EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Markov Forecasting Methods for Welfare Caseloads

Jeffrey Grogger

No 11682, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Forecasting welfare caseloads, particularly turning points, has become more important than ever. Since welfare reform, welfare has been funded via a block grant, which means that unforeseen changes in caseloads can have important fiscal implications for states. In this paper I develop forecasts based on the theory of Markov chains. Since today's caseload is a function of the past caseload, the caseload exhibits inertia. The method exploits that inertia, basing forecasts of the future caseload on past functions of entry and exit rates. In an application to California welfare data, the method accurately predicted the late-2003 turning point roughly one year in advance.

JEL-codes: I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm, nep-ets, nep-for and nep-ict
Note: LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published as Grogger, Jeffrey, 2007. "Markov forecasting methods for welfare caseloads," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(7), pages 900-911, July.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11682.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Markov forecasting methods for welfare caseloads (2007) Downloads
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:11682

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11682

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 ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11682