Measuring the Effect of Child Benefit on Household Expenditures: Evidence from Canadian Households’ Survey Data (original) (raw)
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This research has been supported by a CLSRN grant. We thank Josh Lewis for excellent research assistance. We also thank seminar participants at Alberta, Cornell, McGill, RAND, and Simon Fraser, as well as lunch workshop participants at UBC and several conference participants and discussants for many very helpful suggestions. This paper represents the views of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Statistics Canada. The data used in his article can be obtained through application to Statistics Canada's Research Data Centre program at http://www.statcan.ca/english/rdc/index.htm. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2011
We exploit changes in child benefits in Canada to study the impact of family income on child and family well-being. Using variation in child benefits across province, time, and family type, we study outcomes spanning test scores, mental health, physical health, and deprivation measures. The findings suggest that child benefit programs had significant positive effects on test scores, maternal health, and mental health, among other measures. We find strong and interesting differences in the effects of benefits by child sex: benefits have stronger effects on educational outcomes and physical health for boys, and on mental health outcomes for girls. (JEL I12, I31, I38, J13)
Journal of Public Economics, 2007
In 1998, the Canadian government introduced a new child tax credit. The innovation in the program was its integration with social assistance (welfare). Some provinces agreed to subtract the new federally-paid benefits from provincially-paid social assistance, partially lowering the welfare wall. Three provinces did not integrate benefits, providing a quasi-experimental framework for estimation. We find large changes in social assistance take-up and employment in provinces that provided the labour market incentives to do so. In our sample, the integration of benefits can account for around one third of the total decline in social assistance receipt between 1997 and 2000.
American Economic Review, 2009
We thank Joshua Lewis for excellent research assistance, and the staffs of the Toronto and B.C. Research Data Centres for their technical support. This paper represents the views of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Statistics Canada. 1 See Joseph V. Hotz and John Karl Scholz (2003) for a review of the US literature on the EITC. Kevin Milligan and Mark Stabile (2007) study Canadian child benefits. Herwig Immervoll et al. (2007) provide some detail on European programs.
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The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. At least one co-author has disclosed a financial relationship of potential relevance for this research. Further information is available online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w21101.ack NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.
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Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue Canadienne d`Economique, 2004
A positive relationship between income and child outcomes has been observed in data from numerous countries. A key question concerns the extent to which this association represents a causal relationship as opposed to unobserved heterogeneity. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth to implement a series of empirical strategies for estimating the existence and size of the effect of income on three measures of cognition. Our results indicate that the effect of income on these outcomes may well be positive, but that it is likely to be smaller than conventional estimates. JEL Classification: I10
Assessing the Impact of a Wage Subsidy for Single Parents on Social Assistance in Canada
Cahiers de recherche, 2009
Assessing the Impact of a Wage Subsidy for Single Parents on Social Assistance in Canada * In 2002 the Quebec government implemented the "Action Emploi" (AE) program aimed at making work pay for long-term social assistance recipients (SA). AE offered a generous wage subsidy that could last up to three years to recipients who found a full-time job within twelve months. The program was implemented on an experimental basis for a single year. Based on little empirical evidence, a slightly modified version of the program was implemented on permanent basis in May 2008. The paper investigates the impact of the temporary program by focusing on the labour market transitions of the targeted population starting one year before the implementation of the program and up until the end of 2005. We use a multi-state multi-episode model. The endogeneity of the participation status is accounted for by treating AE as a distinct state and by allowing correlated unobserved factors to affect the transitions. The model is estimated by the method of simulated moments. Our results show that AE has indeed increased the duration of Off-SA spells and decreased the duration of SA spells slightly. There is also some evidence that the response to the program varies considerably with unobserved individual characteristics.