cover image: Effects of Maternal Work Incentives on Adolescent Social Behaviors

20.500.12592/c8nfjf

Effects of Maternal Work Incentives on Adolescent Social Behaviors

7 Feb 2019

This study exploits variations in the timing of welfare reform implementation in the U.S. in the 1990s to identify plausibly causal effects of welfare reform on a range of social behaviors of the next generation as they transition to adulthood. We focus on behaviors that are important for socioeconomic and health trajectories, estimate effects by gender, and explore potentially mediating factors. Welfare reform had no favorable effects on any of the youth behaviors examined and led to decreased volunteering among girls, increases in skipping school, damaging property, and fighting among boys, and increases in smoking and drug use among both boys and girls, with larger effects for boys (e.g., ~6% for boys compared to 4% for girls for any substance use). Maternal employment, supervision, and child’s employment explain little of the effects. Overall, the intergenerational effects of welfare reform on adolescent behaviors were unfavorable, particularly for boys, and do not support longstanding arguments that limiting cash assistance leads to responsible behavior in the next generation. As such, the favorable effects of welfare reform for women may have come at a cost to the next generation, particularly to boys who have been falling behind girls in high school completion for decades.
health children health economics public economics poverty and wellbeing health, education, and welfare national fiscal issues

Authors

Dhaval M. Dave, Hope Corman, Ariel Kalil, Ofira Schwartz-Soicher, Nancy Reichman

Acknowledgements & Disclosure
Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01HD086223 and by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through its support of the Child Health Institute of New Jersey at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers University (grants 67038 and 74260). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The authors are grateful to Elizabeth Lower-Basch for valuable input; Karen Conway, Jeff DeSimone, Daniel Grossman, Brady Horn, Brad Humphries, Joseph Sabia, Orgul Ozturk, and Nicholas Anthony Wright for helpful comments, to the staff at the University of Michigan’s NADHAP for their data and technical help, and Michael Papotto for excellent research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w25527
Published in
United States of America

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