Essays in Economics and Social Policy

Abstract

This dissertation comprises three chapters, each of which uses economics to examine U.S. social policy. Chapter 1 assesses how child protection agencies react to maltreatment deaths and the consequences for welfare. Governments often change policy or practice following a tragedy. In theory, governments should use information from tragedies to optimally update. In practice, their reactions may not be well-calibrated and may depend on whether the tragedy is spotlighted in the media. I first analyze newspaper archives to construct a dataset of publicized maltreatment deaths between 1999 and 2019. I then employ a staggered adoption event study to identify the impact of a death on child protection systems and child outcomes. Agencies react sharply to highly-publicized deaths, increasing removals by 19 percent. There is no detectable reaction to less-publicized deaths, suggesting agencies respond primarily to scrutiny rather than information. Highly-publicized deaths induce an increase in removals among children with the highest predicted risk of maltreatment and hospitalizations for maltreatment-related diagnoses among Medicaid recipients decline. But Black children's removal rates rise more than White children's even conditional on risk, increasing the Black-White removal rate gap. Agency reactions to tragedies therefore do not appear to be optimal, though parts of their reactions may be welfare-enhancing.

Chapter 2 evaluates the impact of a temporary freeze in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) on parental labor supply. In 2010, Arizona was the only state to freeze its CHIP program. Following the freeze, families with household income between 140 and 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) could no longer newly enroll children in public health insurance, though children already enrolled could maintain their coverage. I use difference in differences and triple difference designs to assess the impact of the CHIP freeze on parental labor supply. Among families with newborns, who were most sharply impacted by the freeze, I estimate a large decline in the portion of households with earnings in the CHIP eligibility thresholds. In the preferred specification, the portion of families earning within the CHIP threshold declines by 73.7 percent. The decline was driven by a households in which the mother had a high school education or less. Households appear to have adjusted their income in both directions: some households increased their income, and others decreased it, presumably to maintain access to Medicaid.

Chapter 3, co-authored with Michael Holcomb and Kelsey Pukelis, examines stigma in the context of the social safety net. Stigma may impede participation in social safety net programs and impose utility costs on individuals already receiving benefits. We use a nationally representative survey with descriptive and experimental components to document five facts about stigma and participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). First, many individuals hold stigma-related beliefs about SNAP participation, and grocery stores are a setting with high potential for stigma. Second, individuals who currently participate in SNAP and who have more close acquaintances who use SNAP have lower levels of stigma. Third, most respondents overestimate how much others would judge SNAP participation, with participants overestimating more than non-participants. In the experimental portion of the survey, we find that randomized information and vignettes have heterogeneous effects: stigma declines among Democrats and non-SNAP participants and increases among Republicans and current SNAP participants. One intervention that addresses a common reciprocity concern increases interest in take-up among eligible non-participants but decreases support for SNAP spending across the whole sample. Together, these findings add to our understanding of stigma in the context of the social safety net and suggest that uniform messaging interventions may be an ineffective means to decrease stigma.