Hilary Hoynes is a Professor of Economics and Public Policy and holds the Haas Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities at the University of California Berkeley where she also directs the Berkeley Opportunity Lab. She is an economist who works on poverty, inequality, food and nutrition programs, and the impacts of government tax and transfer programs on low income families. Her current research examines how access to the social safety net in early life affects children’s later life health and human capital outcomes.
Professor Hoynes is a member of the American Academy of Art and Sciences, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists. She has served as Co-Editor of the American Economic Review and the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. She is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on National Statistics and serves on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Previously, she served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Building an Agenda to Reduce the Number of Children in Poverty by Half in 10 Years, the State of California Task Force on Lifting Children and Families out of Poverty, and the Federal Commission on Evidence-Based Policy Making. In 2014, she received the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award from the Committee on the Status of the Economics Profession of the American Economic Association. Dr. Hoynes received her PhD in Economics from Stanford University in 1992 and her undergraduate degree in Economics and Mathematics from Colby College in 1983.
You can reach Hilary at hoynes@berkeley.edu
For CV, office hours and current papers, visit Hilary's website.
Contact and Office Hours
About
Areas of Expertise
- Tax Policy
- Labor and Employment
- Poverty & Inequality
- Children, Youth and Families
- Government
Research
Working Papers
Is the Social Safety Net a Long-Term Investment? Large-Scale Evidence from the Food Stamps Program
Working Paper (April 2020)
We use novel, large-scale data on 43 million Americans from the 2000 Census and the 2001 to 2013 American Communities Survey linked to the Social Security Administration’s NUMIDENT to study how a policy-driven increase in economic resources for families affects children’s long-term outcomes. Using variation from the county-level roll-out of the Food Stamps program between 1961 and 1975, we find that children with access to greater economic resources before age five experience an increase of 6 percent of a standard deviation in their adult human capital, 3 percent of a standard deviation in their adult economic self-sufficiency, 8 percent of a standard deviation in the quality of their adult neighborhoods, 0.4 percentage-point increase in longevity, and a 0.5 percentage-point decrease in likelihood of being incarcerated. Based on these estimates, we conclude that Food Stamps’ transfer of resources to families is a highly cost-effective investment into young children, yielding a marginal value of public funds of approximately 56.
Response to Comment by Dench and Joyce on Hoynes, Miller and Simon AEJP 2015
Working Paper (November 2019)
Safety Net Investments in Children (April 2018)
Working Paper (April 2018)
In this paper, we examine what groups of children are served by core childhood social safety net programs -- including Medicaid, EITC, CTC, SNAP, and AFDC/TANF -- and how they have changed over time. We find that virtually all gains in spending on the social safety net for children since 1990 have gone to families with earnings, and to families with income above the poverty line. These trends are the result of welfare reform and the expansion of in-work tax credits. We review the available research and find that access to safety net programs during childhood improves outcomes for children and society over the long run. This evidence suggests that the recent changes to the social safety net may have lasting negative impacts on the poorest children.
Why SNAP Matters
Working Paper (January 2016)
Experimental Evidence on Distributional Impacts of Head Start [Revise and resubmit, Journal of Political Economy]
Working Paper (August 2014)
This study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the distributional effects of Head Start, using the first national randomized experiment of the Head Start program (the Head Start Impact Study). We examine program effects on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes and explore the heterogeneous effects of the program through 1st grade by estimating quantile treatment effects under endogeneity (IV-QTE) as well as various types of subgroup mean treatment effects and two-stage least squares treatment effects. We find that (the experimentally manipulated) Head Start attendance leads to large and statistically significant gains in cognitive achievement during the pre-school period and that the gains are largest at the bottom of the distribution. Once the children enter elementary school, the cognitive gains fade out for the full population, but importantly, cognitive gains persist through 1st grade for some Spanish speakers. These results provide strong evidence in favor of a compensatory model of the educational process. Additionally, our findings of large effects at the bottom are consistent with an interpretation that the relatively large gains in the well-studied Perry Preschool Program are in part due to the low baseline skills in the Perry study population. We find no evidence that the counterfactual care setting plays a large role in explaining the differences between the HSIS and Perry findings.
Selected Publications
In-Work Credits in the UK and the US
Brewer, Mike and Hilary Hoynes. 2020. “In-Work Credits in the UK and the US,” Fiscal Studies, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 519–560.
