About

Hilary Hoynes is a Professor of Economics and Public Policy and the Haas Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities at UC Berkeley

Research topics

• Political Science
• Medicine
• Economics
• Environmental health
• Demographic economics
• Geography
• Development economics
• Market economy
• Economic growth
• Business
• Finance

Selected publications

• Effects of school meals on nutrition: Evidence from the start of the school year

  Food Policy · 2025-06-16

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The Macroeconomy and Poverty

  The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · 2024-01-01 · 3 citations

  article

  We revisit a key question about poverty that was a repeated subject of investigation for Rebecca Blank, estimating the effects of the business cycle on pre–tax-and-transfer and post–tax-and-transfer poverty. Using an anchored household-level version of the Supplemental Poverty Measure’s thresholds and resources, we show that poverty is countercyclical, rising in recessions and falling in expansions. We also find that the social safety net provides protection against cyclicality: Post–tax-and-transfer poverty is less cyclical than is pre–tax-and-transfer poverty. The largest cyclicality occurs among children and Black and Hispanic persons, and lower cyclicality is evident among white and elderly persons. The safety net leads to the largest reductions in cyclicality for the elderly and the smallest effects for nonelderly households without children. Finally, we find an inverted U shape with cyclicality low and rising below 75 percent of poverty and declining above.

  PublisherDOI

• Benefits and tax credits

  Oxford Open Economics · 2024-01-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The UK government spends over £100 billion each year on working-age benefits, predominantly for those with low incomes or disabilities. Broadly, these payments protect families from hardship, reduce inequality, and support disabled people. But governments across the world and over time have designed these programmes in very different ways. We examine trends in benefit policy in the UK over time, including the treatment of work, support for children and housing costs, and the role of health-related benefits. We then provide a survey of the existing evidence on a wide range of questions in benefit policy design, including take-up, work incentives, and the impact on the next generation—and bring this evidence to bear on key UK policy questions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Is the Social Safety Net a Long-Term Investment? Large-Scale Evidence From the Food Stamps Program

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2023 · 78 citations

  • Political Science
  • Economics
  • Medicine

  We use novel, large-scale data on 17.5 million Americans to study how a policy-driven increase in economic resources affects children's long-term outcomes. Using the 2000 Census and 2001-13 American Community Survey linked to the Social Security Administration's NUMIDENT, we leverage the county-level rollout of the Food Stamps program between 1961 and 1975. We find that children with access to greater economic resources before age five have better outcomes as adults. The treatment-on-the-treated effects show a 6% of a standard deviation improvement in human capital, 3% of a standard deviation increase in economic self-sufficiency, 8% of a standard deviation increase in the quality of neighbourhood of residence, a 1.2-year increase in life expectancy, and a 0.5 percentage-point decrease in likelihood of being incarcerated. These estimates suggest that Food Stamps' transfer of resources to families is a highly cost-effective investment in young children, yielding a marginal value of public funds of approximately sixty-two.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Long-run effects of welfare reform experiments: Portland and Jobs First

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2023-10-18

  datasetSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Mothers as insurance: Family spillovers in WIC

  Journal of Health Economics · 2023-06-28 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a widely used program. Previous research shows that WIC improves birth outcomes, but evidence about impacts on older children and their families is limited. We use a regression discontinuity leveraging a loss of benefits at age five when children become ineligible for WIC and examine nutritional and laboratory outcomes for adults and children. We find little impact on children who aged out of the program. But caloric intake falls and food insecurity increases among adult women, suggesting that mothers protect children by consuming less themselves. We find no effect on others in the household.

  PublisherDOI

• Benefits and tax credits

  2023-01-25 · 1 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter looks at what we know about why Scotland's tax base has grown more slowly so far since devolution.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Legal Representation in Disability Claims

  2023-09-05 · 6 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Legal representatives play a prominent role in the Social Security Disability Insurance adjudication process, earning fees totaling $1.2 billion in 2019. Long ubiquitous in appellate hearings, disability representatives—including attorneys and non-attorneys—have begun appearing more frequently at the beginning of cases, during the initial review. This development has raised questions about the motives of disability law firms, who are sometimes perceived to prioritize their own interests in response to incentives in the fee structure set by the Social Security Administration. At the same time, these concerns have revealed just how little is understood about the value of legal representation for claimants in disability cases. We provide the first estimates of the causal impact of legal representation on case outcomes when representatives are engaged from the initial stage. Our analysis is made possible by new administrative data identifying representatives appointed to disability claims at the initial and appellate levels. To address selection into representation, we instrument for initial representation using geographic and temporal variation in disability law firm market shares in the closely related but distinct appellate market. Among applicants on the margin of obtaining representation at the initial level, representation improves case outcomes and administrative efficiency across several metrics. Legal representation increases the probability of initial award by 23 percentage points, reduces the probability of appeal by 45 points, and induces no detectable change in the ultimate probability of award (including appeals). This pattern indicates that legal representation in the initial stage leads to earlier disability awards to individuals who would otherwise be awarded benefits only on appeal. Furthermore, by securing earlier awards and discouraging unsupported appeals, representation reduces total case processing time by nearly one year. Our analysis explores several mechanisms. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper)

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reproducibility in Economics: Status and Update

  Harvard Data Science Review · 2023-07-27 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Introduction: Administrative Burden as a Mechanism of Inequality in Policy Implementation

  RSF The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences · 2023-08-03 · 78 citations

  articleOpen access

  Administrative burdens are the frictions that people face in their encounters with public services, leading to meaningful costs that include learning, compliance, and psychological costs. We offer evidence that burdens are a key source and consequence of inequality, resulting in disparate outcomes in people’s access to basic rights. We also detail how these outcomes are patterned by targeting, federalism, bureaucratic pathologies, and the growing use of the private sector and tax system to deliver social welfare benefits. Throughout, we highlight recent and novel contributions, including empirical research in this double issue, that have helped clarify how and why administrative burdens shape inequality. Burdens have not received the political, policy, or research priority that is commensurate with their magnitude or impact on individuals. We conclude by arguing that we need a coherent language and framework to recognize and, where appropriate, reduce burdens across a wide array of policy domains.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Marianne Bitler

  279 shared

• Jonah B. Gelbach

  153 shared

• Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

  67 shared

• Nicole Maestas

  36 shared

• Alexander Strand

  United States Social Security Administration

  36 shared

• Nada Eissa

  31 shared

• Erin Todd Bronchetti

  Swarthmore College

  23 shared

• Garret Christensen

  Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

  20 shared

Labs

• Opportunity LabPI

Awards & honors

• Daniel M. Holland Medal from the National Tax Association
• Carolyn Shaw Bell Award from the Committee on the Status of…