Interesting facts/stories. An "Everything Goes" Lounge for Random Knowledge
05-11-2015, 06:37 PM
New evidence that welfare increases dependency, from Norway
http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~gdahl/papers/fa...ltures.pdf
Quoted from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhHTq4_jwcc
"A recent study published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics provides new support for the idea that welfare programs exacerbate, rather than inhibit, inter-generational poverty. Past research on this topic has hampered by the difficulties inherent in correlational research. It's been known for a long time that children of parents who use welfare are more likely than average to use welfare. But that could be because those children inherent the problems that lead to the parents needing welfare in the first place. Findings like this don't show that being on welfare actually causes inter-generational poverty.
This new study attempted to surpass these difficulties by taking advantage of a natural experiment. In Norway whether or not someone gets to receive certain kinds of welfare benefits depends largely on which judge is randomly assigned to review their case. Some judges give out welfare more readily than others. And so who does and does not receive welfare benefits is partly a matter of luck. This allowed researchers to compare life outcomes for families who, before applying for welfare, were extremely similar. To be specific, the researchers controlled for differences in income, labor experience, age, health, and family structure, among other variables. The hope behind these controls is that the only important difference between the families is that, by the luck of the draw, some were able to receive welfare while others were not.
The researchers managed to find data on 14,722 families to make these comparisons with. They found that the adult children of families put on welfare were up to 12% more likely to apply for welfare themselves when compared to children of families who were not put on welfare. Since these families were more or less identical except for the fact that some got welfare and others didn't, this research suggests that parents going on welfare causes their children to be more likely to need welfare in the future. This suggests that there is some substance to the view that welfare creates a culture of dependency. However, the effect is much smaller than some conservatives might have guessed.
Regardless, most people feel that we have an obligation to help those in need. Studies like this won't change that. What they will hopefully do is convince us to try and implement welfare policies that minimize inter generational poverty as much as possible. "
http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~gdahl/papers/fa...ltures.pdf
Quoted from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhHTq4_jwcc
"A recent study published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics provides new support for the idea that welfare programs exacerbate, rather than inhibit, inter-generational poverty. Past research on this topic has hampered by the difficulties inherent in correlational research. It's been known for a long time that children of parents who use welfare are more likely than average to use welfare. But that could be because those children inherent the problems that lead to the parents needing welfare in the first place. Findings like this don't show that being on welfare actually causes inter-generational poverty.
This new study attempted to surpass these difficulties by taking advantage of a natural experiment. In Norway whether or not someone gets to receive certain kinds of welfare benefits depends largely on which judge is randomly assigned to review their case. Some judges give out welfare more readily than others. And so who does and does not receive welfare benefits is partly a matter of luck. This allowed researchers to compare life outcomes for families who, before applying for welfare, were extremely similar. To be specific, the researchers controlled for differences in income, labor experience, age, health, and family structure, among other variables. The hope behind these controls is that the only important difference between the families is that, by the luck of the draw, some were able to receive welfare while others were not.
The researchers managed to find data on 14,722 families to make these comparisons with. They found that the adult children of families put on welfare were up to 12% more likely to apply for welfare themselves when compared to children of families who were not put on welfare. Since these families were more or less identical except for the fact that some got welfare and others didn't, this research suggests that parents going on welfare causes their children to be more likely to need welfare in the future. This suggests that there is some substance to the view that welfare creates a culture of dependency. However, the effect is much smaller than some conservatives might have guessed.
Regardless, most people feel that we have an obligation to help those in need. Studies like this won't change that. What they will hopefully do is convince us to try and implement welfare policies that minimize inter generational poverty as much as possible. "
![[Image: 08TARD1-master675.jpg]](http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/09/08/science/08TARD1/08TARD1-master675.jpg)
![[Image: smile.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/smile.gif)
![[Image: Charles_II_Inbreeding.jpg]](http://www.musitek.com/Public/Charles_II_Inbreeding.jpg)
![[Image: angel.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/angel.gif)
.