My dissertation falls under the broad interest of redistribution of economic resources. The first chapter examines the efficiency of eligibility criteria for transfer programs in the United States, specifically in balancing between screening purposes and administrative burdens. The second chapter investigates the rationale behind states' decisions to adopt different policies for transfer programs. The third chapter studies the multi-generational wealth correlations among the Taiwanese population.
Welfare programs in the United States aim to target beneficiaries and combat fraud through means-testing approaches. Chapter 1 evaluates the efficiency of income and asset limits in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the United States, with a focus on the state option ``Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE)." BBCE allows states to eliminate asset limits and raise income thresholds to broaden eligible populations. Leveraging state variations from 1996 to 2007, I find that the states adopting BBCE reduced SNAP administration costs by 15-25\% without an increase in fraud cases. Moreover, the eligible population only increased by about 2\%, implying that 25\% of the costs were spent to rule out 2\% of the eligible population. Additionally, there is suggestive evidence of increased program take-up among households already eligible under previous rules, potentially driven by the simplified requirements. These findings indicate that existing asset limits and income thresholds impose unnecessary restrictions, incurring high costs for government agencies and deterring participation without effectively targeting or preventing fraud.
In Chapter 2, I attempt to understand states' decision-making behaviors through the lens of office-seeking agents' perspectives. State variations in SNAP policies have been widely utilized as sources of quasi-experiments, yet little rationalization behind such variations has been done. I test factors including voter preferences, political ideologies, fiscal constraints, administrative incentives, and economic circumstances. I examine five SNAP policies: the Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE), vehicle exemptions, face-to-face interview waiver, simplified reporting system, and transitional benefits. Leveraging the exogenous change of federal regulations that made these policies available, I find that BBCE and vehicle exemptions were most utilized by states as economic stabilizers. While Democratic party controls and voters' liberal-leaning preferences affect BBCE, vehicle exemptions, simplified reporting, and transitional benefits, the magnitude appears to be secondary to economic factors or small. Notably, the SNAP error rates continue to emerge in explaining policy adoptions. In sum, SNAP policies appear to be a blend of political, economic, and administrative considerations, depending on the specific function served by each policy.
In Chapter 3, we use millions of records from a public registry in Taiwan to estimate the wealth correlations among Taiwanese kinship members. For a long time, social scientists have used correlations in social status, measured by such characteristics as schooling, income, or occupation, across family members to capture family resemblance in social status. We measure the wealth correlations from the closest parent–child pairing to the farthest kinship ties, with only 1/32 genetic relatedness. Based on this wealth correlation, we present a complete picture of economic similarity among kin members. These correlations give us a better grasp of the hitherto obscure Chinese family structure than that of mechanical genetic relatedness. We obtain statistical evidence to support the following hypotheses: Family members’ wealth resemblance to male egos is stronger than to female egos, wealth correlations are larger along patrilineal lines than along matrilineal counterparts, wealthy families have larger correlations within the nuclear family members but smaller correlations outside it, and adopted children have weaker wealth resemblance with close relatives.
