We investigate income, marital status, and hourly pay differentials by body mass in a sample of 23- to 31-year-olds drawn from the 1988 NLSY. Obese women have lower family incomes than women whose weight-for-height is in the "recommended" range. Results for men are weaker and mixed. We find...

We investigate income, marital status, and hourly pay differentials by body mass (kg/m2) in a sample of 23 to 31 year olds drawn from the 1988 NLSY. Obese women have lower family incomes than women whose weight-for-height is in the 'recommended' range. Results for men are weaker and mixed. We...

Census's Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) nearly doubles the elderly poverty rate compared to the "Official" Poverty Measure (OPM), a result of the SPM subtraction of medical out-of-pocket (MOOP) expenditures from income. Neither the SPM nor OPM counts health benefits or assets as resources....

The 1996 Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act dramatically altered the economic incentive to bear children out-of-wedlock for economically disadvantaged women or couples most likely to avail themselves of welfare programs. We use data from vital statistics and a...

We assess the evidence on the contribution of changes in the population age structure to the changing fortunes of youths in labor markets in advanced economies over the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, and use this evidence to project the likely effects of future cohort sizes on youth labor...

This paper addresses three basic questions about an under-studied food subsidy program, the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP): (1) Does CACFP reach targeted low-income children? (2) How do eligible families and child care providers who participate differ from those who do not...

We explore several problems in drawing causal inferences from cross-sectional relationships between marriage, motherhood, and wages. We find that heterogeneity leads to biased estimates of the "direct" effects of marriage and motherhood on wages (i.e., effects net of experience and tenure);...

Teen childbearing is commonly viewed as an irrational behavior that leads to long-term socioeconomic disadvantage for mothers and their children. Cross-sectional studies that estimate relationships between maternal age at first birth and socioeconomic indicators measured later in life form the...