We leverage the sharp drop in unemployment insurance (UI) benefits following the expiration of the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program to estimate the consumption smoothing effect of UI. The $600/week decline in supplemental UI benefits is estimated to reduce total food spending by 9.7% and the odds of having food sufficiency by 6.0%. The estimate for food spending translates to a marginal

I compile novel data measuring county-level travel distances to abortion facilities and resident abortion rates from 2009 through 2020. Using these data, I implement a difference-in-difference research design measuring the effects of driving distance to the nearest abortion facility on abortions and births. The results indicate large but diminishing effects: an increase from 0 to 100 miles is estimated

The suicide rate in the United States has risen nearly 40% since 2000. This increase is puzzling because suicide rates had been falling for decades at the end of the 20th century. In this paper, we review important facts about the changing rate of suicide. General trends do not tell the story of important differences across groups—suicide rates rose substantially among middle-aged persons between 2005

Visitation in prison is associated with a low recidivism rate after release, but the causality is not clear. This paper tries to estimate the effect of visitation experience on the recidivism outcome of state prisoners in Missouri, using an instrumental variable approach. The instrumental variable used for identification is the distance from a prison to an address before incarceration. The results

In this paper, we estimate the impact on employment of the 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion, which increased the size of the benefit, made it fully refundable, and allowed for monthly receipt. We harness exogenous variation in monthly CTC eligibility by comparing employment among caregivers to that of childless workers before and after monthly payments commenced on July 15, 2021, using event study

We provide a selective survey of the literature on discrimination by criminal justice agents, and argue for a taxonomy of harms that differs from conventional approaches. Discrimination can be self-defeating if it reduces welfare among targets of discrimination while serving no legitimate purpose for the discriminating party. Even if a legitimate purpose is served, discrimination can be deliberative

I provide novel evidence on the role of imperfect information in shaping childhood obesity. Between 2003 and 2017, 24 states began requiring schools to perform Body Mass Index assessments on students. Using the 1991 to 2017 National and State Youth Risk Behavior Surveys and a stacked difference-in-differences identification strategy, I show that these state-mandated school-based BMI assessments were

We would like to highlight the significant overlap between Josh McGee's views and our own. It is refreshing that the public conversation has moved beyond the debate of whether money matters in education, and has shifted focus to the more substantive conversation of how much it matters and in which contexts its impact is more pronounced. We all actually agree on the fact that the effect of school spending

Here, we will make our best guess, based on the highest-quality evidence available, of what the effect would be of a policy that increases school spending on student outcomes. First, we establish a few key empirical facts about the historical relationship between school spending and student outcomes and also what the existing older literature found about this relationship.

Stable housing is critical for health, employment, education, and other social outcomes. Evictions reflect a form of housing instability that is experienced by millions of Americans each year. Inadequately treated psychiatric disorders have the potential to influence evictions in several ways. For example, these disorders may impede labor market performance and thus the ability to pay rent, or increase

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) preexisting conditions provision ensures that insurance companies can no longer deny coverage, charge higher premiums, or exclude coverage due to a preexisting health condition. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of the provision on labor mobility. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for years 2009 through 2019 and estimate di

On March 7, 1962 the Royal College of Physicians published a report entitled Smoking and Health that made the causal link between smoking and lung cancer clear and explicit. Using a historical data set that contains information on smoking from 1958 to 1965, I find a decrease in smoking for those with more schooling after the report's publication. I do not find a difference in the effect for those with

Many states have recently changed their scope of practice laws and granted full practice authority to nurse practitioners, allowing them to practice without oversight from physicians. Physician groups have argued against this change, citing patient safety concerns. In this paper, we use a ratio-in-ratio approach to evaluate whether the transition to full practice authority results in harm to patients

Reducing failures to appear (FTA) in court is a top priority for criminal justice practitioners and advocates. However, existing work on reducing FTAs through text message reminders focuses on large urban jurisdictions and defendants who are housed. Using a field study in Shasta County, California, we evaluate whether text message outreach can increase court appearances for housed and unhoused populations

We use changes to Medicaid immediate postpartum policy to test whether non-monetary costs are meaningful obstacles to health care. Medicaid in several states currently covers long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs, including IUDs and implants) immediately following delivery of a child, eliminating much of the time-cost and stress associated with obtaining a LARC. Postpartum LARCs can reduce unintended

U.S. public school students increasingly attend schools with sworn law enforcement officers present. Yet little is known about how these school resource officers (SROs) affect school environments or student outcomes. Our study uses a fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) design with national school-level data from 2014 to 2018 to estimate the impacts of SRO placement. We construct this discontinuity

