The 1996 U.S. welfare reform legislation established the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. TANF represents the ascendance of the view that market work should be substituted for benefit recipiency. We describe the problems inherent in U.S. social welfare policy prior to TANF...

The goal of securing adequate resources in retirement dominates the ongoing debate regarding social security reforms designed to accommodate the demographic transformation and to provide minimum income security to retired workers. Policy proposals concerned with the implication of future public...

The adequacy of retirement savings is central to the U.S. debate over the effects of Social Security reform and pension changes that would place greater responsibility on individuals for accumulation of retirement resources. We contribute to this discussion by examining the extent to which...

Joblessness among American youth, particularly among nonwhites, has become an issue of increasing national concern. Unemployment rates among such groups, even when adjusted for macroeconomic events such as recessions, continued to rise throughout the post-war period. Statistics also appear to...

A current policy issue is the extent to which savings are sufficient to sustain economic well-being in retirement. We compare annuitized wealth at retirement to three preretirement consumption estimates. About one-half of new retirees have insufficient resources to enable the full maintenance of...

We address the role of youths' own choice-conditioned expectations in understanding their schooling choices by constructing a choice (or "switching") model. We emphasize the effect of individual student perceptions regarding the returns associated with graduating from high school versus dropping...