Kinship Guardianship: Understanding the Changing Incentives of TANF-Recipient Families under Sanctions Open Access

Abstract

This paper evaluates the effect of welfare sanctions on non-foster kinship care rates.

With the passage of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), states were

granted permissions to levy full-family welfare sanctions against recipient families

failing to meet work requirements. At the same time, TANF granted child-only

subsidies to informal relative caregivers. I use a difference-in-differences model as

well as an event study design to compare the relationship between timing of fullfamily

sanction legislation and incidence of non-foster relative care in 48 states from

1989 to 2018. I find that full-family sanctions have a negative effect on non-foster

kinship care rates when only examining children likely to be placed into non-foster

kinship care. I argue that full-family sanctions may have caused parental preferences

to shift from placing children in non-foster relative care to instead placing children

into foster relative care.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………………………1

1.1 Kinship Care……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….2

1.2 “Welfare-to-Work” and TANF Sanctions……………………………………………………………………4

1.3 TANF and Family Living Arrangements………………….…………………………………….…………..6

2 Data and Methods…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….7

2.1 Data and Sample………………………………………………………………………………………………………7

2.2 Treatment Measures…………………………………………………………………………………………………8

2.3 Control Measures………………………………………………………………………………………..……………9

2.4 Outcome Measures………………………………………………………………………………………………….10

2.5 Regression Models……………………………………………………………………………………………………10

2.5.1 Difference-in-Differences Design…………………………………….……………………..10

2.5.2 Event Study Design……………………………………………………….…………………………11

2.5.3 Testing for Heterogeneous Effects…………………………….……………………………11

3 Results………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…13

3.1 Summary Statistics…………………………………………………………….….………………………………13

3.2 Regression Results………………………………………………………………….………………………………15

4 Discussion……………………………………………………………………………………………..…………………………..…18

5 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………..…………………….………20

Tables………………………………………………………………….……………………………………….…………..…21

References…………………………………………………….…………………………………………….…………..…24

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Economics
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Economics, General
Keyword	Kinship Care TANF Sanctions Welfare
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Krzysztof Karbownik, Emory University
Committee Members	Kyungmin Kim, Emory University Michael Carr, Emory University

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