The COVID Cash Transfer Study: The Impacts of a One‐Time Unconditional Cash Transfer on the Well‐Being of Families Receiving SNAP in Twelve States

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management · 2023 · 34 citations

• Sociology
• Demographic economics
• Economics

Abstract There is growing interest in the use of unconditional cash transfers as a means to alleviate poverty, yet little is known about the effects of such transfers in the U.S. This paper reports on the results of a randomized controlled study of a one‐time $1,000 unconditional cash transfer in May 2020 to families with low incomes in 12 U.S. states. The families were receiving, or had recently received, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. We examine the impact of the cash transfer on five pre‐registered outcomes (material hardship, mental health, parenting, child behavior, partner relationships) and several secondary outcomes (hardship avoidance, consumption, employment, benefit use). We find no statistically significant effects (powered to detect effects of 0.09 standard deviations) of the cash transfer on any outcomes for the full sample. In pre‐specified exploratory analyses, we find significant reductions in material hardship (‐0.17 standard deviations) among families with less than $500 of earnings in the previous month, roughly the bottom 50 percent of monthly earnings for the study sample.

The COVID-19 Cash Transfer Study II: The Hardship and Mental Health Impacts of an Unconditional Cash Transfer to Low-Income Individuals

National Tax Journal · 2022 · 29 citations

• Computer Science
• Economics
• Demographic economics

This paper reports findings from a randomized controlled trial of a one-time, $1,000 unconditional cash transfer to low-income households in October 2020. We use a combination of administrative and survey data collected six weeks posttreatment to examine four preregistered hypotheses: impacts on material hardship and mental health in the full study sample as well as among a very low-income sample. We find no effects of the cash transfer on any of the prespecified or other exploratory outcomes. We explore various explanations for these null results and discuss implications for future research on unconditional cash transfer programs.

Historical Trends in Children Living in Multigenerational Households in the United States: 1870–2018

Demography · 2020 · 82 citations

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Demography

Over the last two decades, the share of U.S. children under age 18 who live in a multigenerational household (with a grandparent and parent) has increased dramatically. Yet we do not know whether this increase is a recent phenomenon or a return to earlier levels of coresidence. Using data from the decennial census from 1870 to 2010 and the 2018 American Community Survey, we examine historical trends in children's multigenerational living arrangements, differences by race/ethnicity and education, and factors that explain the observed trends. We find that in 2018, 10% of U.S. children lived in a multigenerational household, a return to levels last observed in 1950. The current increase in multigenerational households began in 1980, when only 5% of children lived in such a household. Few differences in the prevalence of multigenerational coresidence by race/ethnicity or education existed in the early part of the twentieth century; racial/ethnic and education differences in coresidence are a more recent phenomena. Decomposition analyses do little to explain the decline in coresidence between 1940 and 1980, suggesting that unmeasured factors explain the decrease. Declines in marriage and in the share of White children most strongly explained the increase in multigenerational coresidence between 1980 and 2018. For White children with highly educated parents, factors explaining the increase in coresidence differ from other groups. Our findings suggest that the links between race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status and multigenerational coresidence have changed over time, and today the link between parental education and coresidence varies within racial/ethnic groups.