Investigating Treatment Effects of Participating Jointly in SNAP and WIC when the Treatment Is Validated Only for SNAP

The U.S. Department of Agriculture operates several food assistance programs aimed at alleviating food insecurity. We study whether participation in both participation in both SNAP and WIC alleviates food insecurity compared with participation in SNAP alone. We bound underlying causal effects by applying nonparametric treatment effect methods that allow for endogenous selection and underreported program participation when validation data are available for one program (treatment) but not the other. We estimate average treatment effects using data from the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS). FoodAPS includes administrative data to validate SNAP participation. Information on local food prices allows us to construct a food expenditure‐based monotone instrumental variable that does not require a typical instrumental variable exclusion restriction. Under relatively weak monotonicity assumptions, we identify that the impact of participating in both programs relative to SNAP alone is strictly positive, suggesting that the programs are nonredundant. This evidence can support improved design and targeting of food programs.     

A cost–benefit analysis of hearing aids,including the benefits of reducing the symptoms of dementia

We carried out a CBA of hearing aids (HAs) in which we estimated the direct utility benefits, and included the indirect utility benefits working through a reduction in dementia symptoms. The benefits methodology involved using QALYs as the outcome measure and then applying the price of a QALY to convert the outcome measure into monetary terms. The price of a QALY was derived from an age-specific VSL estimate. The effects of HAs on utility were estimated from a fixed effects regression on a large national panel data set provided by NACC where we used a negative proxy for the QoL. We also used a fixed effects regression for the estimate of the indirect benefits involving HAs reducing dementia symptoms. We found that the total benefits, mainly coming from the direct benefits, were extremely large relative to the costs, with benefit–cost ratios over 30.     

Additionality When REDD Contracts Must be Self-Enforcing

This paper examines self-enforcing contracts as a financial mechanism for reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation when the opportunity cost of the land (i.e., landholder type) is private information and is imperfectly correlated over time (i.e., partially persistent types). Because self-enforcement limits the feasible incentives, the conservation levels are constrained by the surplus created. Regardless of the degree of persistence of such opportunity costs across contracting periods, a first-best self-enforcing contract can deliver “additional” carbon sequestration beyond the business as usual scenario only if the value of forest conservation is sufficiently high. Otherwise, self-enforcing contracts can induce some, suboptimal level of carbon sequestration. The degree of persistence of opportunity costs across periods does not affect the amount of total payments provided in the optimal menu of contracts, but greater persistence of opportunity cost types leads to contracts that feature more of the total payment as a bonus in contracts for landholders with a high opportunity cost for their land and more of the total payment as an upfront fixed payment for landholders with a low opportunity cost.     

The value of a year’s general education for reducing the symptoms of dementia

We present a method for estimating the benefits of years of education for reducing dementia symptoms based on the cost savings that would accrue from continuing independent living rather than relying on formal or informal carers. Our method for estimating the benefits of education involves three steps: first taking a year of education and seeing how much this lowers dementia, second using this dementia reduction and estimating how much independent living is affected and third applying the change in caregiving costs associated with the independent living change. We apply our method for estimating education benefits to a National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center sample of 17,239 participants at 32 US Alzheimer’s disease centres over the period September 2005 and May 2015.     

Financial Transfers from Living Parents to Adult Children: Who Is Helped and Why?

Abstract . To what extent can young adult children rely on their parents for financial support? This question will take on added importance if the commitments of the Social Security system put greater strain on the children of retirees. Despite the critical role that parents have in supporting their children, why they help some and not others remains unclear. Findings using two waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study that control for the needs of children and the resources of parents suggest that parents give more inter vivos financial assistance to their disadvantaged children rather than focusing on children most able to give financial help in return. Other measures of child well‐being besides income, including home ownership, education, parental status, and marital status, also suggest that parents help needier children more. Children who live nearby also receive more, a finding consistent with exchange motives or simply the ability of these children to more stridently demand support. Neither altruism nor exchange theories explain why stepchildren receive substantially less support than naturally born or adopted children. The diversity of effects suggests that giving is based on heterogeneous motives—parents may temper their altruism for children by the degree to which they feel responsible and by the stridency of some children in seeking support. Findings are robust upon allowing for unobserved differences across families by estimating fixed effect models.     

Inferring disability status from corrupt data

In light of widespread concerns about the reliability of self‐reported disability, we investigate what can be learned about the prevalence of work disability under various assumptions on the reporting error process. Developing a nonparametric bounding framework, we provide tight inferences under our strongest assumptions but then find that identification deteriorates rapidly as the assumptions are relaxed. For example, we find that inferences are highly sensitive to how one models potential inconsistencies between subjective self‐assessments of work limitation and more objective measures of functional limitation. These two indicators appear to measure markedly different aspects of health status. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A SURVEY OF THE COSTS OF WORLD SUGAR POLICIES

The world sugar market has long been characterized by volatileprices and widespread intervention. Controls on domestic prices,demand, and supply have created an inefficient pattern of worldproduction, consumption, and trade. Without government controls,production would shift from the countries with higher cost,subsidized production (especially the European Community, Japan,and the United States) to the countries with lower costs (suchas Australia, Brazil, and Thailand). The resources saved couldthen be directed to other activities. Sugar policies in countries with high costs reduce world sugarprices quite substantially in the long run and increase pricevariability significantly; production controls in countrieswith low costs increase world prices somewhat and also increasetheir variability. What would happen if all interventions ceased? Average worldsugar prices would probably— but not definitely—rise. World prices would definitely vary less, and economicconditions would definitely improve, especially in developingcountries that depend heavily on sugar exports. But the prospectsfor substantial reform of the sugar market are not promising,even though the GATT Uruguay Round continues. This article putsforward some modest proposals for changing the existing interventionsto lessen economic distortions and reduce costs.