Primary Submission Category: Life-course/developmental
The Long-Term Health Effects of Welfare Reform
Authors: Emily Dore Melvin Livingston
Presenting Author: Emily Dore*
Given the well-documented and negative relationship between childhood poverty and adult health, it is important to understand the potential of economic policies in reducing poverty’s long-term threats to health. Economic policies may buffer poverty’s harmful effects by providing cash and in-kind resources to families in need, thereby reducing stress and enabling opportunities to prioritize health. Welfare reform in the mid-1990s in the US represented a shift from a more to less generous welfare program that emphasized the importance of work and self-sufficiency over governmental assistance. Research has documented the generally negative impact of welfare reform on short-term health outcomes, but less research has documented the impact of welfare reform on health across the life course. However, the lasting impact of childhood circumstances suggests the importance of examining policy exposure during childhood and the consequences throughout life. This study exploits time and state variation in the implementation of welfare reform to examine the impact of exposure to welfare reform as a child on self-rated health and psychological distress in adulthood using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (N=12,032). We estimate the effects in two samples that represent adults more or less likely to be exposed to welfare as children based on parental education. The models adjust for individual-level demographics, state of childhood contexts, and fixed effects for birth year, state of childhood, and interview year. The study’s findings indicate that exposure to welfare reform as a child was harmful to both self-rated health (b=0.61, p=0.013) and psychological distress (b=0.69, p=0.013) for adults with parents in the lower education group. This study suggests providing a more generous safety-net in childhood may reduce long-term health harms caused by poverty.