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Welfare to work and subjective well‐being: Evidence from a randomized control trial
Author(s) -
Riddell Chris
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
canadian journal of economics/revue canadienne d'économique
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.773
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1540-5982
pISSN - 0008-4085
DOI - 10.1111/caje.12430
Subject(s) - welfare , earnings , demographic economics , sample (material) , randomized experiment , work (physics) , treatment and control groups , randomized controlled trial , economics , term (time) , psychology , demography , sociology , medicine , finance , mechanical engineering , surgery , engineering , market economy , chemistry , physics , chromatography , pathology , quantum mechanics
I examine the effect of transitioning from welfare to full‐time employment on a variety of measures of subjective well‐being for a sample of long‐term welfare recipients in British Columbia and New Brunswick who participated in the Self‐Sufficiency Project (SSP). Individuals randomly assigned to the treatment group could receive a generous time‐limited earnings supplement if they found full‐time work. I use random assignment to estimate the local average treatment effect of working full time on well‐being. For the complier subpopulation, I find large, positive effects on subjective well‐being that persist over the longer run for New Brunswick and through roughly three years for British Columbia. Policy changes made during the experiment may explain the provincial differences.