In examining teenage and young adult employment, this study has three objectives. It seeks to throw light on reasons that some teenagers work and some do not. It explores the effect teenage labor force participation has on teenage educational attainment. Finally, it considers the longer-term...

This paper reports the findings of a study of labor market niching involving 102 ethnic groups living in 216 metropolitan areas in 1990. Approximately 12 percent of the labor force of the 216 metropolitan areas studied was employed in ethnic niches. The percentage in niches was substantially...

This paper explores the possibility that states respond asymmetrically to increases versus decreases in their neighboring states’ welfare benefit levels. We present a theoretical model suggesting that states respond more to decreases than to increases in their neighbors’ benefit levels. To...

The recent literature on the effects of welfare on marriage and fertility includes studies employing a wide variety of methodologies and data sets and covering different time periods. A majority of the studies show that welfare has a significantly negative effect on marriage or positive effect...

A survey of AFDC recipients in California shows that income, even when adjusted for household need and augmented by the food stamp grant, poorly predicts hunger or overcrowding among respondents. Families with teenage boys report hunger much more often than their incomes would predict, as do...

This paper examines the role of local labor markets in determining how long families receive benefits from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. Given the current policy emphasis on devolution and reducing the AFDC caseload through employment, understanding the role of...

This paper documents the declining relationship between low hourly wages and low household income over the last half-century and how this has reduced the share of minimum wage workers who live in poor households. It then compares recent and prospective increases in the earned income tax credit...

This paper uses an historical perspective to examine the labor market prospects and the macroeconomic setting facing mothers with dependent children who were (or would have been) enrolled in the old AFDC program, now that their welfare status will be handled by the new state programs in the wake...