This paper uses IRS tax data to evaluate the short- and long-term effects of California's 2004 Paid Family Leave Act (PFLA) on women's careers. Our research design exploits the increased availability of paid leave for women giving birth in the third quarter of 2004 (just after PFLA was...

This paper examines the short and longer-term economic effects of the 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) which increased the national minimum wage to its highest level of the 20th Century and extended coverage to an additional 9.1 million workers. Exploiting differences in the "bite" of the...

We use novel, large-scale data on 43 million Americans from the 2000 Census and the 2001 to 2013 American Communities Survey linked to the Social Security Administration's NUMIDENT to study how a policy-driven increase in economic resources for families affects children's long-term outcomes....

This paper evaluates the long-run effects of Head Start using large-scale, restricted 2000-2018 Census-ACS data linked to the SSA's Numident file, which contains exact date and county of birth. Using the county rollout of Head Start between 1965 and 1980 and age-eligibility cutoffs for school...

Multiple episodes in U.S. history demonstrate that birth rates fall in response to recessions. However, the 2020 COVID-19 recession differed from earlier periods in that employment and access to contraception and abortion fell, as reproductive health centers across the country temporarily closed...

This paper uses the rollout of the first Community Health Centers (CHCs) to study the longer-term health effects of increasing access to primary care. Within ten years, CHCs are associated with a reduction in age-adjusted mortality rates of 2 percent among those 50 and older. The implied 7 to 13...

We use restricted natality microdata covering the universe of U.S. births for 2015-2021 and California births from 2015 to August 2022 to examine the childbearing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although fertility rates declined in 2020, these declines appear to reflect reductions in travel...

In the 1960s, two landmark statutes--the Equal Pay and Civil Rights Acts--targeted the long-standing practice of employment discrimination against U.S. women. For the next 15 years, the gender gap in median earnings among full-time, full-year workers changed little, leading many scholars and...

The Affordable Care Act eliminated cost-sharing for contraception for Americans with health insurance, but substantial cost sharing remains for uninsured individuals who seek care through Title X--a national family planning program that provides patient-centered, subsidized contraception and...

This paper assembles new evidence on some of the longer-term consequences of U.S. family planning policies, defined in this paper as those increasing legal or financial access to modern contraceptives. The analysis leverages two large policy changes that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s:...