We study the effects of prenatal receipt of nutritional and educational services provided by the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) on birth outcomes. Our identification strategy consists of two elements: (1) identifying families in a very tight income range...

The relationships between social networks and economic behavior have been well-documented. However, it is often difficult to distinguish between the role of information sharing and other features of a neighborhood, such as factors that are common to people of the same ethnicities or...

This paper examines participation in the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) and the Welfare–to–Work Tax Credit (WtW), two federal employer subsidy programs. I use nationally–representative data to estimate the number of disadvantaged workers whose employers qualified for either of the...

In this paper, we examine the effects of recent parental Medicaid eligibility expansions on Medicaid participation and private insurance coverage. We present a new approach for estimating these policy effects that explicitly models the particular policy instrument over which legislators have...

Temporary Help Services (THS) employment has been growing in size, particularly among disadvantaged workers. An extended policy debate focuses on the low earnings, limited benefits, and insecurity that such jobs appear to provide. We investigate the earnings and wage differentials observed...

Temporary help services (THS) firms are increasing their hiring of disadvantaged individuals and claiming more subsidies for doing so. Do these subsidies—the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) and Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit (WtW)—create incentives that improve employment outcomes for THS...

Temporary help services (THS) firms are increasing their hiring of disadvantaged individuals while also increasing their use of employment subsidies for doing so. Do these subsidies—the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) and Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit (WtW)—create incentives that improve...

In this paper, we examine the effect of parental Medicaid expansions on job mobility. If expanded Medicaid eligibility makes it easier for a person to have health coverage between jobs, we expect it to reduce "job lock" that occurs for workers with employer-provided health insurance. Expanded...