What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments

Marianne Bitler, Jonah Gelbach and Hilary Hoynes

No 10121, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Labor supply theory predicts systematic heterogeneity in the impact of recent welfare reforms on earnings, transfers, and income. Yet most welfare reform research focuses on mean impacts. We investigate the importance of heterogeneity using random-assignment data from Connecticut's Jobs First waiver features key elements of post-1996 welfare programs. Estimated quantile treatment effects exhibit the substantial heterogeneity predicted by labor supply theory. Thus mean impacts miss a great deal. Looking separately at dropouts and other women does not improve the performance of mean impacts. Evaluating Jobs First relative to AFDC using a class of social welfare functions, we find that Jobs First's performance depends on the degree of inequality aversion, the relative valuation of earnings and transfers, and whether one accounts for Jobs First's greater costs. We conclude that welfare reform's effects are likely both more varied and more extensive than has been recognized.

JEL-codes: C1 I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
Note: LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Published as Bitler, Marianne P., Jonah B. Gelbach and Hilary W. Hoynes. "What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects Of Welfare Reform Experiments," American Economic Review, 2006, v96(4,Sep), 988-1012.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10121.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments (2006)
Working Paper: What Mean Impacts Miss:Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments (2005)
Working Paper: What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments (2005)
Working Paper: What Mean Impacts Miss Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments (2004)
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:10121

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10121

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 ().