This paper characterizes the nature of poverty from a dynamic life-cycle perspective. Using panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find that 40% of young Americans experienced at least one year of poverty, and most of these experienced one or two years. A significant...

Research suggests that children from low-income families are more likely to exhibit behavioral problems than children from wealthier families and these adverse behaviors have long-term detrimental effects on academic outcomes, health and earnings. In this paper, we examine the relationship...

While an extensive literature has shown that family structure is linked with child wellbeing, less well understood is how the dynamics within similar types of families affect children. Family systems theory posits that parents’ couple relationship is important for promoting children’s...

Non-cognitive skills in childhood and adolescence are associated with a host of outcomes in adulthood, including educational and occupational attainment. One explanation for these associations is that poor non-cognitive skills in early childhood interfere with the development of cognitive skills...

Past studies of the informal economy in the US focused on small geographic areas and select populations. This paper uses a nationally representative panel survey of urban parents, the largest and most diverse data yet, to describe the nature of informal work in the United States. Informal work...

This paper investigates to what extent stable and unstable three-generation family households (grandparent, parent and child) are associated with child socioemotional, cognitive and health outcomes over the first three years of a child’s life. Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families...

Theories of family functioning suggest that childbearing with multiple partners may increase parenting stress due to changes in social and economic resources and the challenges associated with parenting across multiple households. These family processes may not be equally stressful for mothers...

Census's Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) nearly doubles the elderly poverty rate compared to the "Official" Poverty Measure (OPM), a result of the SPM subtraction of medical out-of-pocket (MOOP) expenditures from income. Neither the SPM nor OPM counts health benefits or assets as resources....

Following the death of Mao in 1976, abandonment of collective farming lifted millions from poverty and heralded sweeping pro-market policies. How did China's excess in male births respond to rural land reform? In newly-available data from over 1,000 counties, a second child following a daughter...

This paper describes four lessons derived from 115 rigorous impact evaluations of educational initiatives in 33 low- and middle-income countries. First, reducing the costs of going to school and providing alternatives to traditional public schools increase attendance and attainment, but do not...