TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bitler,Marianne
AU  - Gelbach,Jonah
AU  - Hoynes,Hilary
TI  - What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10121
PY  - 2003
Y2  - November 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10121
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10121.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Marianne Bitler
Department of Economics
University of California, Irvine
3151 Social Science Plaza
Irvine, CA  96297
Tel: 949/824-5606
Fax: 949/824-2182
E-Mail: mbitler@uci.edu

Jonah Gelbach
Yale Law School Class of 2013 and
Senior Research Fellow, Program in Applied Economi
Yale University
New Haven, CT
Tel: 510/643-0791
Fax: 510/643-8614
E-Mail: gelbach@gmail.com

Hilary W. Hoynes
Department of Economics
University of California, Davis
One Shields Ave.
Davis, CA  95616-8578
Tel: 530/564-0505
Fax: 530/752-9382
E-Mail: hwhoynes@ucdavis.edu
AB  - Labor supply theory predicts systematic heterogeneity in the impact of recent welfare reforms on earnings, transfers, and income. Yet most welfare reform research focuses on mean impacts. We investigate the importance of heterogeneity using random-assignment data from Connecticut's Jobs First waiver features key elements of post-1996 welfare programs. Estimated quantile treatment effects exhibit the substantial heterogeneity predicted by labor supply theory. Thus mean impacts miss a great deal. Looking separately at dropouts and other women does not improve the performance of mean impacts. Evaluating Jobs First relative to AFDC using a class of social welfare functions, we find that Jobs First's performance depends on the degree of inequality aversion, the relative valuation of earnings and transfers, and whether one accounts for Jobs First's greater costs. We conclude that welfare reform's effects are likely both more varied and more extensive than has been recognized.
ER  -