← Search

American Economic Review Vol. 105 No. 5 2015

Changes in Safety Net Use During the Great Recession

Patricia M. Anderson1; Kristin F. Butcher2; Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach3

1 Department of Economics, Dartmouth College, 6106 Rockefeller Hall, Hanover, NH 03755, and NBER (e-mail: ) · 2 Department of Economics, Wellesley College, Pendleton East, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481, and NBER (e-mail: ) · 3 Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, 2040 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208, and NBER (e-mail: )

Abstract

We examine how participation in social safety net programs differs by income-to-poverty levels, and how that relationship changed after the Great Recession. We define income-to-poverty based on the average of 2 years of merged CPS data, and investigate program participation among households with income less than 300 percent of poverty. We find changes in both the level and distribution of safety-net program participation during the Great Recession, with SNAP expanding most at the bottom, the EITC expanding most in the middle, and UI expanding most at the top of the income ranges that we investigate; TANF did not expand.

DOI
10.1257/aer.p20151056
Volume
105
Issue
5
Pages
161-165
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite