This paper examines the degree to which after-tax wages, benefit guarantees, child care expenses, and other factors affect labor market participation and transfer program participation. We first carefully model the budget constraints that families face using a SIPP-based microsimulation model...

In the United States and Europe there has been renewed interest in subsidizing firms that employ disadvantaged workers as a means of addressing poverty and other social problems. In contrast, the prevailing practice is largely to provide social welfare benefits directly to individuals. Which...

In the United States and Europe there has been renewed interest in subsidizing firms that employ disadvantaged workers as a means of addressing poverty and other social problems. In contrast, the prevailing practice is largely to provide social welfare benefits directly to individuals. Which...

Introduction / Stacy Dickert-Conlin and Ross Rubenstein -- Economic inequality in college access, matriculation, and graduation / Robert Haveman and Kathryn Wilson -- Overcoming educational inequality : improving secondary education linkages with broad access postsecondary education / Michael...

This paper investigates the effects of economic incentives on divorce and remarriage behavior. Before December 1977, the Social Security law entitled divorcees to claim auxiliary benefits on their ex-spouse’s record only if the marriage lasted at least 20 years. One of the 1977 amendments of...

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) could either penalize or subsidize marriage. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and controlling for individual fixed effects and the endogeneity of the EITC, we find that, among a sample of married women with children, those who...

The Social Security program, like the federal income tax system, is not marriage neutral. Provisions in each public program, in effect, subsidize or penalize marriage. In this paper, we examine marriage penalties associated with Social Security's child–in–care benefits. This program provides...