Kearney, Melissa Schettini. 2004. "Is There an Effect of Incremental Welfare Benefits on Fertility Behavior? A Look at the Family Cap." Journal of Human Resources 39(2): 295-325.

This analysis exploits the variation across states in the timing of policy implementation to determine if family cap policies lead to a reduction in births to women aged 15 to 34. Vital statistics birth data for the years 1989 to 1998 offer no such evidence. The data reject a decline in births of more than one percent. The finding is robust to multiple specification checks. The data also reject large declines in higher-order births among demographic groups with high welfare participation rates.

Melissa Schettini Kearney is an assistant professor of economics at Wellesley College and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. The author thanks Joshua Angrist, David Autor, Amy Finkelstein, Jonathan Gruber, Jonathan Guryan, Phil Levine, Sean May, Sendhil Mullainathan, Diane Whitmore, and participants of the MIT labor and public finance lunches for helpful comments. She also thanks Bob Schoeni, Phil Levine, and Diane Whitmore for sharing CEA welfare policy data. Three anonymous referees provided thoughtful comments and suggestions. The National Science Foundation provided financial support through a Graduate Research Fellowship. The analyses, interpretations, and conclusions of this paper are attributable to the author and not to the National Center for Health Statistics, which is responsible only for the initial natality data. The data used in t his article can be obtained beginning October 2004 through September 2007 from Melissa S. Kearney, Department of Economics, Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481.