In-work credits grew in popularity worldwide during the late 1990s and 2000s as a means of reforming welfare systems in ways that could both encourage work and reduce poverty. This paper reviews the role of in-work tax credits in theUKand theUS, what is known and remains to be known about their impacts and distributional consequences, and the possibilities for reform. Evidence is clear that in-work credits reduce poverty and can encourage lone parents to work, but have minimal impacts, in aggregate, on second earners. Spending on in-work credits has grown in the UK, but there have been two major overhauls of the way these are structured so that, on current plans, the UK will not have an identifiable in-work credit by 2023. In the US, in-work assistance has grown in generosity and reach since the 1980s, thanks to broad political support for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the (less-targeted) Child Tax Credit. Future debates in the UK should focus on the rise of in-work poverty, particularly amongst couples, with some needed focus on the design of in-work benefits, a debate here economic analysis and evidence should have a major role to play. In the US, the policy discussion should be aboutIn-work credits grew in popularity worldwide during the late 1990s and 2000s as a means of reforming welfare systems in ways that could both encourage work and reduce poverty. This paper reviews the role of in-work tax credits in the UK and theUS, what is known and remains to be known about their impacts.
and distributional consequences, and the possibilities for reform. Evidence is
clear that in-work credits reduce poverty and can encourage lone parents to
work, but have minimal impacts, in aggregate, on second earners. Spending on
in-work credits has grown in the UK, but there have been two major overhauls
of the way these are structured so that, on current plans, the UK will not
have an identifiable in-work credit by 2023. In the US, in-work assistance
has grown in generosity and reach since the 1980s, thanks to broad political
support for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the (less-targeted) Child
Tax Credit. Future debates in the UK should focus on the rise of in-work
poverty, particularly amongst couples, with some needed focus on the design
of in-work benefits, a debate where economic analysis and evidence should
have a major role to play. In the US, the policy discussion should be about whether to increase substantially the EITC for those without children, and how
best to maintain or expand the credit’s generosity for those with children.
The Real Value of SNAP Benefits and Health Outcomes
Bronchetti, Erin, Garret Christensen and Hilary Hoynes “Local Food Prices, SNAP Purchasing Power, and Child Health,” The Journal of Health Economics, Volume 68, December 2019.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) is one of the most important elements of the social safety net. Unlike most other safety net programs, SNAP varies little across states and over time, which creates challenges for quasi-experimental evaluation. Notably, SNAP benefits are fixed across 48 states; but local food prices vary, leading to geographic variation in the real value – or purchasing power – of SNAP benefits. In this study, we provide the first estimates that leverage variation in SNAP purchasing power across markets to examine effects of SNAP on child health. We link panel data on regional food prices to National Health Interview Survey data and use a fixed effects framework to estimate the relationship between local purchasing power of SNAP and children’s health and health care utilization. We find that lower SNAP purchasing power leads to lower utilization of preventive health care and more days of school missed due to illness. We estimate no effect on parent-reported health status.
Universal Basic Income in the US and Advanced Countries
Hoynes, Hilary and Jesse Rothstein. 2019. “Universal Basic Income in the United States and Advanced Countries,” Annual Review of Economics, Volume 11, pp. 929–58.
We discuss the potential role of Universal Basic Incomes (UBIs) in advanced countries. A feature of advanced economies that distinguishes them from developing countries is the existence of well developed, if often incomplete, safety nets. We develop a framework for describing transfer programs, flexible enough to encompass most existing programs as well as UBIs, and use this framework to compare various UBIs to the existing constellation of programs in the United States. A UBI would direct much larger shares of transfers to childless, non-elderly, non-disabled households than existing programs, and much more to middle-income rather than poor households. A UBI large enough to increase transfers to low-income families would be enormously expensive. We review the labor supply literature for evidence on the likely impacts of a UBI. We argue that the ongoing UBI pilot studies will do little to resolve the major outstanding questions.
Strengthening SNAP as an Automatic Stabilizer
Hilary Hoynes and Diane Schanzenbach (2019), "Strengthening SNAP as an Automatic Stabilizer" in Recession Ready: Fiscal Policies to Stabilize the American Economy, edited by Heather Boushey, Ryan Nunn and Jay Shambaugh. The Hamilton Project.
How do the U.S and Canadian social safety nets compare for women and children?
Hilary Hoynes and Mark Stabile (2019), Journal of Labor Economics Volume 37, number S2, pp: S253-S288.
The past quarter-century has seen substantial change in the social safety nets for families with children in the United States and Canada. Both countries have moved away from cash welfare, but the United States has relied more on work requirements. We examine the implications for the employment and poverty of low-educated single mothers. We find that employment improved substantially in both countries, absolutely and relative to a control group of single women without children. Poverty rates also declined in both countries, with more of the decline coming through market income in the United States and benefit income in Canada.
In the News
Webcasts
Covid-19 Crisis, the Social Safety Net and Who is Being Left Behind - Hilary Hoynes
Hilary Hoyne
Date: November 20, 2020 Duration: 19 minutes
The Social Safety Net as an Investment - Goldman Stories: Hilary Hoynes
Hilary hoyne
Event: University of California Television
Date: November 20, 2020 Duration: 8 minutes
Berkeley Conversations - COVID-19: Economic Impact, Human Solutions
Henry E Brady,Ellora Derenoncourt,Hilary Hoynes,Jesse Rothstein,Gabriel Zucma
Date: April 10, 2020 Duration: 60 minutes
The 20th Anniversary of Welfare Reform: Work and Poverty
Hilary Hoynes and Panelist
Date: September 22, 2016 Duration: 75 minutes
Up from Poverty: Funding Solutions That Work
Hilary Hoynes,Rucker Johnson,Henry E. Brad
Date: May 7, 2016 Duration: 59 minutes
Last updated on 04/24/2024