Cash Transfers and Fertility: Evidence from Poland’s Family 500+ Program

Anna Bokun

Using restricted microdata from the Polish Central Statistical Office’s (GUS) Household Budget Survey and Eurostat, I exploit a recent (2016) and universal Polish child benefit policy change to study how cash transfers affect fertility in the population as a whole and in demographic subgroups. Following a descriptive analysis of fertility trends and difference-in-differences methodology, I aim to address two principal research questions: 1) Is fertility significantly affected by the child benefit policy? If so, what is the magnitude of the effect? 2) What is the policy’s effect on child poverty levels, especially extreme poverty? Preliminary descriptive findings suggest that relatively more educated and older mothers are having more children since the introduction of the child benefit.

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 Presented in Session 49. Flash Session Policy and Practice