Monday 12 June 2023 12:00 - 13:30

SAL 1.04, 1st Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH

About this event

We use three sources of variation in childhood SSI receipt to identify the effects of receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) in childhood on adult outcomes and to estimate a model of human capital development. Using a novel data linkage procedure in Social Security Administration (SSA) data, we identify siblings of children receiving SSI, who help to isolate the income effects of SSI separately from potential perverse incentive effects created by the program's rules. We find that the effects of SSI depend crucially on parental labor supply responses: SSI has positive effects on children when parents do not adjust their labor supply in response to SSI income, but zero or negative effects on children when parents reduce their earnings in response to SSI income. We estimate a model of maternal labor supply and child human capital formation to formally decompose the effect of SSI into channels and quantify the relative importance of those channels. Our findings indicate that 1) the income effects of SSI on children's human capital are substantial, while the perverse incentive effects are relatively small, and 2) parent work on net improves children's outcomes by increasing household consumption, despite the potential decrease in parental time.

Participants are expected to adhere to the CEP Events Code of Conduct.

Directions

This event will take place in SAL 1.04, 1st Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH.

This series is part of the CEP's Labour Markets programme.