Welfare recipiency and savings outcomes in individual development accounts

National origin and immigrant welfare recipiency

This paper explores national origin differences in the welfare recipiency of immigrants to the United States. We develop an economic model of immigration which generates implications about how welfare utilization should vary according to characteristics of the country of origin. The empirical analysis reveals that a few source country characteristics explain over two-thirds of the variance of w...

Savings and Prize-Linked Savings Accounts

Savings and Prize-Linked Savings Accounts Many households have insufficient savings to handle moderate and routine consumption shocks. Many of these financially fragile households also have the highest lottery expenditures as a proportion of income. This combination suggests that Prize-Linked Savings (PLS) accounts, that combine principal-security with lottery-type jackpots, can increase saving...

Assets Beyond Saving in Individual Development Accounts

This study examines whether participation in Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) leads to a significant growth in assets beyond saving in the IDA accounts. Using a longitudinal experimental research design for low-income IDA participants, we test for impacts on five measures of assets: liquid assets, other financial assets, total financial assets, real assets, and total assets. Results show ...

Weather Insurance Savings Accounts

Better insurance against rainfall risk could improve the security of hundreds of millions of agricultural households around the world. This paper theoretically and experimentally analyzes an innovative financial product called a Weather Insurance Savings Account (WISA), which combines savings and rainfall insurance. We index the insurance share of the WISA by γ ∈ [0, 1] and use a standard model...

Medical Savings Accounts: