Research
Research
Voucher Structure and Firm Participation in In-Kind Transfer Programs: Evidence from SNAP and WIC
Many safety net programs in the U.S. are issued as in-kind, rather than cash, transfers. These in-kind transfers are typically structured as either value-based vouchers, which offer recipients additional money to spend at participating private firms, or quantity-based vouchers, which entitle recipients to a specific basket of goods or services to be redeemed at participating firms. A firm’s decision to participate in these programs may be influenced by voucher design: quantity vouchers typically come with price controls imposed on the firm, while value vouchers do not. I study the implications of these in-kind voucher design choices, and how they interact with other public policies, in the context of grocery store participation in the SNAP (value voucher) and WIC (quantity voucher) programs. I find that in response to cost shocks, grocery stores exit the WIC program while continuing to participate in SNAP, suggesting that voucher design is an important factor in firms' participation decisions. I also find that the number of families redeeming their WIC benefits decreases as stores drop out of the program, highlighting the importance of firm participation in ensuring recipients’ access to benefits.
Paid Maternity Leave and Children's Outcomes in the Long Run (with Johanna Rayl)
The US is one of few countries worldwide without a national mandate for paid maternity leave, and as such, we know little about the effects of paid leave in this context. The first cases of statewide maternity leave in the U.S. came about somewhat unintentionally through changes in state Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) in the 1960s and 1970s. Six to seven decades later, we have the opportunity to explore the long run effects of access to paid maternity leave on children, later in their lives. We do so employing a differences-in-discontinuities design around changes in state TDI policies which made disability insurance available for pregnancy. In "first stage" results, we provide new estimates of the effects of paid maternity leave availability on infant birth weights, improving upon existing methodologies estimating the same effect in the literature, and finding much larger positive effects. In a "second stage" exercise, we will link measures of the education and earnings of children with their birthdate records using Census and Numident data to provide the first estimates of the long run impacts of paid maternity leave on children for the US.
Trends in the School Lunch Program: Changes in Selection, Nutrition & Health with Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach (Food Policy. April 2024)
There has been significant media attention on the issue of childhood obesity, leading policymakers to reform the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to include stricter nutritional requirements. We use data on school lunch menus to document improvements in the nutritional quality of school meals between 1991 and 2010. We then evaluate how this change in nutritional content maps into obesity outcomes, using panel data on a nationally representative cohort of children, tracking them from kindergarten entry in fall 2010 through the end of fifth grade in spring 2016. We find little evidence that participation in the school lunch program leads to weight gain, as measured by changes in obesity, overweight, and BMI. These results suggest that improvements in the nutritional content of school lunches have been largely successful in reversing the previously negative relationship between school lunches and childhood obesity. Unrelated to school lunch participation, we find a strong relationship between mother’s obesity status and both the level and growth of children’s obesity, especially for girls and among high-SES families.
Is a Dollar a Dollar? How Transfer Design Shapes Household Spending (with Krista Ruffini and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach)
Unconditional Cash Over Time: A Meta-Analysis of the Dynamic Effects of Guaranteed Income in the U.S. (with Eleni Packis, Tre Wells, Aastha Rajan, and Sheridan Fuller)
Evanston Guaranteed Income Pilot Program Research Report (with Claire Mackevicius, Phoebe Lin, Sheridan Fuller, Tre Wells, and Pilar Manzi)