Understanding the causal impacts of taking youth on the margins of risk into foster care is an element of the evidence-base on which policy development for this crucial function of government relies. Yet, there is little research looking at these causal impacts; neither is there much empirical...

We derive Local Average Treatment Effect estimates of the impact of welfare benefit denial on future receipt using a unique experiment involving reassessment of some applicants who were originally slated to receive benefits. We find evidence of considerable heterogeneity among applicants. Our...

How does welfare affect the prosperity of mothers and their children? We study this question using a Canadian welfare reform and by linking administrative welfare records to tax returns, nearly all medical spending, and children's educational attainment. Eighty percent of mothers in the complier...

Linked administrative data on education, health, social services, and crime from British Columbia, Canada, are used to document the relationship between measures of secondary educational attainment and indicators of poor outcomes later in life. Poor outcomes are seen to manifest primarily among...

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...