This report reviews research on trends in the caseloads of three means-tested transfer programs in the United States: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and the Food Stamp Program (FSP). <p> Trends in caseloads are the result of 1) program parameters...</p>

Large increases in educational attainment have resulted in dramatic shifts in the composition of educational groups. Utilizing the 1960-1990 Decennial Census and other data sources, I account for these changes in composition using educational ranks-cohort-specific relative rankings in...

In this paper, we examine household savings using data from the National Longitudinal Survey, Cohort 1997. This data set provides detailed information about assets and liabilities of parents with teen-age children. In our empirical work, we have first to deal with several problems in measuring...

In the wake of welfare reform, many states-including Mississippi-have considered utilizing religious congregations as a provider of services to the needy. The possibility of utilizing religious congregations to provide social services previously borne by the state stems from the "charitable...

This paper presents a model of prosecutors' decision-making processes in which prosecutors (both federal and state) internalize some of the benefits of reducing crime, but also carte about developing their own human capital. Since U.S. attorneys make their decisions first, they have the...

A consistent observation is that black employers tend to hire African Americans at greater rates than their white counterparts. This paper examines the reasons for this pattern using data from the 1992-94 Multi-City Employer Survey, which is a representative sample of firms in Atlanta, Boston,...

We examine the extent to which children are exposed to the welfare system through their mother's receipt of benefits and its impact on several developmental outcomes. Using data from the matched mother-child file from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we find that children's...