Do Welfare Asset Limits Affect Household Saving? Evidence from Welfare Reform

No 10487, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In this paper, we use household-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine the impact of new saving incentives that were implemented as part of the overhaul of U.S. welfare policy during the mid-1990s on the saving of households at risk of entering welfare. The Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program devolved responsibility of program rules to the states, and many states have responded by relaxing liquid asset and vehicle-equity limits that determine program eligibility, and by introducing time limits on benefit receipt. According to the recent theoretical work and statements made by public officials, such policies are predicted to increase total savings for those households who have a large ex-ante probability of welfare receipt such as female-headed households with children. We follow a sample of female heads with children from 1994 to 2001 and find that in both absolute terms, and relative to comparison groups of male heads and female heads without children, there has been no impact of welfare policy changes on the saving of at-risk households.

JEL-codes: E2 H2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe
Note: EFG AG PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published as Hurst, Erik and James P. Ziliak. "Do Welfare Asset Limits Affect Household Saving?," Journal of Human Resources, 2006, v41(1,Winter), 46-71.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10487.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do Welfare Asset Limits Affect Household Saving?: Evidence from Welfare Reform (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10487

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10487

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().