Does the Timing of Welfare Payments Lead to Increased Drug Treatment Admissions?

Since all the welfare programs pay out at similar times and welfare recipients have higher incidents of drug use, the timing of monthly welfare checks may have unintentional consequences on the health of welfare recipients... [ view full abstract ]

Since all the welfare programs pay out at similar times and welfare recipients have higher incidents of drug use, the timing of monthly welfare checks may have unintentional consequences on the health of welfare recipients that could be mitigated with alternative policies.  Though welfare provides a safety net for many struggling Americans, monthly welfare payments might aid drug habits by providing a large payment all at once.  Empirical evidence from previous studies on the relationship between the timing of welfare payments with crime and intimate partner violence show a potential downside of monthly payments.  Another two papers examine more closely the relationship between the timing of welfare benefits and drug use, both of which provide statistically significant analyses.  

I provide additional insight to the welfare and drug use literature by using a comprehensive, national database with daily entries for drug treatment admissions. With a larger and more complete dataset, I can better inform policy, especially at the federal level.  I combine data on daily drug treatment admissions with an index that denotes days of payment for welfare payments across states and federal programs.  I use a regression discontinuity model to examine the effect of monthly welfare payments on drug treatment admissions.