Changes in the Welfare Caseload and the Health of Low-educated Mothers

Robert Kaestner and Elizabeth Tarlov

No 10034, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Declines in the welfare caseload in the late 1990s brought significant change to the lives of many low-educated, single mothers. Many single mothers left welfare and entered the labor market and others re-arranged their lives in order to avoid going on public assistance. These changes may have affected the health and health behaviors of these women. To date, there has been no study of this issue. In this paper, we obtained estimates of the association between the welfare caseload and welfare policies, and three health behaviors --smoking, drinking, and exercise and two self-reported measures of health --days in poor mental health, and overall health status. The results of our study reveal that changes in the caseload had little effect on measures of health status, but were significantly associated with two health behaviors: binge drinking and regular exercise. The fall in the welfare caseload was associated with a decrease in binge drinking and an increase in regular and sustained physical activity.

JEL-codes: I12 I13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
Note: EH CH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published as Kaestner, Robert and Elizabeth Tarlov. "Changes In The Welfare Caseload and The Health Of Low-Educated Mothers," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2006, v25(3,Summer), 623-641.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10034.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Changes in the welfare caseload and the health of low-educated mothers (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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10034

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10034

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().