We investigate immediate effects of a large scale child benefit program introduction on labor supply of the household members in Poland. Due to nonrandom eligibility and universal character of the program standard evaluation estimators are likely to be inconsistent. In order to address this issues we propose a novel approach which combines difference-in-difference (DID) propensity score based methods with covariate balancing propensity score (CBPS) by Imai and Ratkovic (2014). The DID part solves potential problems with non-parallel outcome dynamics in treated and non-treated subpopulations resulting from non-experimental character of the data, whereas CBPS is expected to reduce significantly bias from the systematic differences between treated and untreated subpopulations. We account also for potential heterogeneity among households by estimating a range of local average treatment effects which jointly provide a reliable view on the overall impact. We found that the program has a minor impact on the labor supply in periods following its introduction. There is an evidence for a small encouraging effect on hours worked by treated mothers of children at school age, both sole and married. Additionally, the program may influence the intra-household division of duties among parents of the youngest children as suggested by simultaneous slight decline in participating mothers' probability of working and a small increase in treated fathers' hours worked.
Unpublished version
Published version
Covariate balancing PS applied to female labor force supply
The aim of the project is develop a new estimator to analyze the case of a universal policy intervention when control groups are unavailable. The estimator will be applied to quantify the effect of child support instrument on the labor supply of men and women. We will verify a hypothesis that monetary non-equivalent transfer reduces the labor supply of the second earner in a household, ceteris paribus. We will separate between the effects on the breadwinner and the second earner in the aftermath of the large family transfer program in Poland. Since in Poland second earner is typically a woman, we will also compare the labor supply reaction of married women and single earner households with woman as a head of the household.
This project combines applied labor economics with theoretical econometrics. The estimation of the effects of the unconditional non-equivalent transfer program program on labor supply falls into the category of program evaluation econometrics, but most of the estimators require a valid control group. We propose to apply a novel approach: a difference-in-difference (DID) estimator with weights derived from the Covariate Balancing Propensity Score (CBPS) estimator by Imai and Ratkovic (2014). The strategy based on DID exploits the quasi-natural experiment character of program, whereas the weighting scheme based on CBPS will assure proper adjustment of the control group to the treated group. Utilizing data for Poland (labor force survey and household budget survey) we will estimate a range of local treatment effects, to provide reliable boundaries for the total effect.
Co się stanie, gdy część rodzin dostanie nagle i bez związku z własną aktywnością bardzo duży transfer? I jak to policzyć?
Our research proposal consists of two important contributions. First, methodological, we propose a novel way to estimate the causal effect of policy instrument, in a situation, when the instrument design invalidates other estimation methods. Second, this novel estimator will be applied to provide an evaluation of the large scale policy instrument in Poland, effects of child support instrument on household labor supply. Additionally, will develop a statistical package for CBPS in Stata environment. The package will be distributed free of charge on the project website and on user forums. As the CBPS method serves for calculation of covariate balancing propensity score in any context, the scope of potential usage is very broad.
@techreport{premik2021evaluating,
title={Evaluating the 500+ child support program in {P}oland},
author={Premik, Filip},
year={2022},
institution={GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics}
}