This paper shows that conditional cash transfers under Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), a main program of the 1935 Social Security Act, reduced infant, children and adult mortality. I take advantage of the transition from mothers’ pensions to ADC and the large differences in ADC payments and eligibility across 104 cities, 2,260 counties, and 49 states to estimate the impacts of cash transfers on mortality rates, by age, sex, race, and cause between 1929 and 1944. I find that ADC's expansion reduced infant and adult mortality by between 10 and 20 percent. This finding, based on an event-study design, is robust to a range of specifications, difference-and-differences, an instrumental variable strategy, a range of fixed effects, placebo tests and a border-pair policy discontinuity design. The largest mortality reductions came from drops in communicable and infectious diseases, such as influenza, pneumonia and tuberculosis.

本文表明，根据1935年《社会保障法》的一项主要计划，有条件现金转移可降低婴儿，儿童和成人的死亡率。我利用从母亲的养老金到ADC的过渡以及104个城市，2,260个县和49个州在ADC支付和资格上的巨大差异来估计现金转移对死亡率的影响，包括年龄，性别，种族和年龄。原因在1929年至1944年之间。我发现ADC的扩展将婴儿和成人的死亡率降低了10％至20％。基于事件研究设计的此发现对于一系列规范，差异和差异，工具可变策略，一系列固定效应，安慰剂测试和边界对策略不连续性设计具有鲁棒性。