Nationally, the welfare caseload declined by more than fifty percent between 1994 and 2000. Considerable research has been devoted to understanding what caused this decline. Much of the literature examining these changes has modeled the total caseload (the stock) directly. Klerman and Haider...

Using data from nationwide and California-specific surveys, the authors provide evidence on the importance of the number of "entries" into the welfare system to explain the decline in welfare caseload during the late 1990s.

Time limits represent a substantial departure from previous welfare policy. Theory suggests that their effects should vary according to the age of the youngest child of the family. I test this prediction using data from the Current Population Survey and find that time limits indeed have larger...

Many young men commit crime and many are arrested. The author estimates the effect of arrests on the employment and earnings of arrestees using a large longitudinal data set constructed by merging police records with unemployment insurance earnings data. He finds that the effects of arrests are...

Transfer payments to poor families are increasingly conditioned on work, either via wage subsidies available only to workers or via work requirements in more traditional welfare programs. Although the effects of such programs on employment are fairly well understood, relatively little is known...

Among the most important changes brought about by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 are time limits, which provide consumers with an incentive to conserve their welfare benefits for future use. Among forward-looking, expected-utility-maximizing consumers...