To test the causal impact of religiosity, we conducted a randomized evaluation of an evangelical Protestant Christian values and theology education program that consisted of 15 weekly half-hour sessions. We analyze outcomes for 6,276 ultra-poor Filipino households six months after the program...

Time limits are a central component of recent welfare reforms and represent a substantial departure from previous policy. However, several recent studies suggest that they have had no effect on welfare use. In this paper I attempt to reconcile those findings with results from Grogger and...

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of recent welfare reforms, investigating the effects of both state-specific waivers in the early 1990s and the 1996 federal reform legislation. Unlike earlier work, we analyze a wide array of indicators, including welfare participation, labor market...

This paper uses a lifetime framework to address questions about the progressivity of social security and proposed reforms. We use a large sample of diverse individuals from the PSID to calculate lifetime income, to classify individuals into income quintiles, and then to calculate the present...

We estimate the effect of losing Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits at age 18 on criminal justice and employment outcomes over the next two decades. To estimate this effect, we use a regression discontinuity design in the likelihood of being reviewed for SSI eligibility at age 18...

We investigate how material well-being has changed over time for single mother headed families--the primary group affected by welfare reform and other policy changes of the 1990s. We focus on consumption as well as other indicators including components of consumption, measures of housing...

Interactions between redistributive policies can confront low-income households with complicated choices. We study one such interaction, namely the relationship between Medicaid eligibility thresholds and the minimum wage. A minimum wage increase reduces the number of hours a low-skilled...

This study estimated the effects of welfare reform in the 1990s, which permanently restructured and contracted the cash assistance system in the U.S., on food insecurity--a fundamental form of hardship--of the next generation of households. An implicit goal underlying welfare reform was the...

Recent changes legislated in the U.S. Social Security system are changing the economic incentives to work and retire. Some older workers will respond to these new incentives by retiring at different ages. This paper evaluates the signs and magnitudes of these responses. Using a representative...

A structural life-cycle retirement model with an improved specification over previous models is used to analyze and compare the long-run labor supply effects of the rules for Social Security in place in 1972,1977 and 1983, and for an actuarially fair system. The effects of separate provisions...