Poverty, Income, and Assets

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Marital Stability

How can the SIME/DIME results be used as a guide to the possible effects on family structure of new public policy initiatives? The analyst themselves "caution the reader against uncritically extrapolating from these or any other summary measure of the effects of SIME/DIME on marital dissolution." (11) They stress as reasons for this statement

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Conclusions Suggested by the SIME/DIME Results

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Effects on Marital Stability (9)

Although, as mentioned earlier, the experiment was not explicitly designed to test effects on marital stability, much attention was paid to the issue in terms of both data collection and analysis. To the extent that the effects of the experiment on marital dissolution were expected to depend on the guarantee and the tax rate, and to the extent t

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Counseling/Training Subsidy Effects

A unique feature of SIME/DIME among the four NIT experiments was the testing of a labor market counseling and training subsidy program in addition to a negative income tax transfer program. The rationale for including these programs was to determine whether increased labor market information and increased education and training could offset the

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Cash Transfer Effects on Labor Supply

The labor supply results for husbands, wives, female family heads, and youth will be summarized in turn. For each group, the overall response to the SIME/DIME negative income tax plans taken together is described first. A discussion of differences in response among the different NIT plans follows.

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Introduction

The major SIME/DIME results are presented under three headings. First, the effects of the experiment on work effort or labor supply are presented. The primary focus is the effect of eligibility for a negative income tax plan, but the analysis sample used to obtain these findings includes all families enrolled in the experiments, including thos

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. SIME/DIME Results

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. The Sample

The composition of the SIME/DIME sample was defined partly with reference to the likely population to be included in any national negative income tax program and partly to assure that important questions about the magnitude of the overall work effort response and about possible differential responses by different population groups could be satisfa

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Data Collection

The primary data for analysis of behavioral responses to the experiment came from a series of face-to-face interviews administered three times a year, for the duration of the treatment period and at least one year beyond. These took about forty minutes each, were administered in the families' homes by specially trained interviewers, and were ide

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Administration of the Treatments

The cash transfer treatment, as has been noted, was defined by a guarantee and a tax rate. The amount of payment actually received by a family was calculated according to information regarding non-experimental income, assets, and expenses contained in a monthly Income Report Form submitted by the family to the SIME/DIME payments office. This i

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Counseling/Training Subsidy Treatment

There were three variants of the counseling/training subsidy treatments: counseling only, counseling combined with a 50% subsidy for approved education (5) or training courses, and counseling combined with a 100% subsidy for approved education or training. Within a family enrolled in the counseling/training subsidy programs, every family memb

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Cash Transfer (NIT) Treatments

The cash transfer treatment tested in SIME/DIME, as in the previous income maintenance experiments, consisted of a series of negative income tax plans. A negative income tax is simply a cash transfer program in which there is (a) a maximum benefit (called the guarantee) for which a family is eligible if it has no other income and (b) a rate (cal

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. The Design and Implementation of SIME/DIME

SIME/DIME was launched in Seattle, Washington, in 1970 and extended in 1972 to a second site in Denver, Colorado. The prime contractors for SIME/DIME were the States of Washington and Colorado, which subcontracted with SIR International for the design, operation, and research evaluation of the experiment. SRI International, in turn, subcontrac

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. The Treatment-Control Comparison

We have been discussing random assignment of treatment to subjects in an experimental study. One "treatment" that is frequently tested is no treatment at all, in order words the "control" treatment. Families or individuals enrolled in the control group are not eligible for any special benefit or services, but provide the same information to th

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Size of Sample and Strength of Treatment

Other things equal, the larger the sample size, the greater the ability of an experiment to detect treatment effects and the greater the statistical confidence that can be placed in the findings. Having a larger sample size than all the other income maintenance experiments combined, SIME/DIME produced the results to which one could attach the gr

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. The Design of the Experiment

Given a will-defined treatment, an expected effect, and an expected cause-effect mechanism, the next step is to design an experiment that will clarify the cause-effect relationship. Developing such a design is complex. The basic aim, however, is straightforward; to introduce deliberate and systematic variations in the strength of the treatment

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. The Propositions to be Tested

In order to test whether something is the cause of something else, it is important not only to define the treatment and the hypothesized effect clearly and unambiguously, but also to be able to spell out the logic of the mechanism connecting the treatment to the hypothesized effect. If the issue of policy interest cannot be given prior shape in

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Social Experimentation

A social experiment is a field test of one or more social programs — or, to use the phraseology of the natural sciences, a test of one or more "treatments." A social experiment is a field test in the sense that families or individuals are actually enrolled in a pilot social program offering some type of special benefit or service. It is "ex

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. The Policy Context

In the mid 1960s, a consensus emerged among policy analysts and that there were potential problems with the existing set of transfer programs available to those in need. Programs were believed to be fragmented and characterized by variations in benefit levels and administrative access among different types of families. In particular, the worki

Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment

The Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment (SIME/DIME) was the last in a series of four, large-scale income maintenance experiments undertaken in the late 1960s and early 1970s to measure the disincentive effects of cash transfers on the market work of those eligible for them. The purpose of the summary is to provide an overview of the rat

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