The Hope Tax Credit, the L ifetime Learning Tax Credit and the Tuition and Fees Deduction are the first forms of federal student aid administered through the tax code. In this paper, which is the first to explore the effects of the three programs, I use policy-induced variation in the value of...

Policy changes in the United States in the 1990s resulted in sizable increases in employment rates of single mothers. We show that this increase led to a large and abrupt increase in work experience for single mothers with young children. We then examine the economic return to this increase in...