In this paper, the effect of business cycles on the employment, earnings, and income of persons in different demographic groups are examined. Individuals are classified by sex, education and race. The analysis uses data from the Current Population Survey's Outgoing Rotation Group file, covering...

This paper will focus on the child care decisions of women who differ by their level of skill, as measured by their level of education, and the role that costs play in determining their labor force participation. Our analysis will include four separate components. First, we will review the...

This paper presents African American adolescents girls' views of welfare and welfare reform at the cusp of welfare legislation in 1996. Data were collected from a randomized, community-based sample of families living in impoverished urban neighborhoods through a series of open- and close-ended...

One limitation of the recent research on the long-term costs of job displacement is its focus on individuals with established work histories. Using longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), the authors estimate the long-term costs of job displacement for young...

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is designed to shift more of the responsibility for poor children from government to parents. To accomplish this goal, the new law requires welfare clients to work and limits the total number of years they can...

The authors provide empirical evidence that risk sharing enhances specialization in production. To the best of their knowledge, this well-established and important theoretical proposition has not been tested before. The empirical procedure is summarized as follows. First, the authors construct a...

Theoretical models of self-employment posit that attitudes toward risk, entrepreneurial ability, and preferences for autonomy are central to the individual's decision between self-employment and wage/salary work. None of the studies in the rapidly growing empirical literature on self-employment,...

In this report, we examine the eligibility for and participation in the earned income tax credit (EITC) for low-income families in California during the 1990s. The EITC is a federal in-come tax credit available to working poor families, with the amount of credit determined by the number of...

Welfare caseloads have dropped dramatically in recent years, prompting many policy makers to declare an end to welfare as we have known it. The recent decline in caseloads has occurred concurrently with two distinct events. First, most states have restructured their welfare programs to place...

This paper empirically examines the role of social networks in welfare participation. Social theorists from across the political spectrum have argued that network effects have given rise to a culture of poverty. Empirical work, however, has found it difficult to distinguish the effect of...