We examine how the racial wealth gap interacts with financial aid in American higher education to generate a disparate impact on college access and outcomes. Retirement savings and home equity are excluded from the formula used to estimate the amount a family can afford to pay. All else equal,...

Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, the authors examine the effect of smoking on wages. Their analysis controls for differences in individual charaeteristics that may be correlated with both smoking and wages, including unobservable person-specific characteristics that are constant...

The authors examine the relationship between stock market performance and retirement behavior. They first present a descriptive analysis of the wealth holdings of older households and simulate the labor supply response among stockholders necessary to generate observed retirement patterns. Few...

This paper examines the effect of changing the level of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits on workers who do not receive UI. The author hypothesizes a spillover effect between insured and uninsured workers whereby an increase in UI benefits, which leads to longer durations of unemployment for...

We investigate trends in the U.S. rate of teen childbearing between 1981 and 2010, giving particular attention to the sizable decline that has occurred since 1991. Our primary focus is on establishing the role of state-level demographic changes, economic conditions, and targeted policies in...

This paper examines two aspects of teen childbearing in the United States. First, it reviews and synthesizes the evidence on the reasons why teen birth rates are so uniquely high in the United States and especially in some states. Second, it considers why and how it matters. We argue that...

Why is the rate of teen childbearing is so unusually high in the United States as a whole, and in some U.S. states in particular? U.S. teens are two and a half times as likely to give birth as compared to teens in Canada, around four times as likely as teens in Germany or Norway, and almost ten...

Although past research has found that recessions reduce contemporaneous mortality, workers nearing retirement age may experience reduced longevity attributable to lengthy unemployment spells and lost health insurance at a particularly vulnerable time. To test this hypothesis, we generate...