¶ A structural meta-analysis of welfare reform experiments and their impacts on children

pdf link], Online appendix

¶ BibTeX

@article{mullins2020structural,
  title={A structural meta-analysis of welfare reform experiments and their impacts on children},
  author={Mullins, Joseph},
  journal={University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, MN},
  year={2020}
}

¶ Abstract

Using a model of maternal labor supply and investment in children, this paper synthesizes the findings from three separate welfare reform experiments across six sites. The proposed model maps variation in experimental design to parameters that define labor supply behavior, child care use, and the importance of money and child care arrangements in the development of child skills. The estimation procedure, which aggregates available evidence to identify the model’s key causal parameters, amounts to a structural metaanalysis. A number of counterfactuals underscore the utility of this model-based approach for understanding the mechanisms behind treatment effects and the roles played by heterogeneity and selection in shaping impacts.

¶ Notes and Excerpts

Combines data from three experiments with a representative sample of single mothers from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)

Following the literature (Todd and Wolpin 2023), the estimation sample excludes members of treatment groups who are new applicants in the CTJF and MFIP experiments from Manchester, Anoka, and Dakota counties. Figure 4 validates the model by comparing its prediction for employment, welfare participation, and earnings for members of these three out-of-sample groups. These predictions are largely within the 95% confidence intervals of each group and match the patterns of outcomes very well.

Finally, in order to distinguish between between non-experimental and experimental sources of variation, let the state χ be decomposed into the pair (X, Z). Online Appendix B uses the properties of nested logit choice probabilities and the model’s finite dependence (Arcidiacono and Miller 2011) to derive a system of equations with the following structure …