Building on recent work by Rosenzweig (1999), this paper re-examines the effect of AFDC benefits on early nonmarital childbearing. Unlike most previous work in this area, Rosenzweig finds a statistically significant and quantitatively large positive effect of AFDC benefits. Using data from the...

This article provides recent national estimates of the short-term economic outcomes of marital dissolution for mothers, fathers, and children. In addition, the article estimates the current and potential impact of private child support transfers on the economic well-being of the various parties...

Over the course of the last 60 years, the United States has developed a series of public programs to aid economically disadvantaged people that involve both cash and in-kind assistance. Much of our understanding of public assistance is based on an important body of work examining factors that...

Our purpose in this paper is to speculate on the cyclicality of state fiscal responses under welfare reform. In particular, how will they respond during the next recession? We draw lessons from several literatures and present some new evidence. An important literature estimates the spending...

In recent years, women have made considerable gains relative to men in the labor market. Most notably, the gender gap in hourly wages has narrowed substantially. In this paper we divide workers into three skill groups on the basis of education, and analyze how the hourly earnings of women in...

Between 1984 and 2000, the share of non-elderly adults receiving benefits from the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs rose from 3.1 to 5.3 percent. We trace this growth to reduced screening stringency and, due to the interaction between...

This paper attempts to determine whether wage records reported quarterly by employers to state Unemployment Insurance (UI) agencies provide a valid alternative to more costly retrospective sample surveys of individuals as the basis for measuring the labor market impacts of employment and...

Recent theoretical work suggests that means and asset-tested social insurance programs can explain the low savings of lower income households in the U.S. We assess the validity of this hypothesis by investigating the effect of Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income women and...

Changes in food insecurity and hunger among low-income nonmetropolitan households that did not receive Food Stamps are analyzed to assess the extent to which the decline in Food Stamp caseloads among these households resulted from reduced need for food assistance versus reduced access to Food...