Between 2010 and 2017, 42 U.S. states added work requirements as a food assistance eligibility criterion for Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWDs). Another U.S. public assistance program, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), provides food assistance without a work requirement, along with...

This paper exploits variation resulting from a series of federal and state Medicaid expansions between 1979 and 2014 to estimate the effects of child's access to public health insurance on labor market outcomes of parents. The results imply that extended Medicaid eligibility of children leads to...

The Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) subsidizes long-term care to satisfy the increasing desire to age at home among older adults. The HCBS program may improve health outcomes of this population by allowing them to age-in-place, but less quality and quantity of home-based care...

Stigma of welfare participation is important for policy and survey design, because it deters program take-up and increases misreporting. Stigma is also relevant to the literature on social image concerns, yet empirical evidence is scant because stigma is difficult to empirically identify. We use...

Take-up of a social benefit is usually defined as receiving a benefit for which an individual or household is eligible. The take-up rate is the fraction of those eligible for a program who participate and receive a benefit or service. We survey estimates of take-up of social benefits around the...

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented level of job losses in the U.S., where a job loss is also associated with the loss of health insurance. This paper uses data from the 2020 Household Pulse Survey (HPS) and difference-in-difference (DD) regressions to estimate the effect of the...

Activation policies to promote self-sufficiency among recipients of welfare and other types of benefits are becoming more common in many welfare states. We evaluate a law change in Norway making welfare receipt conditional on participation in an activation program for all welfare recipients...

We provide new insights regarding the finding that Medicaid increased emergency department (ED) use from the Oregon experiment. We find meaningful heterogeneous impacts of Medicaid on ED use using causal machine learning methods. The treatment effect distribution is widely dispersed, and the...

We provide new insights regarding the finding that Medicaid increased emergency department (ED) use from the Oregon experiment. We find meaningful heterogeneous impacts of Medicaid on ED use using causal machine learning methods. The treatment effect distribution is widely dispersed, and the...

We study the impact of restricting child-related social assistance to the first two children in the family on the fertility of third and subsequent births. As of April 2017, all third and subsequent born children to low-income families in the UK did not receive means-tested child benefits,...

The Medicaid Home and Community- Based Services (HCBS) program in the United States subsidizes the long-term care provided at home or in community-based settings for older adults. Little is known about how HCBS affects the well-being of the aging population. Using detailed information about...

In 2005, Germany introduced the integrated welfare benefit 'unemployment benefit II' for needy individuals capable of working and their families. In line with international trends, the benefit system is characterised by a broad definition of eligibility and a focus on labour market integration...

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...

Advocates of Medicaid expansion argue that federal Medicaid assistance to states fosters economic activity, generating positive local multiplier effects. Furthermore, during economic downturns, Congress regularly tweaks federal match rates for state Medicaid spending – including during the...

In the 1990’s, the United States reformed its welfare system through state waivers and the creation of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. These changes altered family insurance access and economic resources available to invest the health of children. Using data from the Panel...

Advocates of Medicaid expansion argue that federal Medicaid assistance to states fosters economic activity, generating positive local multiplier effects. Furthermore, during economic downturns, Congress regularly tweaks federal match rates for state Medicaid spending – including during the...

Health care report cards - public disclosure of patient health outcomes at the level of the individual physician and/or hospital - may address important informational asymmetries in markets for health care, but they may also give doctors and hospitals incentives to decline to treat more...

This paper studies the accuracy of reported Medicaid coverage in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) using a unique data set formed by matching SIPP survey responses to administrative records from the State of California. Overall, we estimate that the SIPP underestimates...

We investigate the effect of universal health insurance on health outcome and the use of health services by exploiting a natural experiment that changes the insurance status of most Americans at age 65; that is, eligibility for the U.S. Medicare program. We compare inequalities in health and...

This paper investigates how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program(SNAP) eligibility and benefits affect food expenditures by exploiting theCalifornia "cash-out" policy, which made Supplemental Security Income(SSI) recipients ineligible for SNAP. Using the Consumer ExpenditureSurvey, we find...

