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 study the effects of consumer information on equilibrium market prices and observable product quality in the market for child care. Child care markets offer a unique opportunity to study these effects because of the existence of resource and referral agencies (R&Rs) in some markets. R&Rs...

We have used a unique longitudinal database that incorporates information from diverse administrative and research sources to examine the impact of the early stages of welfare reform on poor working families who do not receive cash assistance. Our data are for 2,791 working poor families from...

Rapidly growing prison population in the U.S. has led to an upsurge of interest in discerning the impact of this costly increase on crime rates. Estimates of impact vary. We find that both higher levels of imprisonment and increases in labor force participation of women are related to...

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...