Strengthening Public Benefits to Support Family Financial Resilience

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Public benefits can provide families with a backstop when they experience financial hardship and distress. However, these programs do not reach all families that could benefit and may be limited in their adequacy, eligibility, and duration. The diverse set of papers on this panel use quantitative methodologies across consumer finance, sociology, and public policy fields to explore public benefits provisions that could strengthen the performance and reach of the social safety net in ways that support family financial resilience.

The first paper explores the rates at which low-wage workers are affected by public benefits cliffs and asset limits and the employment and earnings decisions they make to stay on public benefits using nationally-representative survey data on low-income workers and descriptive, linear probability, and random effects models. They find low-income workers decline additional hours, promotions, and job offers to remain on public benefits. These results suggest that benefits cliffs and asset limits create substantial barriers to work and economic mobility that could be addressed through policy modernization.

The second paper examines the impact of the SNAP Emergency Allotment (EA) payments on the material and economic well-being of low-income individuals using national cross-sectional data on recent SNAP participants. They find after SNAP EAs ended, overall material hardship, food insecurity, and reliance on family for food increased. These results inform debates on the impact of safety net programs on families and suggest that SNAP EAs help families make ends meet.  

The third paper draws on administrative data from 22,000 applicants to New York’s privately-funded Guaranteed Income for Artists (GIA) program to examine whether GIA extended financial support to artists who were not receiving public assistance and whether the program’s prioritization model effectively reached a more diverse and economically vulnerable population. This paper provides empirical evidence that guaranteed income programs can serve a supplementary role to public benefits, particularly when they incorporate priority criteria to address racial, gender, and economic disparities.

The final paper uses proprietary transaction data from over 8,000 SNAP households to examine changes in consumer purchasing behavior following the removal of SNAP EAs. Using imputation difference-in-difference static and dynamic models (Borusyak et al. 2024), they find that households participating in SNAP partially compensated for reductions in benefit generosity by reducing their aggregate food purchasing and by shifting to paying for groceries with cash and/or credit cards. These households may not have substantially changed their overall consumption (in dollar terms) across key food categories, suggesting that they may be less sensitive to policy changes in terms of what they buy. This paper provides empirical evidence on households respond to changes in benefit generosity and how public benefits interact with households' private financial resources.

Ensuring public benefits can reach families and support their financial well-being without inducing unintended consequences requires thoughtful evaluation. By examining the effects of asset limits and public benefit cliffs in public programs, privately-funded guaranteed income programs, and federal nutrition assistance programs, this panel provides policymakers with evidence to create efficient, fair policies that improve family financial resilience.

Policy Area

• Poverty and Income Policy

Secondary Policy Area

• Methods and Tools of Analysis

Chair

• Katherine Richard, Georgetown University

Discussants

• Marianne Bitler, University of California, Davis

• Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, Barnard College

Organizer

• Kassandra Martinchek, George Washington University

Individual Presentations

• The Impact of Benefits Cliffs and Asset Limits on Low-Wage Workers: Evidence from a Nationally-Representative Survey - Presenting Author: Stephen Patrick Roll, Washington University in St. Louis

• The Effect of the Termination of the SNAP Emergency Allotments on Material and Economic Wellbeing - Presenting Author: Natasha Pilkauskas, University of Michigan Ann Arbor; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Katherine Michelmore, University of Michigan Ann Arbor

• Filling the Social Welfare Gap: Guaranteed Income for Artists as a Supplement to Government Assistance - Presenting Author: Douglas S Noonan, Indiana University

• How Did Consumers Change Their Grocery Spending in Response to Changes in SNAP Benefit Generosity? - Presenting Author: Kassandra Martinchek, George Washington University