Cash Transfers for Excluded Workers

• In Event: COVID, Public Health, and the Welfare State

Abstract

Although conditional and unconditional cash transfers are a very common policy tool, and they became especially common as a tool as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite their widespread use by policymakers, their importance as a response to Covid-19, and the money invested in them, there is still comparatively little research on the impacts that they had on their target populations. Furthermore, in the US, given the near universality of cash programs, there not many populations who did not receive cash transfers since 2020.
Our project studies some of the effects of New York State’s Excluded Workers Fund (EWF). This was an unconditional, lump-sum cash transfer which provided $15,500 dollars to undocumented workers who had been excluded form the CARES Act and other Covid-19 assistance. The EWF, however, ran out abruptly, creating two otherwise like populations of individuals and families who suffered extreme hardship during the worst part of the pandemic as they were made particularly vulnerable due to their immigration status and their exclusion to cash assistance.
We compare a sample where a portion of remained outside the EWF funding and another within it, creating conditions similar to a natural experiment. We seek to study impacts on health, housing and food security. Most research on the Pandemic Relief Acts (PRActs) will study how the pandemic disproportionately affects Black and Brown families, but not analyze how lacking legal status or living with a parent who lacks status also harms children’s food security, health, and wellbeing. The 2.1 billion dollar Excluded Workers Fund (EWF) was created (7-21) by New York State to support undocumented families excluded from the PRActs and offered onetime payments of $3200 to $15,600 (funds ran out 10-21). NYS’s EWF is bigger than CA’s $125 million fund (or others in WA, CO, or DC). CPP was an emergency program funded by NYC and foundations, giving $1000 to immigrant families ineligible for PRActs, during the pre-vaccine, economic free-fall, mid-2020 pandemic phase. We posit CPP/EWF payments helped bolster income, prevent homelessness, and prevent cascading harms to children’s wellbeing. Our research design compares these outcomes for people who were eligible and got/did not get EWF and CPP payments over a planned multi-year study. We will also be able to compare impacts for those who did not get Covid, who got it but recovered fully, and those who have long-haul symptoms. We will report results since 2020 at APSA.
Our team has conducted close to 50 in-depth interviews understanding both how the pandemic affected undocumented individuals and their families and how the EWF’s effects. Furthermore,
Smith and Besserer analyzed El Centro’s 5000 member survey in the pre-vaccine pandemic phase (done 4-20 to 8-20), showing worst phase impacts. We are recontacting respondents in the 6000-person survey to track changes over time in income (which fell from $503/week to $146/week by July 2020) and savings (fell to $0 in 7-20), perceived risk of homelessness (75% 7-20), reported recovery from Covid (38% reported Covid symptoms 2020. We are doing surveys, interviews, focus groups, and ethnography.

Authors

• Robert Courtney Smith, Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, and Sociology, Grad Center, CUNY

• Andres Besserer Rayas, The Graduate Center, City University of New York