We examine the long-term impact of expansions to Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program that occurred in the 1980's and 1990's. With administrative data from the IRS, we calculate longitudinal health insurance eligibility from birth to age 18 for children in cohorts affected...

We examine the extent to which children are exposed to the welfare system through their mother's receipt of benefits and its impact on several developmental outcomes. Using data from the matched mother-child file from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we find that children's...

Economic research on the safety net has evolved significantly over time, moving away from a near exclusive focus on the negative incentive effects of means-tested assistance on employment, earnings, marriage and fertility to include examination of the potential positive benefits of such programs...

To study the effects of neighborhood and place-based interventions, this paper incorporates neighborhood effects into a general equilibrium (GE) heterogeneous-agent overlapping-generations model with endogenous location choice and child skill development. Importantly, housing costs as well as...

There is a well-established association between income and child health. We examine the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which provides cash assistance to low-income children with disabilities, to assess how this relationship arises. We use a large database of Medicaid administrative...

We assess evidence from randomized control trials (RCTs) on long-run economic productivity and living standards in poor countries. We first document that several studies estimate large positive long-run impacts, but that relatively few existing RCTs have been evaluated over the long-run. We next...

Low birth weight infants born to mothers with low educational attainment have a double hurdle to overcome in the production of human capital. We examine whether income transfers in the form of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments for children with disabilities can help close the gap in...

Evidence shows that the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is underutilized. WIC enrolls only sixty percent of eligible persons. Participants claim only a fraction of available benefits. Researchers suggest that people underutilize WIC because of the...

This study investigated the effects of welfare reform in the 1990s, which represented a major policy shift that substantially and permanently retracted cash assistance to poor mothers in the U.S., on parenting. Using data on women from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth...

We experimentally evaluate the impact on child malnutrition of a maternal cash transfer program in Myanmar that was supplemented with Social Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) in a subset of villages. The combination of interventions significantly reduced the proportion of children stunted,...