Food Assistance Take-Up and Infant Health: Evidence from the Adoption of EBT
Abstract: More than 7 million individuals who were eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in 2017 did not participate in the program. Incomplete take-up is common in many transfer programs, and may limit their effectiveness in reducing economic disparities. In this paper, I use a unique setting to shed light on the role that participation costs play in determining food assistance take-up, and to quantify the effects of increasing take-up on infant health at birth. I do this by studying a reform that made it easier to receive and use food assistance benefits in the US: the adoption of the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) debit card for food stamp benefit disbursement. I estimate event study regressions using the county level rollout of EBT in California between 2002 and 2004 and find that EBT adoption led to a large and persistent increase in caseloads and applications for the program, as well as higher retailer participation in high poverty neighborhoods. I document that this rise in food stamp benefit take-up led to a meaningful increase in average birth weight for births most likely impacted by the policy, with effects concentrated in the bottom half of the birth weight distribution. These estimates provide new evidence that reducing the barriers to participation in food assistance programs can lead to potentially large gains in health for disadvantaged children.
Cash Transfers and Child Well-Being: Historical Evidence from the 1940 ADC Program
Abstract: The adverse consequences of childhood poverty are extensive and long-lasting, suggesting an important role for government policies that have direct impacts on early-life outcomes. There is a large literature on the incentive effects of cash tax and transfer programs in the U.S., yet less is known about how these programs impact the children of recipients. In this paper I estimate the causal effect of unconditional cash welfare receipt on outcomes for low-income children by examining the effects of the first federally funded cash welfare program in the US, a means-tested program implemented as part of the Social Security Act of 1935. Using newly digitized data on the full population of the U.S. in 1940, I leverage discontinuities in benefit generosity across state borders to estimate effects of cash assistance within contiguous county pairs. I find that a one standard deviation increase in the maximum benefit was associated with a 2.5 percentage point increase in the probability of school enrollment for disadvantaged children, reductions in overcrowded living arrangements, and evidence of substitutions away from work towards schooling for older children. Consistent with the existing literature on the labor supply disincentives from unconditional transfers, I also find that higher benefit generosity is associated with reductions in maternal labor supply.
"Tattoos, employment, and labor market earnings: Is there a link in the ink?" (with Michael French, Phil Robins, Catherine Maclean and Bisma Sayed). Southern Economic Journal, 2016, 82(4): 1212-1246.