TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bitler,Marianne
AU  - Hoynes,Hilary W.
TI  - Welfare Reform and Indirect Impacts on Health
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12642
PY  - 2006
Y2  - October 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12642
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12642.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

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  - The stated goals of welfare reform are to increase work, reduce dependency on welfare, reduce births outside marriage, and to increase the formation of two parent families.  However, welfare reform may also have indirect impacts on health.  We provide a comprehensive review of the literature on the impacts of welfare reform on health.  We illustrate the main findings from the literature by presenting estimates of the impact of reform on health insurance, health utilization, and health status using data from five state waiver experiments.  The most consistent finding is that welfare reform led to a reduction in health insurance coverage.  The impacts on health care utilization and health status tend to be more mixed and fewer are statistically significant.  While the results are not conclusive, they suggest that welfare-to-work programs need not have large negative health effects.
ER  -