This paper examines the effects of family structure on the economic resources available to children, using family fixed-effects to control for unobservable characteristics of the family. The effects of divorce on the income and consumption of children born to two-parent households, and the...

We use the Health and Retirement Study to examine the effects of job loss on factors affecting retirement incentives, including earnings, assets and pensions. We then estimate models of the retirement decision, which take into account the incentive to retire and any additional effects of...

This study considers whether there has been a decline in the attachment of workers and firms in the United States over the past several decades. Specifically, it compares snapshots of job tenure taken at the end of workers' careers from 1969 to 2002, using data from the Retirement History...

Despite robust growth in real per capita GDP over the last three decades, the U.S. poverty rate has changed very little. In an effort to better understand this disconnect, we document and quantify the relationship between poverty and four different factors that may affect poverty and its...

This paper investigates the persistence of poverty over individuals' lifetimes using a hazard rate, or spells approach. Previous research on poverty dynamics using the spells approach has been limited by its failure to take into account multiple episodes of poverty. I estimate hazard models for...

A growing literature documents cyclical movements in mortality and health. We examine this pattern more closely and attempt to identify the mechanisms behind it. Specifically, we distinguish between mechanisms that rely on fluctuations in own employment or time use and those involving factors...

The goal of federal food and nutrition programs in the United States is to improve the nutritional well-being and health of low income families. A large body of literature evaluates the extent to which the Supplemental Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC) has accomplished this goal, but...

We study the relationship between parental job loss and children's academic achievement using data on job loss and grade retention from the 1996, 2001, and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation. We find that a parental job loss increases the probability of children's...

Job loss in the United States is associated with long-term reductions in income and long-term increases in mortality rates. This paper examines the short- to medium-term changes in health, health care access, and health care utilization after job loss that lead to these long-term effects. Using...

This paper measures the long-term wage and earnings losses of workers who lose jobs due to plant closings and layoffs, using a fixed-effects estimator to control for unobserved worker characteristics and longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The results show large and...