The German Child Benefit (Kindergeld) is paid to legal guardians of children as a cash benefit. This study employs exogenous variations in the amount of child benefit received by households to investigate the extent to which these various changes have translated into an improvement in the...

The German Child Benefit ("Kindergeld") is paid to legal guardians of children as a cash benefit. This study employs exogenous variations in the amount of child benefit received by households to investigate the extent to which these various changes have translated into an improvement in the...

I study fertility adjustments after the introduction of a large universal child benefit in Poland. The program caused a six percent increase in the number of births. Patterns of selection into parenthood changed significantly and persistently, with a weakening of positive selection based on...

The effects of a recent Swedish child-care fee reform are compared with those of an alternative reform, increased child benefits. The fee reform implied considerably decreased fees and was intended to increase both labor supply among parents and their economic wellbeing. We estimate labor supply...

There is a large empirical literature on policy measures targeted at children but surprisingly very little theoretical foundation to ground the debate on the optimality of the different instruments. In the present paper, we examine the merit of targeting children through two general policies,...

I investigate the labor supply effects of the introduction of a large unconditional cash benefit. I exploit the unique design of the child benefit program in Poland to identify the income effects of the monthly transfer in a difference-in-differences design. On average, the marginal propensity...

Social protection systems use a range of entitlement criteria. First-tier support typically requires contributions or past employment in many countries, while safety net benefits are granted on the basis of need. In a context of volatile and uncertain labour markets, careful and continuous...

We examine the multigenerational impacts of a nationwide social pension program in China, the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS). NRPS was rolled out in full scale since 2012, and rural enrollees over age 60 are eligible to receive a minimum of 70 CNY non-contributory monthly pension. We leverage...

Welfare caseloads in North America halved following reforms in the 1990s and 2000s. We study how this shift affected families by linking Canadian welfare records to tax returns, medical spending, educational attainment, and crime data. We find substantial and heterogeneous employment responses...

In October 1999, the British government enacted the Working Families? Tax Credit, a generous tax credit aimed at encouraging work among low-income families with children. This paper uses longitudinal data collected between 1991 and 2001 to evaluate the effect of this reform on single mothers. We...