Dynamic Envy-Free Permanency in Child Welfare Systems

Abstract: Caseworkers in foster care systems seek to place waiting children in the most suitable homes. Furthermore, social work guidelines prioritize heterogeneous attributes of children and homes when deliberating placements. We use insights from market design and dynamic matching to characterize a class of dynamically envy-free mechanisms that incentivize expedient placements when children and homes arrive to the market over time and homes may accept or decline placements. The mechanisms have robustness against justified envy and costly patience. We analyze strategic incentives and efficiency properties of dynamic envy-freeness. Finally, we conduct empirical simulations that affirm that our mechanisms drastically increase placements and reduce waiting costs while maintaining robustness to prediction error versus a naive mechanism that always sequentially runs Deferred Acceptance. Practitioners can implement our mechanisms through assigning priority to child-home matches.