We assess the role of child care in the welfare to work transition using an unusually large and comprehensive data base. Our data are for Massachusetts, a state that began welfare reform in 1995 under a federal waiver, for the period July 1996 through August 1997. We find that both the nature of...

We consider the effects the child care market, early care and education programs, and welfare reforms have on welfare recipients’ transition from welfare to work. Using 1996-1997 data for Massachusetts, we find that the availability and quality of formal child care, the presence of Head Start...

We consider the effects the child care market, child care vouchers, early childhood education programs, and welfare reforms have on welfare recipients in their transition from welfare to work. Specifically, we are interested in determining which factors encourage single mothers to move directly...

Crime, Imprisonment, and Female Labor Force Participation: A Time-Series Approach Robert Witt and Ann Dryden Witte NBER Working Paper No. 6786 November 1998 JEL No. K14, H0 Rapidly growing prison population in the US has led to an upsurge of interest in discerning the impact of this costly...

In this paper, we consider a number of issues regarding crime prevention and criminal justice. We begin by considering how crime is measured and present both general and specific evidence on the level of crime in a variety of countries. Crime is pervasive and varies substantially across...

In this paper, we consider a number of issues regarding crime prevention and criminal justice. We begin by considering how crime is measured and present both general and specific evidence on the level of crime in a variety of countries. Crime is pervasive and varies substantially across...

Recently, attention has moved away from using parental background variables, such as parental education, in favour of using institutional features of the education system as instruments when estimating the return to schooling. In this paper, these possible instruments are revisited. Using the...

No Child Left Behind is the most recent federal legislation aimed at eliminating perceived achievement gaps across sociodemographic groups of students in the United States. This article quantifies the degree to which the worst-performing schools can be expected to narrow these gaps by increasing...

Proposals to alter the estate tax are contentious and have been debated largely in an empirical vacuum. This paper examines time series and cross-sectional variation to identify the effects of gift and estate taxation on the timing of private transfers. The analysis is based on data from the...

The purpose of this paper is to quantify, as best as possible, the union wage effect achieved by the teachers' unions in Pennsylvania. As the legal right for local teachers' organizations to collectively bargain remains controlled by state legislatures, it tends to be the case that either all...