Of all of the welfare reforms that were implemented during the 1990s, time limits may represent the single greatest break from past policy. This paper expands on what is known about this important welfare reform measure by exploiting the predictions from Grogger and Michalopoulos (2003) to estimate the effects of time limits on welfare use, employment, labor supply, earnings, and income among female-headed families. Results based on data from the March Current Population Survey suggest that time limits have had important effects on welfare use and work, accounting for about one-eighth of the decline in welfare use and about 7% of the rise in employment since 1993. They have had no significant effect on earnings or income, however. The analysis also shows that the collective effects of other reforms have had important impacts on employment and labor supply. Furthermore, it identifies the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as a particularly important contributor to both the recent decrease in welfare use and the recent increase in employment, labor supply, and earnings.

Among the most important changes brought about by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 are time limits, which provide consumers with an incentive to conserve their welfare benefits for future use. Among forward‐looking, expected‐utility‐maximizing consumers who face liquidity constraints and earnings uncertainty, economic theory predicts that the incentive to conserve should be strongest among families with the youngest children. We test this prediction using data from Florida’s Family Transition Program, a randomized welfare reform experiment. Our estimates generally exhibit the predicted age dependence, which suggests that time limits affect welfare use before they become binding. Our estimates indicate that, in the absence of other reforms that increased welfare use, FTP’s time limit would have reduced welfare receipt by 16 percent.

Why Did the Welfare Rolls Fall During the 1990's? The Importance of Entry by Jeffrey Grogger, Steven J. Haider and Jacob Klerman. Published in volume 93, issue 2, pages 288-292 of American Economic Review, May 2003