More or less poor
How Do Government Benefits Affect Elections? Evidence from State Earned Income Tax Credits
Hunter Rendleman & Jesse Yoder
Harvard Working Paper, September 2019
Abstract:
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one of the largest social provision programs in the United States, yet little is known about how it influences election outcomes, voter behavior, and attitudes about the government. We exploit the staggered timing of the roll-out of state-level EITC programs to estimate the causal effect of the program on political outcomes. Using a series of difference-in-differences designs, we find that Republican governors who implement the credit are rewarded in the election after they implement the EITC, whereas Democratic governors derive no additional support. Individual-level analyses show that those who are eligible for the credit tend to feel more positively about their governors after the program is introduced. Taken together, our results suggest that voters who gain the most from the credit reward the officeholder responsible for enacting it.
Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental Evidence on Barriers to Neighborhood Choice
Peter Bergman et al.
NBER Working Paper, August 2019
Abstrract:
Low-income families in the United States tend to live in neighborhoods that offer limited opportunities for upward income mobility. One potential explanation for this pattern is that families prefer such neighborhoods for other reasons, such as affordability or proximity to family and jobs. An alternative explanation is that they do not move to high-opportunity areas because of barriers that prevent them from making such moves. We test between these two explanations using a randomized controlled trial with housing voucher recipients in Seattle and King County. We provided services to reduce barriers to moving to high-upward-mobility neighborhoods: customized search assistance, landlord engagement, and short-term financial assistance. The intervention increased the fraction of families who moved to high-upward-mobility areas from 14% in the control group to 54% in the treatment group. Families induced to move to higher opportunity areas by the treatment do not make sacrifices on other dimensions of neighborhood quality and report much higher levels of neighborhood satisfaction. These findings imply that most low-income families do not have a strong preference to stay in low-opportunity areas; instead, barriers in the housing search process are a central driver of residential segregation by income. Interviews with families reveal that the capacity to address each family's needs in a specific manner – from emotional support to brokering with landlords to financial assistance – was critical to the program's success. Using quasi-experimental analyses and comparisons to other studies, we show that more standardized policies – increasing voucher payment standards in high-opportunity areas or informational interventions – have much smaller impacts. We conclude that redesigning affordable housing policies to provide customized assistance in housing search could reduce residential segregation and increase upward mobility substantially.
The effects of state‐level earned income tax credits on suicides
Otto Lenhart
Health Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines the relationship between state‐level earned income tax credit (EITC) laws in the United States on suicides. Following findings in previous work showing that the EITC is associated with lower depression rates and reduced number of risky biomarkers, I estimated the effects of state EITC generosity on suicide rates. Using data for the years 1996 to 2016, a period with 74 state‐level EITC policy changes, I find that introducing a high state EITC rate reduces suicide rates for adults aged 25 or above by 3.91%. The results are consistent across four different measures of EITC generosity.
The E Is in the G: Gene–Environment–Trait Correlations and Findings From Genome-Wide Association Studies
Reut Avinun
Perspectives on Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have shown that pleiotropy is widespread (i.e., the same genetic variants affect multiple traits) and that complex traits are polygenic (i.e., affected by many genetic variants with very small effect sizes). However, despite the growing number of GWASs, the possible contribution of gene–environment correlations (rGEs) to pleiotropy and polygenicity has been mostly ignored. rGEs can lead to environmentally mediated pleiotropy or gene–environment–trait correlations (rGETs), given that an environment that is affected by one genetically influenced phenotype, can in turn affect a different phenotype. By adding correlations with environmentally mediated genetic variants, rGETs can contribute to polygenicity. Socioeconomic status (SES) and the experience of stressful life events may, for example, be involved in rGETs. Both are genetically influenced and have been associated with a myriad of physical and mental disorders. As a result, GWASs of these disorders may find the genetic correlates of SES and stressful life events. Consequently, some of the genetic correlates of physical and mental disorders may be modified by public policy that affects environments such as SES and stressful life events. Thus, identifying rGETs can shed light on findings from GWASs and have important implications for public health.
Who Files for Personal Bankruptcy in the United States?
