We find that poor children receiving cash transfers in childhood live about a year longer and the results are very robust. Because income transfers were the only major public benefit for which poor children were eligible until 1950, (with the exception of public schooling) we can interpret these as the effect of cash transfers alone. We also present suggestive evidence regarding potential mechanisms by which income transfers increase longevity. Specifically, we find that cash transfers are associated with lower probability of being underweight (a marker of mal-nutrition), higher income in young adulthood and we present suggestive evidence of a relationship to higher levels of schooling.

That’s what makes new research into Mothers’ Pensions, one of America’s earliest welfare programs, so fascinating. These state-level programs for widows became popular in the early decades of the 20th century, before the financial strain of the Great Depression rendered them nonviable; later, the New Deal stepped in with the federal program Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC; later replaced by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF). Anna Aizer, Shari Eli, Joseph Ferrie, Adriana Lleras-Muney, and a team of research assistants took a detailed look at kids who grew up in Mothers’ Pension households and drew some conclusions about the long-term benefits of modest cash transfers. The program is old enough that almost all the kids whose moms received money are dead now, allowing the researchers to conclude definitively that it increased life expectancy. What’s more, World War II draft records show that poor kids whose moms received pensions were substantially healthier, had more years of schooling, and earned higher incomes than similar kids whose moms didn’t get pensions.