary Hoynes, 2016. "The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same? The Safety Net and Poverty in the Great Recession," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(S1), pages 403-444.
    17. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:9:y:2008:i:8:p:1-9 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Rebecca M. Blank, 2002. "Evaluating Welfare Reform in the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1105-1166, December.
    19. Jorge Rodriguez, 2017. "Understanding the Effects of Income and Child Care Subsidies on Children's Academic Achievement," 2017 Papers pro1077, Job Market Papers.
    20. Florian Pelgrin & Arnaud Sylvain & Eric Heyer, 2003. "Durées d'utilisation des facteurs et fonction de production : une estimation par la méthode des moments généralisés en système," Working Papers hal-00972839, HAL.
    21. Martin A. Carree, 2002. "Nearly Unbiased Estimation in Dynamic Panel Data Models with Exogenous Variables," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 02-007/2, Tinbergen Institute.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Welfare time limit; dynamic panel data model; generalized method of moments; policy experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:uts:ecowps:23. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Duncan Ford (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edutsau.html .

    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.