Jonathan Fisher
Journal of Consumer Affairs, forthcoming
Abstract:
Who files for bankruptcy in the United States is not well understood. Previous research relied on small samples from surveys or a small number of states from administrative records. Using over 10 million administrative bankruptcy records linked to the 2000 Decennial Census and the 2001‐2009 American Community Surveys, I document who files for bankruptcy. Compared to U.S. population, bankruptcy filers are middle income, more likely to be divorced, more likely to be black, more likely to be veterans, less likely to be immigrants, and more likely to have a high school degree or some college. Filers are more likely to be employed. The bankruptcy population is aging faster than the U.S. population as a whole. Lastly, using pseudo‐panels I study what happens in the years around bankruptcy. Individuals are likely to get divorced in the years before bankruptcy and then re‐marry. Income falls before bankruptcy and rises after bankruptcy.
Aging Out of Women, Infants, and Children: An Investigation of the Compensation Effect of Private Nutrition Assistance Programs
Xia Si & Tammy Leonard
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper is the first to address the causal relationship between an abrupt change in the availability of public nutrition assistance and low‐income households' private nutrition assistance utilization. In particular, we examined the way in which loss of Women Infants and Children (WIC) benefits impacted a household's utilization of private food assistance. Using a regression discontinuity analysis framework, we found that households significantly increased utilization of private nutrition assistance following an abrupt loss in public nutrition assistance. Estimates indicated that some households might have been able to compensate from about half to more than 90% of their loss in public WIC nutrition assistance.
Household Debt and Children’s Risk of Food Insecurity
Mackenzie Brewer
Social Problems, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the United States, almost one in six households with children cannot access adequate food for a healthy and active lifestyle. Although food insecurity disproportionately affects lower-income households, it remains unclear why some lower-income families are more vulnerable to food insecurity than others. Household unsecured debt, such as debt incurred from credit cards and medical bills, may be an unexplored financial constraint associated with food insecurity. Using data from the 2014 Child Development Supplement (CDS) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), I assess whether unsecured debt, by amount and type of debt, is associated with food insecurity among lower-income households with children (N=1,319). Results indicate that medical debt increases odds of household food insecurity even after accounting for key sociodemographic and economic risk factors, while no relationship exists between other forms of unsecured debt and food insecurity. Moreover, although liquid assets decrease the risk of household food insecurity and attenuate the harmful effects associated with unpaid medical bills, few households have enough liquid assets to mitigate the risks associated with medical debt. Efforts to prevent medical debt may be essential for eliminating food insecurity among lower-income households with children.
Does Payday Lending Hurt Food Security in Low‐Income Households?
Yunhee Chang
Journal of Consumer Affairs, forthcoming
Abstract:
During the study period of 2005–2011, household food insecurity rates as well as regulations over payday lending industry increased in the United States. This study evaluates the association between access to payday lending and the risk of food insecurity using cross‐sectional samples of low‐income households from the 2005 to 2011 Food Security Supplements of the Current Population Survey. The study uses county‐level payday lender density, state‐level legislative status, and county border indicators of cross‐state payday access to examine how payday lender availability affects household food insecurity. The findings suggest that access to payday lending, which may be presumed to provide convenient short‐term credit to underserved consumers, increases the likelihood of household food insecurity by 2.8–6.0 percentage points in absolute terms. Furthermore, the county border effect of payday access has become insignificant later in the sample period, the potential reasons for which are discussed.
Housing and Urban Development–Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Vouchers and Veterans’ Homelessness, 2007–2017
William Evans et al.
American Journal of Public Health, October 2019, Pages 1440-1445
Objectives: To determine what role the 88 000 Housing and Urban Development–Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) vouchers for permanent supportive housing among US veterans distributed between 2008 and 2017 played in the significant fall in veterans’ homelessness over the same time period.
Methods: Using a panel data set at the Continuum of Care level over the 2007 to 2017 period, we correlated changes in vouchers with permanent supportive housing units and measures of homelessness. To reduce concerns about omitted variables bias, we used a 2-stage least-squares procedure. The instrument is a Bartik-type shift-share variable. Specifically, for the cumulative vouchers received at the local level, we used the share of the nation's homeless veterans from the local level in the year before the HUD-VASH program multiplied by the cumulative number of vouchers distributed at the national level up to that point.
Results: For each additional voucher, permanent supportive housing units increased by 0.9 and the number of homeless veterans decreased by 1.