How Did Safety-Net Reform Affect the Education of Adolescents from Low-Income Families?

Roughly 25 years ago, the US safety net was substantially reformed. Here we ask how those reforms affected the educational attainment of youths who were teens at the time those reforms took place. We take a difference-in-difference approach, following adolescents from two generations roughly 20 years apart. In each generation, we compare two groups, one which was more likely to have been affected by safety-net reform, and one which was less likely to have been affected. Under some assumptions, our approach identifies the joint, or bundled, effects of the constituent policy changes that make up safety-net reform. We find evidence that safety-net reform may have reduced educational attainment for women, and had small positive effects on education for men. We offer suggestions as to why our findings differ from those of previous studies of the components of safety net reform.