This paper examines the multigenerational impact of children and whether the public provision of formal childcare lessens the earnings and employment impacts of children. We find that the arrival of a firstborn reduces employment and earnings of mothers and employment of grandmothers. Studying a...

Children represent the largest indirect beneficiaries of the U.S. social welfare system. Yet, many questions remain about the direct benefits of cash aid to children. The current understanding of the impacts of cash aid in the U.S. is drawn primarily from studies of in-kind benefits, tax...

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...

This paper analyzes the impact of paid family leave (PFL) policies in California, New Jersey, and New York on the labor market and mental health outcomes of individuals whose spouses or children experience health shocks. We use data from the 1996-2019 restricted-use version of the Medical...

We study the effects of job-protected leave policies on intergenerational mobility, long-run child outcomes, and parental decisions (labor market, investments in children, and fertility). We merge rich sources of historical information on family leave policies across the United States since 1973...

Unlike most advanced countries, the U.S. does not have a federal paid sick leave (PSL) policy; however, multiple states have adopted PSL mandates. PSL can facilitate healthcare use among women of child-bearing ages, including use of family planning services such as contraception, in-vitro...

We develop, apply, and test a new measure of the marriage tax - the reduction in future spending from getting married - using SCF and ACS data. Our measure incorporates all major and most minor U.S. tax and benefit programs. And it assumes clone marriage - marrying oneself - to ensure the...

Although improving psychological well-being was not the explicit focus of the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), psychological health outcomes may have been affected by the positive income shocks generated by the credit. In this chapter we ask: How did the 2021 expanded CTC affect parents'...

We offer a child-centric framework for reparations with considerations for policy and implications for child descendants of enslaved African Americans. We apply economic theory of human capital integrated with the theories of bioecological developmental systems to illustrate the multilayered...

We conducted a randomized trial among 14,545 households in rural Burkina Faso to test the oft-cited hypothesis that limited access to contraception is an important driver of high fertility rates in West Africa. We do not find support for this hypothesis. Women who were given free access to...