In our efforts to better understand how policies geared towards poverty reduction may impact teen childbirth, we analyzed the impact of the 10-20-30 provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, P.L. 111-5) on teen childbirth. The 10-20-30 provision allocated at least...

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...

We examine the effects of an unconditional cash transfer on the economic wellbeing (material hardship, ability to meet needs, money on hand, use of friends and family for assistance, and employment) of families and children with very low incomes. We use a parameterized difference-in-differences...

We provide new evidence that cash transfers following the birth of a first child can have large and long-lasting effects on that child's outcomes. We take advantage of the January 1 birthdate cutoff for U.S. child-related tax benefits, which results in families of otherwise similar children...

I discuss recent books offering differing explanations for persistent U.S. poverty. Desmond (2023) argues that aid to low-income Americans is captured by more powerful market actors. I contextualize this concern as about incidence and consider both policies for changing incidence (by changing...

This paper contributes towards the growing debate concerning the world distribution of income and its evolution over that past three to four decades. Our methodological approach is twofold. First, we formally test for the number of modes in a cross-sectional analysis where each country is...

The Easterlin paradox" suggests that there is no link between a society's economic development and its average level of happiness. We re-assess this paradox analyzing multiple rich datasets spanning many decades. Using recent data on a broader array of countries, we establish a clear positive...

In diesem Beitrag werden theoretische und empirische Zusammenhänge zwischen Globalisierung und absoluter Armut in Entwicklungsländern beleuchtet. Es wird gezeigt, dass die zunehmende Handelsintegration die Chancen für verbesserte Armutsreduktion eröffnet und viele Entwicklungsländer davon...

This paper contributes towards the growing debate concerning the world distribution of in- come and its evolution over that past three to four decades. Our methodological approach is twofold. First, we formally test for the number of modes in a cross-sectional analysis where each country is...

Rising income inequality is an anglo Saxon problem. For most of the other OECD countries, earnings dispersion is rather persistent. Vertical mobility is to be taken into account. The paper also looks at the relationship of income inequality, growth and employment. It elaborates the point that...