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What Mean Impacts Miss
Marianne Bitler
Jonah B. Gelbach
Hilary Williamson Hoynes
其他書名
Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments
出版
National Bureau of Economic Research
, 2003
URL
http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=CQEgQgAACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api
註釋
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 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 dropouts and other women does not improve the performance of mean impacts. Evaluating Jobs First relative to AFDC using a class of social welfare functions, we find that Jobs First's performance depends on the degree of inequality aversion, the relative valuation of earnings and transfers, and whether one accounts for Jobs First's greater costs. We conclude that welfare reform's effects are likely both more varied and more extensive than has been recognized.