It is widely accepted that poor early life health has detrimental effects on later life health and achievement. But a growing literature shows that positive policy interventions may improve long-term and even intergenerational outcomes. For example, cash payments made to families in the first year of a child’s life have been shown to improve that child’s educational outcomes and earnings.
Considering these findings, in “The Long-Term Effects of Income for At-Risk Infants: Evidence from Supplemental Security Income,” Christopher Hollrah and his co-authors ask whether providing cash transfers to families with infants with poor health and low family income can remediate the circumstances into which the infants are born. Specifically, the authors analyze eligibility for the Supplemental Security Income Program, which provides cash transfers and, in most states, eligibility and automatic enrollment in Medicaid. The analysis relies on a novel data source compiled in collaboration with the California Departments of Public Health and Health Care Access and Information, the US Census Bureau, the National Student Clearinghouse, and Educational Results Partnership.
The results show that despite the increase in cash transfers received by infants just below the eligibility cutoff, there are no discernible improvements across the broad set of early life, childhood, and young adult administratively measured outcomes the authors studied. This analysis contributes to multiple strands of literature within economics and public policy. First, there is new evidence on the role of targeted cash transfers to families experiencing both economic and health disadvantages. Second, it builds on work examining the impacts of childhood SSI benefits specifically.
