Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
Health Aff (Millwood). 2013 Jun;32(6):1072-7. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2012.0971.
During the 1990s reforms to the US welfare system introduced new time limits on people's eligibility to receive public assistance. These limits were developed to encourage welfare recipients to seek employment. Little is known about how such social policy programs may have affected participants' health. We explored whether the Florida Family Transition Program randomized trial, a welfare reform experiment, led to long-term changes in mortality among participants. The Florida program included a 24-36-month time limit for welfare participation, intensive job training, and placement assistance. We linked 3,224 participants from the experiment to 17-18 years of prospective mortality follow-up data and found that participants in the program experienced a 16 percent higher mortality rate than recipients of traditional welfare. If our results are generalizable to national welfare reform efforts, they raise questions about whether the cost savings associated with welfare reform justify the additional loss of life.
20 世纪 90 年代，美国福利制度改革对人们享受公共援助的资格设定了新的时间限制。这些限制旨在鼓励福利接受者寻找工作。关于这些社会政策项目如何影响参与者的健康，我们知之甚少。我们探讨了佛罗里达家庭过渡计划随机试验（一项福利改革实验）是否导致参与者的死亡率发生长期变化。佛罗里达计划包括 24-36 个月的福利参与时间限制、强化就业培训和安置援助。我们将实验中的 3224 名参与者与 17-18 年的前瞻性死亡率随访数据相关联，发现该计划的参与者死亡率比传统福利接受者高出 16%。如果我们的结果可以推广到全国的福利改革工作，那么这就引发了一个问题，即与福利改革相关的成本节约是否证明额外的生命损失是合理的。
