Despite facing some of the same challenges as private insurance markets, little is known about the role of adverse selection in social insurance programs. This paper studies adverse selection in Social Security retirement choices using data from the Health and Retirement Study. We find robust...

Why do some men father children outside of marriage but not provide support? Why are some single women willing to have children outside of marriage when they receive little or no support from unmarried fathers? Why is this behavior especially common among blacks? To shed light on these...

How do abortion costs affect non-marital childbearing? While greater access to abortion has the first-order effect of reducing childbearing among pregnant women, it could nonetheless lead to unintended consequences via effects on marriage market norms. Single motherhood could rise if lower-cost...

We develop a directed search model of relationship formation which can disentangle male and female preferences for types of partners and for different relationship terms using only a cross-section of observed matches. Individuals direct their search to a particular type of match on the basis of...

The market for abortion in the U.S. has become increasingly concentrated in recent years and many states have tightened abortion regulations aimed at providers. Using unique data on abortion providers I estimate a dynamic model of entry, exit and service provision which captures the effect of...