Who Gets a Family? The Consequences of Family and Congregate Care Allocation for Child Outcomes
中文摘要
每年有数十万儿童在美国寄养系统中成长，面临入狱和无家可归等负面结果的高风险。本文利用其他儿童退出家庭作为其安置环境的工具变量，考察了将寄养儿童安置于家庭而非集中照料如何改善其结果。由于处理效应的异质性，改变哪些儿童与家庭匹配的政策，可以实现向寄养系统增加家庭政策所获收益的很大比例。(JEL J12, J13, J18, K42)
Abstract
Hundreds of thousands of children grow up in the US foster care system every year and are at high risk of experiencing negative outcomes such as incarceration and homelessness. This paper documents how the placement of foster children into families rather than congregate care improves their outcomes, using the exits of other children from families as an instrument for their placement setting. Policies that change which children are matched to families can achieve a large percentage of the gains from policies that add families to the foster care system due to heterogeneity in treatment effects. (JEL J12, J13, J18, K42)