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...

Although there is ample support for the causal link between home visit parenting programs and child development outcomes, few studies have explored what it is that drives this relationship – to what extent home visit programs are implemented as designed in terms of the content and strategies...

Much previous research has focused on the length of welfare spells and returns to welfare following an exit. Few quantitative studies have looked at broader indicators of the economic well-being of those who have exited AFDC. In this paper we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of...

In this article a composite indicator is built, named the Children's Deprivation Index (CDI), which attempts to verify the access to a set of key goods, services and conditions that have a positive effect on children's well-being, and informs on the compliance with their rights, as stated on the...

We estimate the effect of providing universal free school meals through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) on the percentage of healthy weight students attending a school and average Body Mass Index (BMI) score among the population of K-12 schools in the state of Georgia. Different...

This paper measures impacts of removing children from families investigated for abuse or neglect. We use removal tendencies of child protection investigators as an instrument. We focus on young children investigated before age six and find that removal significantly increases test scores and...

Foster care youth are a large population that have reliably been shown to be at high risk of poor adult outcomes that are costly to both former foster youth and the public. We evaluate the effects of placing foster children with extended family, rather than unrelated caregivers, using...

We investigate the short-term impact of out-of-home care on child health, schooling and juvenile crime. Using an event study to examine the dynamics around the time of placement, we document a clear deterioration of mental health and increasing crime rates before placement. After placement, we...

Participation in non-parental child care arrangements is now the norm for preschool-age children in the U.S. However, child care services are becoming increasingly expensive for many families, and quality is highly uneven across providers and sectors, raising questions about the impact of child...

This paper examines the effect of a housing assistance program on school enrollment, child labor and poverty reduction among poor families in Ecuador. Administrative data is merged to a household panel to link the history of a voucher application with socioeconomic information. Two empirical...