ArticleAmerican journal of epidemiology2016
Health Behaviors, Mental Health, and Health Care Utilization Among Single Mothers After Welfare Reforms in the 1990s.
Article in American journal of epidemiology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of social assistance programs on population health: a systematic review of research in high-income countries.BMC public health · 2019Pooled it
- Welfare-to-work interventions and their effects on the mental and physical health of lone parents and their children.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2018Pooled it
- Welfare-to-work interventions and their effects on the mental and physical health of lone parents and their children.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2017Pooled it
- Variations in diagnostic testing utilization in Italy: Secondary analysis of a national survey.PloS one · 2018Trial
- Article
- Easing Cash Assistance Rules and Breastfeeding.JAMA health forum · 2025Article
- Effects of the Mindful Somatic Psychoeducation Program on the Mental Health of Unmarried Mothers: A Randomized Control Trial.Psychiatry investigation · 2025Article
- The long-term health effects of welfare reform.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2025Article
- Social Determinants of Health: Analysis of the Effect of Socio-environmental Factors to Diseases, Injury-related DALYs, and Deaths based on WHO, ILO, and WB Data.Acta medica Philippina · 2025Article
- Methods Used to Evaluate the Health Effects of Social Policies: A Systematic Review.Current epidemiology reports · 2025Article
- Easing Cash Assistance Rules During COVID-19 Was Associated With Reduced Days Of Poor Physical And Mental Health.Health affairs (Project Hope) · 2022Article
- Effect of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games on COVID-19 incidence in Japan: a synthetic control approach.BMJ open · 2022Article
- Impact of Regression to the Mean on the Synthetic Control Method: Bias and Sensitivity Analysis.Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2020Article
- Autocratisation and universal health coverage: synthetic control study.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2020Article
- Solidarity and disparity: Declining labor union density and changing racial and educational mortality inequities in the United States.American journal of industrial medicine · 2020Article
- Do disability, parenthood, and gender matter for health disparities?: A US population-based study.Disability and health journal · 2019Article
- Is social assistance boosting the health of the poor? Results from Ontario and three countries.Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique · 2019Article
- Can the health effects of widely-held societal norms be evaluated? An analysis of the United Nations convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (UN-CEDAW).BMC public health · 2019Article
- Synthetic control methodology as a tool for evaluating population-level health interventions.Journal of epidemiology and community health · 2018Review
- Effects of restrictions to Income Support on health of lone mothers in the UK: a natural experiment study.The Lancet. Public health · 2018Article
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Abstract
We studied the health of low-income US women affected by the largest social policy change in recent US history: the 1996 welfare reforms. Using the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (1993-2012), we performed 2 types of analysis. First, we used difference-in-difference-in-differences analyses to estimate associations between welfare reforms and health outcomes among the most affected women (single mothers aged 18-64 years in 1997; n = 219,469) compared with less affected women (married mothers, single nonmothers, and married nonmothers of the same age range in 1997; n = 2,422,265). We also used a synthetic control approach in which we constructed a more ideal control group for single mothers by weighting outcomes among the less affected groups to match pre-reform outcomes among single mothers. In both specifications, the group most affected by welfare reforms (single mothers) experienced worse health outcomes than comparison groups less affected by the reforms. For example, the reforms were associated with at least a 4.0-percentage-point increase in binge drinking (95% confidence interval: 0.9, 7.0) and a 2.4-percentage-point decrease in the probability of being able to afford medical care (95% confidence interval: 0.1, 4.8) after controlling for age, educational level, and health care insurance status. Although the reforms were applauded for reducing welfare dependency, they may have adversely affected health.
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