The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 represents a dramatic change in the US welfare state. One of its key goals was to move lone mothers, even those with young children, from welfare to work. Early evidence suggests that, in concert with a strong...

This paper utilizes a rich longitudinal data set -- the Women's Employment Study (WES) to investigate whether obesity, which is common among women of low socioeconomic status, is a barrier to employment and earnings for current and former welfare recipients. We find evidence that, among current...

In 1998, a conference brought together US psychologists, economists, sociologists, demographers, political scientists, social workers, and medical doctors, to review what we know about the processes that affect child development and how we might wisely increase public and private investments in...

Beginning in 1999, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) added new questions about several categories of consumption expenditure. The PSID now covers items that constitute more than seventy percent of total expenditure measured in the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE). We show that...