Welfare and Family Stability: Do Benefits Affect When Children Leave the Nest?
研究福利制度如何通过待遇与家庭规模的关联影响青少年是否留在父母家，发现父母因子女离巢而损失的福利越少，子女越可能提前离家，这揭示了福利时限政策的潜在副作用。
The welfare system has long been criticized for its incentives against marriage. This paper examines one way in which welfare actually may keep families together: the fact that benefits increase with family size may encourage teenagers to stay in welfare-recipient households. Welfare benefit incentives affecting coresidence are twofold: (1) a parent loses benefits if a child leaves the household and (2) a child may receive additional benefits if s/he leaves the parental household. At a theoretical level, these incentives are shown to have an ambiguous effect on the coresidence decision. Empirically, Ifind that children are more likely to leave their parents the smaller the benefit loss that the parent suffers. This result illustrates a potential side-effect of welfare time limits, which effectively make children less valuable to welfare parents who reach the time limit. When children no longer increase the benefits available to lowincome parents, more children may leave the parental household before age 18. Welfare's effects on living arrangements are estimated to be considerably stronger than most previously estimated effects on childbearing or female headship.