The child support system is not serving low-income families well. Custodial parents are not receiving the child support they need. Enforcement of child support for lowincome parents receiving welfare primarily benefits the state because the payments are owed to the government. Low-income...

This paper examines the impact of South Africa’s Child Support Grant (CSG) on the schooling and learning attainments of children. Children who were enrolled in the CSG at birth completed 0.14 more grades of schooling than children who were enrolled at age six. There are marked gender...

This paper considers the effect of child care costs on two labor market outcomes for single mothers - whether to participate in the labor market and whether to receive welfare. Hourly child care expenditures are estimated for all women in the sample (using data drawn from the 1992 and 1993...

This paper examines the extent to which differences in welfare generosity across states leads to interstate migration. Using microdata from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) between 1979 and 1992, we employ a quasi-experimental design that utilizes the categorical eligibility of...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic two new timely poverty measures have been developed to monitor fast-changing economic conditions for the most deprived. The Han et al. near real-time poverty measure uses responses to a global income question on the Monthly Current Population Survey (CPS)...

Several recent studies have shown that daughters whose mothers have participated in the welfare program Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) are themselves more likely to participate in AFDC when they head their own household. Other studies have shown that the earnings of parents and...

Utilizing a sample of 2,964 unmarried women over the period 1979-88 from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a test was performed to determine the causal direction of relationship between receipt of aid to families with dependent children (AFDC) and the decision to have a nonmarital...

Despite the attempt to transform the system of state child support in South Africa shortly after the transition to democracy, the initial changes resulting in the implementation of the Child Support Grant were only partial in nature. This paper explains why institutional stickiness in the shape...

25 years have passed since the beginning of market reforms in Russia. Like other post-soviet countries, in the early 1990s Russia faced a period of sharp decline in real household incomes. Then a gradual growth of population well-being began. However, income inequality was deep throughout this...

Time-limited in-work credits are cheaper, and more targeted, than conventional in-work credits, but are thought to have small to zero long-term impacts. We study two time-limited in-work credits introduced in the mid-2000s in the UK and find they reduced welfare participation and increased...