Update of the Benefits and Costs of a Child Allowance—April 2024
In the Benefits and Costs of a Child Allowance (Garfinkel et al., 2022), published in the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, the authors developed a model to calculate the benefits and costs of cash transfers to families with children. A key element of the model is the standardization of a wide variety of estimates across and within studies of impacts for an annual $1,000 increase in transfer income. Since then, the benefit-cost research group at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University has built on this research focused on cash transfers for children and their families to estimate the benefits and costs of other policy reforms (e.g. child care assistance) and we hope that others may also build on this work in diverse ways.
This method update records the refinements we have made to our model to date. In consequence of these updates, a $1,000 increase in household income from cash and near-cash transfer generates $8,342 social benefits, and a child allowance policy with $97 billion of fiscal cost per year, generates social benefits of $1,541 billion per year. As new studies broaden and deepen our understanding of the impacts of cash and near-cash transfers or methods for estimating the benefits of cash and near-cash benefits, we will update the model periodically.
Suggested Citation
Garfinkel, Irwin, Elizabeth Ananat, Sophie M. Collyer, Robert Paul Hartley, Buyi Wang, and Christopher Wimer. 2024. Update of the Benefits and Costs of a Child Allowance—April 2024. New York: Center on Poverty and Social Policy, Columbia University.
Access at: www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/publication/2024/updating-benefit-cost-child-allowance-model
