In the post-reform era, the production of welfare policy is taking shape in an increasingly devolved and discretionary environment. Street-level workers are "making" reform through their day-to-day practices in public, quasi-public, and private agencies, extending even into the private...

In this paper, tests are made for the effect that the spatial distribution of welfare and Food Stamp caseloads may have on caseload change in the South. Spatial effects are captured by contrasting caseload trends overtime in metropolitan (urban) counties and nonmetropolitan (rural) counties...

This paper provides an early analysis of child care subsidies under welfare reform. We review the literature on child care subsidies and discuss the potential for such subsidies to be an effective part of the effort to make low-income families economically self-sufficient. Previous studies of...

Control of public spending and revenues is increasingly being left to states and localities. In order to understand the consequences of such a movement on the distribution of social spending, it is necessary to understand how fiscal distress will affect state and local budgets. This paper...

This paper describes selected results from qualitative telephone interviews with 130 Minnesota employers who participated in local welfare-to-work partnerships with social service agencies and other community members. Differences among rural and urban/suburban employers are examined and...

We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Mother-Child Files to estimate the effect of age at enrollment in first grade on eight to eleven year old children's cognitive test scores and behavior problems. We find that children who enroll in first grade at a young age score higher...

A recent study concludes that permissive concealed-handgun carrying (or "shall-issue") laws have sharply reduced crime rates, including the rate of homicide. Their method has been critiqued by several authors. In this paper I report a quite different approach, which exploits the minimum age...

Under the new welfare system, states must design and institute programs that both provide assistance and encourage work, two objectives that have thus far appeared incompatible. Will states meet these new requirements? For many innovative programs, the randomized welfare-to-work experiments...

Social security system old age insurance systems are devices for the sharing of income risks of elderly people with others. Risks can be shared intergenerationally (with the young of the same country), intragenerationally (with other elderly of the same country), or internationally (with...

This paper presents findings from a net impact evaluation of the Ohio JOBS Student Retention Program. The JOBS program, a component of the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children (ADC) program, was required, in all states, for ADC recipients who met certain criteria. The Ohio JSRP was an...