American divorce rates rose from the 1950s to the 1970s, peaked around 1980, and have fallen ever since. The mean age at marriage also substantially increased after 1970. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I explore...

I analyze the impact of the early 1990s state waivers from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) guidelines to understand how changes in options outside of marriage affect household expenditures. AFDC waivers decreased the public assistance available to impoverished divorced women and...

Three years before the ruling on Roe v. Wade, New York became the first state to allow all women legal access to abortion on demand. In this study, I determine the extent to which this change in reproductive rights impacted the characteristics of mothers giving birth in New York, their newborns,...