Are Lone Mothers Responsive to Policy Changes? The Effects of a Norwegian Workfare Reform on Earnings, Education and Poverty

Chiara Pronzato and Magne Mogstad

CHILD Working Papers from CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY

Abstract: High welfare dependency and poverty rate among lone mothers prompted a workfare reform of the Norwegian welfare system for lone parents: activity requirements were brought in, time limits imposed and benefit levels raised. To evaluate the reform we introduce an estimator that, unlike the much used difference-in-difference approach, accounts for the fact that policy changes are typically phased in gradually rather than coming into full effect immediately. We find that the reform has not only led to increased earnings and educational attainment – in the process lowering welfare caseloads and therefore easing the government’s financial burden – but also reduced poverty.

Keywords: Welfare; lone mothers; workfare reform; difference-in-difference; activity requirements; time limits; earnings; education; poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 I32 I38 J00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2008-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.child.carloalberto.org/images/wp/child14_2008.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Are lone mothers responsive to policy changes? The effects of a Norwegian workfare reform on earnings, education and poverty (2008)
Working Paper: Are lone mothers responsive to policy changes? The effects of a Norwegian workfare reform on earnings, education and poverty (2008)
Working Paper: Are Lone Mothers Responsive to Policy Changes? The Effects of a Norwegian Workfare Reform on Earnings, Education, and Poverty (2008)
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:wpc:wplist:wp14_08

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CHILD Working Papers from CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Giovanni Bert ().