Katherine Richard
Welcome! I am an applied micro-economist, with a current focus on the U.S. social safety net. My work employs quasi-experimental and experimental methods, in combination with large administrative data, to learn about how low income families interact with assistance programs and the labor market. My prior joint work has explored effects of unanticipated delays to transfer income and effects of unconditional cash transfers during the COVID-19 pandemic. My current projects study the role of work requirement enforcement and multiple benefit issuance timing on access to resources for low income families.
My work is funded with support from the Michigan Department of Economics, the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the National Science Foundation Foundation (GRP), and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy. I will complete my Ph.D. in Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan in May 2025.
I will be on the economics and public policy job market in 2024-2025.
Working Papers
“Penalties in the Safety Net: Effects of Work Requirement Enforcement on Household Resources” (with Lea Bart) Job Market Paper
U.S. cash assistance promotes self-sufficiency through employment but imposes penalties that reduce or remove benefit income when participants violate work requirements. This paper quantifies the downstream consequences of not meeting work requirements using novel administrative data covering the full caseload of Michigan's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, combined with monthly enrollment records in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, as well as quarterly Unemployment Insurance earnings records. We study a policy reform that increased the length of time that families were removed from TANF after violating work requirements to estimate causal responses of long-term safety net attachment and labor supply. We find that penalties result in persistent enrollment declines in SNAP and Medicaid for all household members, even those still eligible for programs. Moreover, when penalties are made more severe, far fewer families re-attach to TANF and formal employment declines due to a decreasing rate of job entry. On net, labor supply responses do not offset lost benefit income, and harsher penalties reduce cumulative financial resources by an additional 84 percent over the subsequent two years. Our findings indicate that sanctions reduce broader safety net attachment and increase economic instability for vulnerable families over the long-term.
“Monthly Resource Allocation amongst the Least Financially Liquid: Effects of SNAP and TANF Issuance Frequency”
Families spend Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits rapidly upon receipt. However, many beneficiaries of the program rely on multiple sources of benefit income, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits. How do families spend these benefits in tandem within the month? Does the temporal spacing of benefit payments shape intra-month spending patterns? This paper uses administrative data of daily, SNAP and TANF spending to document new facts about how very low income households spend multiple program benefits. Because SNAP and TANF issuance dates are randomly assigned using Social Security Numbers, otherwise similar beneficiaries end up receiving their benefits within a few days of one another, or as much as two weeks apart. I study co-enrolled households that live in five U.S. states where this random assignment mechanism is used and find that receiving SNAP and TANF two weeks apart, relative to all at once, decreases total benefit spending but increases the rate at which benefits are spent.
Publications
“The COVID-19 Cash Transfer Study II: The Hardship and Mental Health Impacts of an Unconditional Cash Transfer to Low-Income Individuals” (with Jacob, B. Pilkauskas, N., Rhodes, E. and Shaefer, H.L.) National Tax Journal, September 2022, 75(3)
This paper reports findings from a randomized controlled trial of a one-time, $1,000 unconditional cash transfer to low-income households in October 2020. We use a combination of administrative and survey data collected six weeks posttreatment to examine four preregistered hypotheses: impacts on material hardship and mental health in the full study sample as well as among a very low-income sample. We find no effects of the cash transfer on any of the prespecified or other exploratory outcomes. We explore various explanations for these null results and discuss implications for future research on unconditional cash transfer programs.
“Spending Responses to High-Frequency Shifts in Payment Timing: Evidence from the Earned Income Tax Credit” (with Aladangady, A., Aron-Dine, S., Cashin, D., Dunn, W., Feiveson, L. Lengermann, P. and Sahm, C.), American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2023
This study explores how shifts in the timing of large lump-sum payments to households affect spending. Using a novel data set combining daily, state-level measures of retail sales with IRS administrative data on tax refund issuance, we exploit plausibly exogenous, high-frequency variation across states in the timing of tax refunds to households claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit, particularly variation resulting from the 2017 PATH Act. Retail spending increases by 27 cents per refund dollar, implying an extra $1,150 of spending associated with the average refund within just two weeks of issuance. Results show non-durable and services expenditures increase along with durables, suggesting a considerable consumption response to the two-week shift in the timing of a large, predictable payment. Our results, which provide a lower bound on spending out of lump-sum payments, are informative for the efficacy of lump-sum transfers, including stimulus payments made during the recent recession.
“The COVID Cash Transfer Study: The Impacts of a One-Time Unconditional Cash Transfer on the Wellbeing of Families receiving SNAP in Twelve States” (joint with Jacob, B. Pilkauskas, N., Rhodes, E. and Shaefer, H.L.), Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, February 2023
There is growing interest in the use of unconditional cash transfers as a means to alleviate poverty, yet little is known about the effects of such transfers in the U.S. This paper reports on the results of a randomized controlled study of a one-time $1,000 unconditional cash transfer in May 2020 to low-income families in twelve states in the U.S. Families were receiving, or had recently received, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. We examine the impact of the cash transfer on five pre-registered outcomes (hardship, mental health, parenting, child behavior, partner relationships) and several secondary outcomes (hardship avoidance, consumption, employment, benefit use). We find no statistically significant effects (powered to detect effects of 0.09 standard deviations) of the cash transfer on any outcomes for the full sample. In pre-specified exploratory analyses, we find significant reductions in material hardship (-0.17 standard deviations) among families with less than $500 of earnings in the previous month, roughly the bottom 50 percent of monthly earnings for the study sample.
Works in Progress
“Effects of Reducing Safety Net Screening Complexity on Access and Retention” (with Julia Yates)
“Effects of Nutritional Education on the SNAP Benefit Cycle” (w/ Mel Stephens)
Other Writing
“The COVID Cash Transfer Studies: Key Findings and Future Directions” (with Jacob, B. Pilkauskas, N., Rhodes, E. and Shaefer, H.L.), University of Michigan Poverty Solutions Research Brief, June 2022