In 2021, the U.S. Congress temporarily expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit for workers without a qualifying child (childless EITC), to help counteract the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on lower-wage working adults. This expansion roughly tripled the maximum benefits for qualifying filers and...

We investigate the gap in welfare use between immigrants and natives over a 24-year period using the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey from 1995-2018, spanning periods of economic recessions and recoveries, changes in welfare policy regimes, and policies...

Recent years have seen an unprecedented growth and geographic dispersion in international student mobility. In this paper, we empirically test the predictions of two competing theoretical models underpinning the determinants of student mobility - the human capital model and the migration model -...

Using county-level data on COVID-19 mortality and infections, along with county-level information on the adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in the United States, we examine how the speed of NPI adoption affected COVID-19 mortality. Our estimates suggest that advancing the date...

The Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat is arguably the most controversial dam ever built in India, with over a 100,000 displaced people. Most ousted families in Gujarat were resettled in the late 1980s and early 1990s. All oustees were tribals--a term used in India to cover a list of tribes viewed as...

We study the effect on nutrition of an exogenous increase in food grain subsidy in rural India resulting from a program targeting the poor. Our analysis suggests that increase in income resulting from the food price subsidy changed consumption patterns in favor of the subsidized grains and...

Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the March Current Population Survey, we calculate historical poverty estimates based on the new Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) from 1967 to 2012. During this period, poverty as officially measured has stagnated. However, the official...

We study the effect of welfare reform, broadly defined to include social policy changes in the 1990s, on the material well-being and expenditure patterns of poor single-mother families. Our research suggests that welfare reform did not affect total expenditures in households headed by...

Although the gender wage gap in the U.S. has narrowed, women's career trajectories diverge from men's after the birth of children, suggesting a potential role for family-friendly policies. We provide new evidence on employer provision of these policies. Using the American Time Use Survey, we...

This paper evaluates the effect of Paid Family Leave (PFL) on breastfeeding, which we identify using California's enactment of a 2004 PFL policy that ensured mothers up to six weeks of leave at a 55 percent wage replacement rate. We employ synthetic control models for a large, representative...