The Impact of Universal Child Benefits on Family Health and Behaviours

Abstract

In 2006, the Universal Child Care Benet was introduced in Canada for all children aged less than 6 years. This program aims to help cover the cost of children and to provide nancial assistance to families with young children in their choice of childcare. We exploit this policy change to estimate the eects of unconditional family cash transfers on the health and behaviours of two-parent families and their children. Using a dierence-in-dierences model, we nd no evidence that the program improved child and parental outcomes in aggregate.A modest but fragile benecial eect is found for low-education families and for girls.

Effects of social security policy reforms on mental health and inequalities: A systematic review of observational studies in high-income countries

“…Increasing Child Benefits in the USA, Canada and Germany n=6Six studies in the review evaluated changes to policies that provide income support for families with dependent children ( Table 2). The majority of these studies were based in Canada (Daley, 2017;Lebihan and Mao Takongmo, 2018;Milligan and Stabile, 2009;Milligan and Stabile, 2011), with one in the USA (Rostad et al, 2020) and one in Germany (Hener, 2016). The policy reforms under evaluation included expansions in both conditional and unconditional income transfers.…”

“…Introduced in 1998, the policy underwent two expansions, one in 2001 and one in 2009, when the credit was made available in excess of the tax liability for those earning at least $10,000 and $3,000 respectively, and thus expanded in eligibility for those with lower earnings (previously the credit amount was equal to the tax liability and only available for higher earners). The study found that, relative to no CTC, only the In terms of the three studies evaluating unconditional benefits, two of them investigated the effects of introducing the Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) in Canada (Daley, 2017;Lebihan and Mao Takongmo, 2018), and one evaluated an expansion of the Universal Child Benefit in Germany (Hener, 2016).…”

“…The study by Daley (2017) focused only on maternal mental health outcomes, while using data from four repeated cross-sections in the period covering 2003 and 2008. Lebihan and Mao Takongmo (2018), in contrast, focused on outcomes for both mothers and children, and exploited individual longitudinal data covering a much longer period from 1994 to 2011. In terms of the findings, Daley 2017found that the introduction of the benefit had a positive effect on life satisfaction of all mothers in the sample (i.e.…”

“…Lebihan and Mao Takongmo (2018), on the hand, concluded that the UCCB had no significant positive effects on the J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f wellbeing of mothers and their children overall, except for a slight reduction in hyperactivity-inattention among girls (by 16% of s.d., p<0.05). There was also evidence of increased indirect aggression in the sample overall, which was driven by the higheducated sample (an increase of 11.3% of s.d., p<0.05), indicating a narrowing of inequalities but mixed effects overall.…”

DSGE models, detrending, and the method of moments

“… Notes : This table reports the moment estimators of the parameters of our model using raw data, the data in difference, and the HP‐filtered data. We follow the common presentation in applied economics (e.g., Lebihan & Mao Takongmo, 2018, 2019; Lebihan, Mao Takongmo, & McKellips, 2018). In particular, all estimators are presented with standard errors in parentheses.…”