We explore the role of the largest non-food support safety net program, Medicaid, on multiple measures of food hardship among households with children, including measures that capture hardship explicitly experienced by children. Using data from the 2001-2020 waves of the December Current...

The Medicaid Home and Community- Based Services (HCBS) program in the United States subsidizes the long-term care provided at home or in community-based settings for older adults. Little is known about how HCBS affects the well-being of the aging population. Using detailed information about...

We calculate conservative estimates for the marginal value of public funds (MVPF) associated with providing Medicaid to inmates exiting prison. Our MVPF estimates, which measure the ratio between the benefits associated with the policy (measured in terms of willingness to pay) and its costs net...

We study a large-scale (n=50,000) natural field experiment implemented by the U.S. Social Security Administration that was aimed at increasing the timely and accurate self-reporting of wages by Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients. Sending a letter reminding SSI recipients of their wage...

The 2014 Medicaid expansion excluded Americans over 65, but they could still be affected via spillover effects. Using Medicare administrative data, we test for spillovers in Medicaid coverage and Medicare spending among Medicare beneficiaries. We analyse two separate birth cohorts: those under...

The 2014 Medicaid expansion excluded Americans over 65, but they could still be affected via spillover effects. Using Medicare administrative data, we test for spillovers in Medicaid coverage and Medicare spending among Medicare beneficiaries. We analyze two separate birth cohorts: those under...

This paper investigates how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility and benefits affect food expenditures by exploiting the California 'cash-out' policy, which made Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients ineligible for SNAP. Using the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we...

The 2014 Medicaid expansion excluded Americans over 65, but they could still be affected via spillover effects. Using Medicare administrative data, we test for spillovers in Medicaid coverage and Medicare spending among Medicare beneficiaries. We analyze two separate birth cohorts: those under...

Increased availability of public health insurance for children has led to two potentially contradictory concerns for public policy: that expanded availability of public insurance may lead families to decline private insurance and that additional public coverage may not reach many uninsured...

"The COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately affecting dually eligible individuals, racial and ethnic minority groups, and individuals with disabilities." — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, February 18, 2021 1. Government policy worsens racial healthcare disparities for low-income...

Medicaid aging waivers incentivize older adults who need long-term care to stay at home rather than move into nursing facilities. However, this policy may inadvertently shift care burdens onto informal caregivers. Using data on state-level waiver expenditures from 1998 to 2014 linked with the...

This paper investigates the short-run impact of public insurance expansion under the Affordable Care Act on out-of-pocket medical spending (OOP) and risk exposure among low-income, eligible households as well as the incidence of the cost of providing insurance. Using data from the Medical...

Medicare is one of the largest federal social insurance programs in the United States and the secondary payer for Medicare beneficiaries covered by employer-provided health insurance (EPHI). However, an increasing number of individuals are delaying their Medicare enrollment when they first...

Health insurance expansions can exert wellbeing effects on individuals who provide informal care to their loved ones, reducing their experience of depression. This study exploits evidence from the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Medicaid expansion to examine the effects on the mental wellbeing of...

Can the expansion of Medicaid, a means-tested health and long-term care insurance, be slowed down by incentivising the purchase of private long-term care insurance (LTCI)? We study the implementation of the long-term care insurance partnership (LTCIP) program, a joint federal and state-level...

Worldwide, single mothers are profoundly time and income constrained, making them heavily reliant on government transfers. We examine how welfare reforms that introduced mutual obligations affected the economic position of single mothers and the development of their children over the past two...

Can the expansion of Medicaid, a means-tested health and long-term care insurance, be slowed down by incentivising the purchase of private long-term care insurance (LTCI)? We study the implementation of the long-term care insurance partnership (LTCIP) program, a joint federal and state-level...

Health insurance expansions can exert wellbeing effects on individuals who provide informal care to their loved ones, reducing their experience of depression. This study exploits evidence from the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Medicaid expansion to examine the effects on the mental wellbeing of...

Eswatini has notably high levels of poverty and inequality. Recurrent, negative shocks are an important contributing factor. This study assesses the performance of the largest social assistance programs in Eswatini, based on 2016/17 national household survey data. It examines the coverage rates...