Welfare Dynamics under Time Limits
利用佛罗里达州家庭转型计划的随机实验数据，检验了福利时间限制对家庭福利使用的影响，发现家庭会为未来保留福利，尤其是有年幼子女的家庭，时间限制在生效前就已减少福利领取。
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.