We use a rapid introduction of an unconditional cash grant (child support) in South Africa to estimate the marginal propensity to consume and earn out of a permanent change in unearned income. We find that the marginal propensity to earn is about to -0.25 for single-adult households, and...

Social policies play a critical role in the transformation of emerging economies. This paper discusses this with reference to China and India, with their very distinctive public policy approaches. Much of the economics literature either does not pay much attention to social policy or regards it...

In this paper we investigate whether local governments react on the welfare benefit levels in neighboring jurisdictions when setting their own benefit levels. We solve the simultaneity problem arising from the welfare game by utilizing a policy intervention; more specifically, we use a centrally...

Standard economic theory implies that the labelling of cash transfers or cash-equivalents (e.g. child benefits, food stamps) should have no effect on spending patterns. The empirical literature to date does not contradict this proposition. We study the UK Winter Fuel Payment (WFP), a cash...

This paper analyses the dynamics of the duration of housing allowance claims in Sweden during the period 1991 to 2002. The central concern in this paper is whether the Swedish housing allowance system creates dependence on welfare. Using longitudinal data from Swedish micro database-LINDA, this...

We estimate the causal effect of cash grants on household finance and business survival following a natural disaster. Disaster-affected individuals in high damage blocks with access to cash grants have 17% less credit card debt following the disaster than those without access to cash grants....

Despite being a very hot subject in the public debate, the causes behind the increase in social assistance (SA) in the 1990s are relatively unknown. In this paper, I try to investigate if the increase is in part a result of an increase in the propensity to receive SA. Despite what is usually...

It has been shown that the social security system and other sorts of government transfers have helped poor elderly people, such as widows, to live alone in the U. S. This paper investigates whether government financial support contributed to the increase in the probability of the vulnerable...

Conditional transfer programs are becoming a common approach to influence household decisions. The evidence to date is that these programs are good at promoting certain outcomes such as school attendance, but that other outcomes such as reducing child labor are more difficult to achieve. This...