Roughly 25 years ago, the US safety net was substantially reformed. Here we ask how those reforms affected the educational attainment of youths who were teens at the time those reforms took place. We take a difference-in-difference approach, following adolescents from two generations roughly 20 years apart. In each generation, we compare two groups, one which was more likely to have been affected by safety-net reform, and one which was less likely to have been affected. Under some assumptions, our approach identifies the joint, or bundled, effects of the constituent policy changes that make up safety-net reform. We find evidence that safety-net reform may have reduced educational attainment for women, and had small positive effects on education for men. We offer suggestions as to why our findings differ from those of previous studies of the components of safety net reform.

大约 25 年前，美国的安全网进行了重大改革。在这里，我们询问这些改革如何影响这些改革发生时青少年的受教育程度。我们采用差异中的差异方法，跟踪相隔大约 20 年的两代青少年。在每一代人中，我们比较两组，一组更有可能受到安全网改革的影响，另一组不太可能受到影响。在某些假设下，我们的方法确定了构成安全网改革的组成政策变化的联合或捆绑影响。我们发现有证据表明安全网改革可能降低了女性的受教育程度，并且对男性的教育产生的积极影响很小。