The Effect of Welfare on Work and Marriage: A View From the States

Abstract

This study provides a comprehensive examination of the work and family structure incentives of public assistance, focusing on the consequences of state-determined programs. Such an approach allows state policy- makers to understand the tradeoffs implicit in their current program parameters. It allows them to better identify alternative arrangements that may be more consistent with policy goals. And it discovers linkages between work and family structure incentives that may be otherwise difficult to discern. We follow the previous literature in working through a small set of common scenarios meant to represent typical experiences of public assistance recipients. However, accompanying this study is an EXCEL spreadsheet program that allows interested readers to extend the analysis for the complete set of program participation/family characteristics permutations. The spreadsheet has a user-friendly interface and may be downloaded from the internet.