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Academic Papers Artículo en revista académica

Stigma in Welfare Programs

  • person Pablo Celhay

    Bruce D. Meyer, Nikolas Mittag

  • class The Review of Economics and Statistics 2025
Stigma of welfare participation is important for policy and survey design, because it reduces program take-up and increases misreporting. Stigma is also relevant to the literature on social image concerns, yet empirical evidence is scant because stigma is difficult to empirically identify. We use a novel approach to studying stigma by examining the relationship between program participation in a recipient’s local network and underreporting program participation in surveys. We find a robust negative relationship and provide evidence against explanations other than stigma. Stigma decreases when more peers engage in the stigmatized behavior and when such actions are less observable.