Effects of Welfare Reform on Parenting

Nancy Reichman (), Hope Corman (), Dhaval Dave (), Ariel Kalil () and Ofira Schwartz-Soicher ()
Additional contact information
Nancy Reichman: Rutgers University - Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Department of Pediatrics
Hope Corman: Rider University - Department of Economics; NBER
Dhaval Dave: Bentley University - Department of Economics; IZA; NBER
Ariel Kalil: University of Chicago - Harris School of Public Policy
Ofira Schwartz-Soicher: Princeton University - Donald Stokes Library

No 2020-163, Working Papers from Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics

Abstract: This study investigated the effects of welfare reform in the 1990s, which represented a major policy shift that substantially and permanently retracted cash assistance to poor mothers in the U.S., on parenting. Using data on women from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth linked with information on their 10- to 14-year-old children from the Child Self- Administered and Self-Report surveys, we exploited variation in the implementation of welfare reform across states, over time, and across treatment and comparison groups to estimate the effects of welfare reform on parent-child activities and closeness of the mother-child relationship. We found that welfare reform had adverse effects on engagement in parent-child activities, children feeling close to their mothers, and mothers knowing their children’s whereabouts, with the effects generally concentrated among boys. These findings have implications for children’s development and contribute to a virtually non-existent literature on the effects of welfare reform on parenting and the small but growing economic literature on parenting. We found no evidence that the effects of welfare reform on parenting operated through the mother working more than full time, having multiple jobs, working in a service job, or having a non-standard work schedule.

JEL-codes: I3 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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