Unemployment Insurance and Means-Tested Program Interactions: Evidence from Administrative Data

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Leung, Pauline; O'leary, Christopher
• 署名单位: Cornell University; W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20170262
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 159-192
• 关键词: regression discontinuity designs; earnings losses; benefits

摘要

We study the ways in which unemployment insurance (UI) benefits interact with other elements of the social safety net around job losses. We exploit a cutoff for UI eligibility, based on a workers' highest quarterly earnings in the past year, to generate quasi-experimental variation in UI receipt. We find that UI receipt cuts welfare (TANF) receipt by half among low-earning UI applicants but has no impact on SNAP or Medicaid usage. However, because welfare participation is low in this population, overall crowdout is small. In the quarter following layoff, UI increases total income by 55 percent (including labor earnings and transfers)