In recent years, important and headline-grabbing findings have emerged from research using individual income tax data for statistical purposes. Demand for these microdata, accessible under the tax administration authority of the Internal Revenue Code and through the IRS Statistics of Income...

Using friendship data from Facebook, we study the effects of three aspects of social capital on household financial behavior. We find that the most important measure of social capital in explaining stock market and saving participation is Economic Connectedness, defined as the fraction of one's...

We examine the effects of an unconditional cash transfer on the economic wellbeing (material hardship, ability to meet needs, money on hand, use of friends and family for assistance, and employment) of families and children with very low incomes. We use a parameterized difference-in-differences...

This study examines the impact of publicly provided daycare for children aged 0-3 on outcomes of children and their caregivers over the course of seven years after enrollment into daycare. At the end of 2007, the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil used a lottery to assign children to limited...

Early childhood interventions aim to promote skill acquisition and poverty reduction. While their short-term success is well established, research on longer-term effectiveness is scarce, particularly in LDCs. We present results of a randomized scalable intervention in India, that affected...

The causal effects of fertility are a central focus in the social sciences, but the analysis is challenged by the endogeneity of fertility choices. Earlier work has proposed several "natural experiments" from twin births or gender composition of earlier births to assess whether having more...

A growing literature explores the impact of home-based versus office-based work. Differences in productivity may arise due to a treatment effect of the office or from workers with different abilities sorting into office or home work. We conduct an RCT in the data entry sector in India that...

A key policy question in evaluating social programs to address childhood poverty is how families receiving unconditional financial support would spend those funds. Economists have limited empirical evidence on this topic in the U.S. We provide causal estimates of financial and time investments...

In Belgium, a series of social security reforms have been implemented over the years with the overarching goal of increasing the labor force participation through better work incentives. Using individual-level administrative data, the paper studies the impact of those incentive-based reforms on...

We provide the first evidence on the disenrollment impacts of SNAP's General Work Requirements, which apply to 28% of SNAP households, including many with young children. We leverage a regression discontinuity design based on the age of the youngest child in the household relative to the date of...