Working Papers

The Effect of State-Level Welfare Policy on Disability Acceptance Rates (JOB MARKET PAPER)

In 1996, Congress passed legislation that transitioned welfare funding from a matching grant to a block grant, increasing the incentive for states to restrict welfare caseloads by increasing the opportunity cost of welfare funds. Disability programs offer an attractive alternative for states to reduce the number of welfare recipients because disability is federally funded. While disability policy is set at the federal level, cases are reviewed by state-run offices. A state seeking to shift individuals off of welfare and onto disability can restrict access to welfare while exerting institutional pressure on disability offices to admit more applicants. Using state-level data, I investigate the degree to which states affect the substitution of disability for welfare assistance. I find that, on average, the presence of welfare time-limit policies increases a state's disability acceptance rates by 1.96 percentage points, from approximately 36 percent to 38 percent for the average state in my sample.

Voting on Delegation: Evidence from the Passage of the 1996 Welfare Reform

I examine the role of the expectations in congressional decisions to delegate power to the states. One such example of this is the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), which granted much greater rule-making power to the states concerning cash welfare programs. I use measures of the restrictiveness of state welfare rules as a proxy for the expectations of members of the House. I find evidence that Democratic members of the House from more conservative districts were more likely to vote for welfare reform. Additionally, I find that for more conservative members of the House, reasons to expect that their state would become more restrictive on welfare policy increased the probability that they would vote for welfare reform.