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Title: A Dynamic Model of Welfare Participation
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Kerttula, Anne Kaarina |
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A Dynamic Model of Welfare Participation Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1996 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): Childbearing; Economics of Gender; Modeling; Schooling; Welfare Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. This dissertation analyses whether a five-year time limit on welfare participation encourages behaviors that lead to less reliance on public assistance. Using a dynamic discrete choice model, it describes young women's decisions about childbearing, schooling, working and welfare participation over time. The parameters underlying these decisions are estimated by fitting the model to data on observed choices obtained from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Estimation is done using a simulated maximum likelihood procedure. Parameter estimates are used to simulate choices under current policy and under a policy of a five-year time limit on welfare participation. This provides a way of assessing effects of the time limit. The results suggest that a time limit has a significant impact on the behavior of those at highest risk for welfare participation. When faced with a time limit, they have fewer children, work and attend school more and rely on less welfare. In fact, a time limit leads to shorter-term welfare participation, apart from the purely "mechanical" effect of making long-term recipients categorically ineligible. Thus a time limit does encourage self-sufficiency in the sense that individuals rely more on other sources of support. At the same time, it appears that the shift occurs towards sources of support other than full-time work to a greater extent than towards full-time school attendance or full-time work. |
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Bibliography Citation
Kerttula, Anne Kaarina. A Dynamic Model of Welfare Participation. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1996. |