Means-Tested Social Assistance and Household Responses: A Triple-Difference Analysis from Taiwan

• In Event: Poverty, Policies, and Program Participation's Relationship to Child and Adolescent Well-being

Abstract

This study examines how Taiwan’s means-tested social assistance affects the way near-poor families provide care, work, and housing for an older adult. Eligibility is assessed at the household level, and because working-age adults without earnings are assigned imputed income at the minimum wage, an imputation that stops at age 65, a household becomes much more likely to qualify once a member turns 65, even though its actual resources are unchanged. Using this jump in eligibility at 65, we compare age-65 with age-60 cohorts, and households that just pass the means test with near-poor households that just fail it, in a triple-difference design applied to individual-level administrative data for 2013 to 2022.

The results show that crossing the age-65 threshold raises the probability of receiving assistance by roughly 2.5 to 5.3 percentage points, and this eligibility gain clearly changes family behavior. Older adults become more likely to enter long-term care and to move, so assistance helps support formal care rather than keeping them in place. Spouses and adult children work less, with employment falling by about 2 to 3 percentage points and spouse earnings declining; adult children also co-reside with the parent less and are less likely to stay in the same county, stepping back from care and proximity. At the same time, the children’s own marriage and childbearing rise, more so for sons, consistent with sons carrying more of the traditional duty to support aging parents. Overall, social assistance substitutes for the care, income, and housing support families had provided, and by easing children’s support burden it frees them to start families of their own, so its effects reach well beyond the recipient and reallocate responsibility between the state and the family.

Authors

• Chia-Le Yen, Washington University in St. Louis
  Presenting Author

• Julia Shu-Huah Wang, National Taiwan University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Kuan-Ming Chen, National Taiwan University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author