What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments

Marianne P. Bitler (), Jonah B. Gelbach and Hilary Williamson Hoynes
Additional contact information
Jonah B. Gelbach: University of Maryland

No 1728, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: Labor supply theory predicts systematic heterogeneity in the impact of recent welfare reforms on earnings, transfers, and income. Yet most welfare reform research focuses on mean impacts. We investigate the importance of heterogeneity using random-assignment data from Connecticut's Jobs First waiver, which features key elements of post-1996 welfare programs. Estimated quantile treatment effects exhibit the substantial heterogeneity predicted by labor supply theory. Thus mean impacts miss a great deal. Looking separately at samples of dropouts and other women does not improve the performance of mean impacts. We conclude that welfare reform's effects are likely both more varied and more extensive than has been recognized.

Keywords: treatment effect heterogeneity; welfare reform; distributional effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J2 I38 H53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-07
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://repec.iza.org/RePEc/Discussionpaper/dp1728.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments (2003)
Working Paper: What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments (2005)
Working Paper: What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments (2003)
Journal Article: What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1728

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Address: IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Mark Fallak ().