The Virginia Work Requirements Experiment

Since the mid-1990s, work requirements have become central to major public assistance programs in the U.S. Despite the long history of these policies, there is little evidence to inform debates about the consequences of conditioning public benefits on work. Economists Timothy Layton and Adam Leive with health policy scholar Adrianna McIntyre will use the first randomized evidence of the effects of SNAP work requirements and recertification on program enrollment, and labor market and other outcomes to measure the effect of work requirements on SNAP participation and assess how participation effects vary across groups. They will assess the impacts of work requirements on labor force participation, earnings, and other outcomes and assess the independent and complementary roles of work and reporting requirements on program participation and labor market outcomes.