The decline in the employment-population ratios for men and women over the period 2000-2007 prior to the Great Recession represents an historic turnaround in the evolution of U.S. employment. The decline is disproportionately concentrated among the less educated and younger groups within the...

The reform of the cash-based welfare program for single mothers in the US which occurred in the 1990s was the most important since its inception in 1935. The reforms imposed credible and enforceable work requirements into the program for the first time, as well as establishing time limits on...

This paper proposes a nonparametric method of estimating marginal treatment effects in heterogeneous populations. Building upon an insight of Heckman and Vytlacil, the conventional treatment effects model with heterogeneous effects is shown to imply that outcomes are a nonlinear function of...

We assess the effectiveness of means-tested and social insurance programs in the United States. We show that per capita expenditures on these programs as a whole have grown over time but expenditures on some programs have declined. The benefit system in the U.S. has a major impact on poverty...

We estimate the trend in the transitory variance of male earnings in the U.S. using the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1970 to 2004. Using both an error components model as well as simpler but only approximate methods, we find that the transitory variance started to increase in the...