The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act denied legal noncitizens who arrived in the United States after August 1996 access to means-tested federal benefits for the first 5 years. However, using state funds, a number of states restored some of the benefits. I use this...

We examine how child maltreatmentincluding neglect, physical and sexual abuse, and other forms of maltreatmentis affected by parental economic circumstances. Using state-level panel data on cases of maltreatment and numbers of children in foster care, we find that increases in the fractions of...

In the United States and Britain, there is a 'family gap' between the wages of mothers and other women. Differential returns to marital and parental status explain 40-50 percent of the gender gap. Another 30-40 percent is explained by women's lower levels of work experience and lower returns to...