Essays on the Incentive Effects of U.S. Welfare Policy

Essays on the Incentive Effects of U.S. Welfare Policy PDF Author: Elizabeth T. Powers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Essays on the Incentive Effects of U.S. Welfare Policy

Essays on the Incentive Effects of U.S. Welfare Policy PDF Author: Elizabeth T. Powers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Do Work Incentives Work?

Do Work Incentives Work? PDF Author: Carolyn M. Wolff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Incentive awards
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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"The three essays in this dissertation focus on the impacts of work incentives geared towards two very different segments of the labor market. The first essay, "Does Incentive Pay Alter Physician Effort? An Analysis of the Time and Treatment that Physicians Provide to Patients," examines the link between incentive pay and effort among a group of highly-skilled workers: physicians. The other two essays, "Exiting TANF in South Carolina after the Deficit Reduction Act" and "What Happened to Cash Assistance for Needy Families," focus on a group of generally low-skilled, low-wage workers: welfare recipients. "Exiting TANF in South Carolina after the Deficit Reduction Act " examines the impact of a recent welfare reform aimed at promoting employment and self-sufficiency on durations of welfare recipiency. "What Happened to Cash Assistance for Needy Families?" identifies trends in welfare recipiency and self-sufficiency over the past twenty years. While a number of studies have attempted to measure the impact of financial incentives on physician behavior, none has examined the impact of performance-based incentive pay on broad measures of physician effort. In "Does Incentive Pay Alter Physician Effort? An Analysis of the Time and Treatment that Physicians Provide to Patients." I use newly available data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey from 2006 through 2008 to estimate the effect of three specific types of performance-based incentive pay -- productivity incentives, patient-centered incentives, and practice profiling incentives -- on both the time physicians spend with patients and the intensity with which physicians treat patients. Using a discrete factor approximation approach to control for the endogeneity of incentive pay, I am able to estimate the impact of these types of incentive pay on physician effort. I find that performance-based incentive pay is associated with physicians spending significantly less time with each patient. I also find some evidence that performance-based incentive pay impacts physicians' intensity of treatment. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) narrowed and standardized the work and work readiness activities that satisfy the work requirement of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. In "Exiting TANF in South Carolina after the Deficit Reduction Act, " I use administrative data from South Carolina's TANF program and employ event history techniques with a difference-in-difference estimation framework to analyze the effect of this policy change. I find that the DRA's definition of work and work readiness activities reduced the likelihood of black recipients to exit the TANF program in South Carolina while increasing the likelihood of exit for non-black recipients. For blacks, this decrease in the hazard comes from a decrease in the likelihood of exit through employment. For non-blacks, the result stems from an increase in the hazards for administrative exits and for other income exits. I also find that the reform led to longer durations of TANF benefit receipt in South Carolina for black recipients and shorter durations of cash assistance for non-black recipients. A primary goal of welfare reform since the early 1990's has been to increase the self-sufficiency of welfare recipients. The essay "What Happened to Cash Assistance for Needy Families?, " coauthored with David. C. Ribar, examines trends in the characteristics and outcomes for recipient families to determine if welfare recipients are becoming more self-sufficient. Using annual public use data on AFDC and TANF households from the Department of Health and Human Services, we find both positive and negative trends over the past twenty years. We find that the size of the caseload has decreased, the fraction of the caseload with earned income has increased, and the average earnings of welfare recipients has increased. On the other hand, we find that the fraction of child-only cases has increased, the caseload has disproportionately dropped the least-skilled households, average benefits fell faster than earnings grew, and the majority of households that exit TANF have no earnings."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.

The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity

The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity PDF Author: National Bureau of Economic Research
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400879760
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 647

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The papers here range from description and analysis of how our political economy allocates its inventive effort, to studies of the decision making process in specific industrial laboratories. Originally published in 1962. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Incentive Effects of the U.S. Welfare System

Incentive Effects of the U.S. Welfare System PDF Author: Robert Moffitt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Child support
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Incentive Effects of Social Assistance

Incentive Effects of Social Assistance PDF Author: Thomas Lemieux
Publisher: Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch
ISBN:
Category : Welfare recipients
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Making Sense of Incentives

Making Sense of Incentives PDF Author: Timothy J. Bartik
Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute
ISBN: 0880996684
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Bartik provides a clear and concise overview of how state and local governments employ economic development incentives in order to lure companies to set up shop—and provide new jobs—in needy local labor markets. He shows that many such incentive offers are wasteful and he provides guidance, based on decades of research, on how to improve these programs.

Democracy, Public Expenditures, and the Poor

Democracy, Public Expenditures, and the Poor PDF Author: Philip Keefer
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0031210104
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Countries vary systematically with respect to the incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods, and to reduce poverty. Even in developing countries that are democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to political rents, and to private transfers that benefit a few citizens at the expense of many. These distortions can be traced to imperfections in political markets, that are greater in some countries than in others. The authors review the theory, and evidence on the impact of incomplete information of voters, the lack of credibility of political promises, and social polarization on political incentives. They argue that the effects of these imperfections are large, but that their implications are insufficiently integrated into the design of policy reforms aimed at improving the provision of public goods, and reducing poverty.

Welfare Reform

Welfare Reform PDF Author: Jeff GROGGER
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674037960
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
In Welfare Reform, Jeffrey Grogger and Lynn Karoly assemble evidence from numerous studies to assess how welfare reform has affected behavior. To broaden our understanding of this wide-ranging policy reform, the authors evaluate the evidence in relation to an economic model of behavior.

Welfare Doesn't Work

Welfare Doesn't Work PDF Author: Leah Hamilton
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030371212
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
This book explores the incentives and effects of modern welfare policy, contrasted with outcomes of global basic income pilots in the past seventy years. The author contends that paternalistic and counterproductive eligibility rules in the modern American welfare state violate the human dignity of the poor and make it nearly impossible to escape the “poverty trap.” Furthermore, these types of restrictions are absent from expenditures aimed at middle and upper-income households such as mortgage interest deductions and tax-sheltered retirement accounts. Case examples from the author's years as a front-line social worker and interviews with basic income pilot recipients in Ontario, Canada, are woven throughout the book to better illustrate the effects of the current system and the hidden potential of more radical alternatives such as a universal basic income.

Wealth and Welfare States

Wealth and Welfare States PDF Author: Irwin Garfinkel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019957930X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Including education has profound consequences, undergirding the case for the productivity of welfare state programs and the explanation for why all rich nations have large welfare states, and identifying US welfare state leadership. From 1968 through 2006, the United States swung right politically and lost its lead in education and opportunity, failed to adopt universal health insurance and experienced the most rapid explosion of health care costs and economic inequality in the rich world. The American welfare state faces large challenges. Restoring its historical lead in education is the most important but requires investing large sums in education, beginning with universal pre-school and in complementary programs that aid children's development.