1. Health-related effects of welfare-to-work policies.
- Author
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Ayala, Luis and Rodríguez, Magdalena
- Subjects
- *
GOVERNMENT policy , *COMPETENCY assessment (Law) , *HEALTH status indicators , *SURVEYS , *DESCRIPTIVE statistics - Abstract
Non-health related policies may have consequences for health that are more important than the outcomes they were originally designed to produce. In this paper we evaluate the effects of welfare-to-work programs (WTW) on physical and mental health status and a variety of health behaviors. The paper is based on data from the minimum income program of Madrid's Government (IMI). We match the program's administrative records (39,200 households) – covering the whole history of the program from the second half of 1990 to 2001 – with a specific survey of former recipients who took part in different work-related activities conducted in 2001 (2300 households). We perform propensity score matching to find that both health status – including physical and mental health problems – and behaviors outcomes were modestly better for those individuals who had taken part in work-related activities. These results offer support for the contention that welfare-to-work policies may have positive unintended health effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2013
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