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Title: Essays on the Incentive Effects of United States Welfare Policy
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Powers, Elizabeth T.
Essays on the Incentive Effects of United States Welfare Policy
Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994
Cohort(s): Mature Women
Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning
Keyword(s): Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Assets; Childbearing; Life Cycle Research; Peers/Peer influence/Peer relations; Savings; Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP); Wealth; Welfare

This dissertation consists of three essays about how people respond to welfare policy. The first two essays examine the potential effects of the asset limit in welfare programs on saving. Theory predicts that among some groups, the prospect of facing an asset test discourages wealth accumulation. In the first essay, wealth holdings of female-headed households are examined in an era of significant interstate variation in asset limits. Based on theory and simulation results for two period models, a positive relationship between wealth holdings and asset limits supports the hypothesis. The paper also includes an examination of the asset data in the National Longitudinal Survey of Women. The second essay examines the saving response to prospective welfare participation spells using data from the 1984 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Estimates of an augmented life cycle saving equation indicate that those about to participate in welfare programs save significantly less than their peers and that expectations of future welfare participation also lead to reduced saving. In the third and final essay estimate the effect of the benefit schedule, which is nondecreasing in the number of children, on childbearing decisions of female heads of household, treating the childbirth and participation decisions in a sequential framework. Finding indicate that there are small but significant positive effects of benefit policy on births, but that elimination of the differentials would not lead to substantial reductions in the cost of the AFDC program. Findings also indicate that welfare mothers are no more likely to give birth to more children than female heads who are not participating.
Bibliography Citation
Powers, Elizabeth T. Essays on the Incentive Effects of United States Welfare Policy. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994.