This piece introduces "social organization theory" to the analysis of drug-law enforcement policy. Social organization theory was developed more than 50 years ago as an innovative attempt to explain criminal behavior. This theory should have revolutionized criminal law policy. Unfortunately, it...

This paper investigates the impact of financial incentive programs, which have become an increasingly common component of welfare programs. We review experimental evidence from several such programs. Financial incentive programs appear to increase work and raise income (lower poverty), but cost...

Over the past decade, public assistance caseloads have increased rapidly to an historical high point and then decreased with even greater speed to their lowest level in decades. Several recent papers have focused on the rise in Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) caseloads in the...

This study hypothesizes that stringent state welfare policies may promote enrollment and reduce employment through four mechanisms taking place in the larger society, the local labor market and the family, particularly for adolescents from low-income families. We conduct a rigorous and robust...

The federal government spent more than $19 billion on subsidized housing programs for the poor in Fiscal Year 1992. Of this amount, roughly two-thirds was spent on Section 8 housing vouchers and one-third on public housing projects. Although spending on these programs is nearly equal to Aid to...

The Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), enacted in 1982 as a major initiative of the Reagan Administration, created what became a $5 billion federally-funded employment and training program for disadvantaged workers. The JTPA directs the states to provide services to "those who can benefit...

We assess the impact on family functioning and child well-being of the New Hope Project, a random-assignment anti-poverty program. New Hope's treatment provides job-search assistance, wage supplements that raise income above the poverty threshold, and subsidies for health insurance and child...

This paper has been published as: Bruce Meyer and Dan Rosenbaum. 2000. "Making Single Mothers Work: Recent Tax and Welfare Policy and Its Effects," National Tax Journal 53(4, part 2): 1027-1062. <p> We describe the enormous changes in social and tax policy in recent years that have encouraged work...</p>

Building on recent work by Rosenzweig (1999), this paper re-examines the effect of AFDC benefits on early nonmarital childbearing. Unlike most previous work in this area, Rosenzweig finds a statistically significant and quantitatively large positive effect of AFDC benefits. Using data from the...