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...

Unlike most developed countries, the U.S. lacks a federal paid sick leave policy. As a result, many workers must choose between losing earnings and attending to childcare responsibilities. To date, 14 states and the District of Columbia have adopted paid sick leave mandates that provide up to...

The United States Social Security Amendments of 1983 (SSA1983) increased the full retirement age (FRA) and increased penalties for retiring before the FRA. This cut to retirement benefits caused spillover effects on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) applications and receipt by making...

This paper uses a heterogeneous-agent overlapping-generations model to examine the fiscal and distributional consequences of introducing a means test in US Social Security. I find that a means test, that is, conditioning benefit payments on a household's earnings or assets, leads to a higher...

Conventional labor supply studies assume constant eligibility monitoring of income-tested program participants, but this is not true for most programs. For example, states can allow children to enroll in Medicaid/CHIP for 12 months regardless of family income changes. A long recertification...

This paper examines evidence on the role of assimilation versus source country culture in influencing immigrant women’s behavior in the United States-looking both over time with immigrants' residence in the United States and across immigrant generations. It focuses particularly on labor supply...

The two perhaps most influential empirical labor supply studies carried out in the U.S. in recent years, Hausman (1981) and MaCurdy, Green & Paarsch (1990), report sharply contradicting labor supply estimates. In this paper we seek to uncover the driving forces behind the seemingly...

While the health risks associated with smoking are well known, the impact on income distributions is not. This paper extends the literature by examining the distributional effects of a behavioral choice, in this case smoking, on net marginal Social Security tax rates (NMSSTR). The results show...