We examine more than one million children whose parents won a state lottery to trace out the effect of financial resources on college attendance. The analysis links the universe of federal tax records to federal financial aid records and leverages substantial variation in the size and timing of...

Can shocks to one generation propagate to the next? To answer this question, we study how the Vietnam draft lottery affected the next generation's labor market. Using the universe of federal tax returns, we link fathers from draft cohorts to their sons' outcomes and find that sons of fathers...

This paper leverages the universe of U.S. tax data and state lottery wins between 2000 and 2019 to estimate the causal effect of financial resources on three key lifecycle outcomes for young adults. We find large and persistent effects on homeownership, with a response function that exhibits...

We examine U.S. children whose parents won the lottery to trace out the effect of financial resources on college attendance. The analysis leverages federal tax and financial aid records and substantial variation in win size and timing. While per-dollar effects are modest, the relationship is...

The initial years of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic fallout likely posed particular financial strain on U.S. households with children, who faced income disruptions from widespread jobs and hours cuts in addition to new childcare and instruction demands. One common expense for...