23. Indexing and abstracting
Joseph John Doyle, David Cutler, Esther Duflo, Amy Finkelstein, Gruber Lorens Helmchen Robert Kaestner · 1999
Altruism is central to economic models of the family, yet little is known about the response of within-family altruism to changes in its cost. On July 1st 1995, Illinois cut the monthly subsidy offered to grandparents and other relatives to care for children entering foster care—those children removed from home due to abuse or neglect. This provides a rare opportunity to test the effect of a plausibly exogenous change in the cost of caring for related children on the propensity to provide care. Following the thirty- percent decline in subsidies, kin are found to have a ten to twenty percent lower propensity to provide foster care. The response is especially large for younger children, and for those who require mental health services. Finally, child outcomes do not appear to suffer following the reform, with child health outcomes tending to improve. Lower subsidies may ‘weed out ’ those more interested in the monetary reward, who may be of lower quality.