Enrollment and Policy Effects of Assistance Programs Including SNAP, TANF, and Head Start

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

U.S. assistance programs provide valuable support to vulnerable populations. Programs can have large effects on the health, economic outcomes, and wellbeing of participants. In order to access these benefits programs must be available to eligible participants and participants must satisfy various program policies. In this panel we review how program implementation and policies affect various outcomes, namely enrollment, health, and labor market outcomes. We present causal and descriptive work detailing the effects of program enrollment and policies in an array of assistance programs including SNAP, TANF, and HeadStart across multiple states.

The first paper studies how SNAP work requirements affect the enrollment and labor outcomes of able-bodied adults without dependents. Leveraging variation created by work requirement waivers and administrative data from Virginia this paper find that work requirements waivers raise SNAP enrollment for this population without affecting labor outcomes. This paper then comments on the mechanisms underlying these effects and overall welfare effects of work requirements. This paper highlights how work requirement policies affect program enrollment and participant outcomes.

Our second paper reveals the many ways in which public assistance programs are administered and how much these structures can matter. They describe the diverse organizational structures used to manage caseloads across multiple safety net programs within California. Using existing surveys and measures derived from administrative data, they document a variety of organizational structures and evaluate each model’s program efficiency, accuracy, access, and cost effectiveness. This paper demonstrates how not only program policies but also program administration can affect program enrollment.

The third paper investigates the effects of the welfare time limit implemented in 1996 on welfare use and labor market outcomes. The paper studies two welfare waiver experiments: Florida’s Family Transition Program (FTP) and Connecticut’s Jobs First Program (JFP) the latter of which has not been previously explored. Using an identification strategy based of the age of the youngest child in a household, the paper shows that in Florida the time limit policy reduced welfare usage. However, in Connecticut the paper finds that single mothers did not reduce welfare use due to the time limit and more people began combining welfare and work. This paper discusses how welfare time limit policies affect enrollees' program usage and outcomes.

Our final paper investigates the health effects of HeadStart being made available to mothers. The authors use the staggered rollout of HeadStart from 1965-1980 to estimate the effects of HeadStart availability to mothers during childhood on infant health using Vital Statistics Natality data. They find mothers’ access to HeadStart raises their infants’ birthweights by 44 grams and decreases the probability of low birthweight by 11.8%. They suggest that fetal exposure to alcohol may be a mechanism for these effects. This paper shows how the usage of a welfare program can affect the outcomes not only of those currently enrolled but also future generations.

Overall, this panel presents a diverse collection of papers all studying how welfare programs' availability, administration, and policies affect low-income people's outcomes.

Policy Area

• Poverty and Income Policy

Chair

• Katherine Richard, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Discussants

• Jordan W. Jones, USDA Economic Research Service

• Krista Ruffini, Georgetown University

Organizer

• Caitlin Shamoly Dutta, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Individual Presentations

• Enrollment, Targeting, and Labor Market Effects of Work Requirements: Evidence from SNAP - Presenting Author: Caitlin Shamoly Dutta, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Division of Labor in the Safety Net: Task-Based vs. Case-Based Caseworker Models - Presenting Author: Kelsey Pukelis, California Department of Social Services & Harvard University; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Luiza Macedo, California Department of Social Services

• Effects of Welfare Time Limits on Enrollment and Work: New Evidence from Welfare Reform Experiments - Presenting Author: Seojung Oh, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

• The Intergenerational Effects of Head Start on Infant Health - Presenting Author: Esra Kose, University of California, Merced