The Impact of Family Tax Benefits on Children’s Health and Educational Outcomes

Abstract

We leverage recent income support reforms for families with children in Canada to investigate the impact of child benefits on child health and educational outcomes. Using administrative school data from British Columbia linked to parents' tax files, we find evidence that increased family benefit generosity improved children's mental health, but little evidence of any change in test scores from standardized exams. Our results suggest that most of the mental health effect is concentrated among girls and that relative improvements in mental health were larger among children in higher-income families.