02898cam a22003257 4500001000700000003000500007005001700012008004100029100002300070245024800093260006600341490004200407500001800449520124300467530006101710538007201771538003601843690009401879690013901973690007502112690008102187690005702268700001902325700001902344700002502363710004202388830007702430856003802507856002702545w15696NBER20140713112852.0140713s2010 mau||||fs|||| 000 0 eng d1 aFishback, Price V.12aA Patchwork Safety Neth[electronic resource]:bA Survey of Cliometric Studies of Income Maintenance Programs in the United States in the First Half of the Twentieth Century /cPrice V. Fishback, Samuel Allen, Jonathan Fox, Brendan Livingston. aCambridge, Mass.bNational Bureau of Economic Researchc2010.1 aNBER working paper seriesvno. w15696 aJanuary 2010.3 aSocial welfare programs in the United States are designed to serve as safety nets for people in hard times, in contrast with the universal approach found in many other developed western nations. In a survey of Cliometric studies of social welfare programs in the U.S., we examine the variation in the safety net in the U.S. across states in the 20th century, the determinants of the variation, and its impact on socioeconomic outcomes. The U.S. has always displayed substantial variation in the extent of the safety net because the features of most public social welfare programs are and were determined by local and state governments, even after the federal government became involved. Differences across states persist strongly for typically a decade, although the persistence weakens with time, and there are some periods when federal intervention led to a re-ordering. The rankings of state benefits differs from program to program, and economic and political factors have different weights in determining benefit levels in panel data estimation of their effects. Variation in benefits across programs during the early 1900s had significant impact on labor markets, economic activity, family formation, death rates, and crime. aHardcopy version available to institutional subscribers. aSystem requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files. aMode of access: World Wide Web. 7aH53 - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aH75 - State and Local Government: Health • Education • Welfare • Public Pensions2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aN32 - U.S. • Canada: 1913-2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aN42 - U.S. • Canada: 1913–2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aR50 - General2Journal of Economic Literature class.1 aAllen, Samuel.1 aFox, Jonathan.1 aLivingston, Brendan.2 aNational Bureau of Economic Research. 0aWorking Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)vno. w15696.4 uhttp://www.nber.org/papers/w15696 uurn:doi:10.3386/w15696