Poster #121 - Understanding Well-Being and Income Volatility: Welfare “without” the Bureaucracy

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

During the Covid-19 pandemic, citizens across the United States received direct payments of unrestricted cash to help them weather the impacts of the pandemic. One result of these payments was a substantial, though temporary, decline in poverty rates across the country, especially among children. As the pandemic upended daily life across the country, a unique guaranteed income pilot was just completing its first year in Stockton, CA. Promising preliminary results from Stockton, as well as observable benefits of pandemic cash payments to families, catalyzed an unprecedented expansion of guaranteed income pilots across the United States.

Guaranteed income programs have the potential to disrupt prevailing social safety net structures established by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. A common thread that runs through Welfare Reform programs such as TANF, SNAP, Section 8 and Housing Choice Vouchers, is a measure of persistent surveillance to ensure beneficiaries’ eligibility. Guaranteed income studies are designed to understand how additional, unrestricted, cash can benefit individuals and families across a range of outcomes, including labor force attachment, physical and mental health, education, consumer spending behavior, and financial wellbeing.

The Guaranteed Resources Optimize Wellbeing (GROW) study is unique. It is the only guaranteed income pilot focused solely on Extended-Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (E-TANF) beneficiaries who participate in an established workforce development program in Philadelphia. The goal of the GROW study (N = 291) is to understand how additional cash payments impact multiple dimensions of study participants’ lives: their social, emotional, psychological, and financial wellbeing, as well as their day to day living situations and decision making.

51 randomly assigned treatment group participants received 12 monthly payments of $500, while 240 randomly assigned control group participants received 12 monthly payments of $50. The mixed-methods design included four rounds of surveys – pre-payments; two during the intervention; and post-payments – along with four semi-structured interviews conducted with all treatment group and randomly selected control group members over twelve-months.

Preliminary findings suggest that throughout the study all participants (treatment and control) experienced higher levels of mental health compared to the general US population of adults.  In addition, during the study treatment group participants’ social, psychological and financial wellbeing increased significantly more than control group participants’. Among treatment and control group participants, the most commonly reported spending included housing/utilities, groceries, cell phones, and transportation. In addition, study participants’ cited a range of additional benefits, including: relieved safety concerns, using extra cash “to cover my costs for an uber and avoid riding public transportation for going to work”; enhanced ability to purchase basic necessity items not covered by other restricted benefits they receive; and the opportunity to parent their children without feeling guilty. These early findings point to the promise that additional income can likely help alleviate the day-to-day stress welfare reliant parents experience, provide an argument for an increase in TANF grants, and contribute to improvements in multiple dimensions of their overall wellbeing.  

Author

• David J Pate, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author