1000 low income adults were randomly selected to receive $1000/month for 3 years, with a control group receiving $50/month over that same period. Many of them had children in the household. How did it affect how they parented and their kids’ outcomes? www.nber.org/papers/w34040

Is there a more millennial Christmas album? Merry Christmas!

However, contrary to what we might expect, we do not find that those randomly assigned to Medicaid have lower rates of charges and convictions than those who did not receive Medicaid. Our estimates are fairly precise and can rule out most effects estimated in other settings/populations.

Does Medicaid reduce involvement with the criminal justice system? In this new paper we find no effect of Medicaid on criminal charges and convictions using experimental variation in Medicaid coverage from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment.

Garden still giving but not for much longer

But despite these higher transfer payments we don’t find any evidence of improved medium or long-term outcomes through young adulthood. For some outcomes we can rule out effects of $ transfers documented among less disadvantaged populations.

They are also experience a small but statistically significant increase in Medicaid enrollment.

Infants born just below the 1200gram (tiny!!) cutoff in low income families receive more SSI per month, w payments more than $10k over childhood (mostly at ages 0-2) compared to those born just above. This is more than annual income for the low-income families in our sample.

SSI provides cash payments to over a million families who have children w disabilities. Do these substantial payments—which make up ~half of total income for recipients—improve kids’ outcomes? We use a cutoff in SSI eligibility for infants based on birthweight to investigate.

Telling the magic 8 ball my research ideas 😫

Another great family photo (he insisted on wearing a chip clip in his hair)

Amazing choice this year!! His work is incredible