Jeff Grogger
speaker
12 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2010
last heard Sep 2010
Jeff Grogger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
The differences across the states are really one of the key mechanisms by which we learn anything about the incentive effects of welfare programs.
And they vary quite a bit.
What we do is we try to use that variation in benefits to understand the relationship between benefits and welfare receipt.
And so this is where we learn, for example, that a 10% increase in benefits generates roughly a 2% to 4% increase in the caseload.
So there's an effect there, but the magnitude of the effect is not all that great.
The incentive problem is actually the weakest when the economy is itself weak.
If there's no jobs to be had, then the idea that somebody is trading welfare for a job isn't that much of a problem.
It's not like they would be working anyway.
At the same time, that's precisely the point at which you want to be spending more in terms of macroeconomic stabilization.
That's when you want the government to be boosting the economy.
What I would do is I would take the benefits and I would make them rise during times when the economy is very weak.
That way, you're providing aid to people who need it and you're targeting that aid at a time when it's needed the most, when the economy is weak.
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