This paper studies housing market outcomes of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and explores the mechanisms behind the differential prices that immigrants pay for shelter. I show that undocumented renters pay a premium for housing relative to observably similar, documented, immigrant renters occupying similar housing. Building on theory and suggestive evidence that the premium is the result of search

We explore the dynamics of competitive search in the K–12 public education sector. Using detailed panel data on teacher hiring from Boston Public Schools, we document how teacher labor supply varies substantially across vacancies even within a single district depending on position type, school characteristics, and the timing of job postings. We find that early-posted positions are more likely to be

Body-worn cameras may produce varying effects on police behavior, depending on the agency-specific accountability context in which the technology adoption is embedded. The cameras may encourage coercive police actions when acquired to incentivize performance, such as by protecting officers from false complaints. By contrast, when acquired to enhance procedural accountability, such as by enabling closer

E-cigarette taxes are an active area of legislation and have important regulatory implications by proxying e-cigarette accessibility. We examine the effect of e-cigarette taxes on prepregnancy and prenatal smoking using the near-universe of births to mothers conceiving between 2013 and 2019 in the United States. Using fixed effect regressions, we show that e-cigarette taxes increase prepregnancy and

Single mothers are more likely to experience mental health problems and stress-related negative health behaviors than their married counterparts, but a more generous safety net may improve these outcomes. We use a simulated safety net eligibility approach that accounts for interactions across safety net programs and relies on changing policies across states and time to identify causal effects of safety

Reverse transfer associate degrees are credentials retroactively awarded to current bachelor's degree seekers, combining four-year credits with credits previously earned at a community college. Using administrative data from Tennessee, we use a difference-in-difference design to compare students before and after receipt of a reverse transfer degree to similar students over time. We find reverse transfer

We study whether the work capacity of the older working population responds to improved pain management therapy access. We use the adoption of state recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) as a large policy shock to access to a non-pharmaceutical pain management option. We focus on workers’ compensation cash benefit receipt as a measure of work capacity, finding that receipt declines in response to RML

There is growing interest in the use of unconditional cash transfers as a means to alleviate poverty, yet little is known about the effects of such transfers in the U.S. This paper reports on the results of a randomized controlled study of a one-time $1,000 unconditional cash transfer in May 2020 to families with low incomes in 12 U.S. states. The families were receiving, or had recently received,

The transfer between two-year and four-year colleges is a critical path to baccalaureate attainment. Yet students face a number of barriers in transfer pathways, including a lack of coherent coordination and articulation between their community colleges and four-year institutions, resulting in excess units and increased time to degree. In this paper we evaluate the impact of California's Student Transfer

Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits were a central part of the social safety net during the COVID-19 recession. UI benefits, however, are severely understated in surveys. Using administrative tax data, we find that over half of UI benefits were missed in major survey data, with a greater understatement among low-income workers. As a result, 2020 official poverty rates were overstated by about 2 percentage

We conduct the first quantitative analysis of “blind removals,” an increasingly popular reform that seeks to reduce the over-representation of Black children in foster care by eliminating biases in the removal decisions of investigators. We first show that over-representation in most foster care systems is driven by Black children being substantially more likely than White children to be investigated

Interior immigration enforcement in the U.S. has rapidly increased over the past two decades, including increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity and the revival of workplace raids under the Trump administration. We contribute to the body of research that aims to better understand the consequences of immigration enforcement for children in targeted communities, including on their

Behavioral interventions appealing to taxpayers’ reciprocity often leave tax compliance unaffected. We provide evidence that a “fiscal exchange nudge” increased tax compliance in a setting where one might not expect it: crisis-ridden Argentina. In a randomized controlled trial with over 20,000 taxpayers, a tax bill visually celebrating realized public works benefiting children increased payment rates

The editors hoped that Brad and I would disagree. But I find myself agreeing with much of Brad's piece. I agree that as an economic problem (though perhaps not as a political problem), inflation is to be much preferred to unemployment. And I agree that historical analogies are a useful way of thinking about how the current inflation can end. Where I disagree is in which historical analogy is most relevant

The price level in the U.S. today (July 2022) is 8.5 percent above its level in July 2021 and 15.5 percent above its level in July 2019 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2022a). How worried should we be about inflation persisting? Until recently, the answer from financial markets and the Federal Reserve was clear: very little. In the words of Gabriel Chodorow-Reich (2022a), the Fed and financial

Does legitimating sinful activities have a cost? This paper examines the relationship between housing demand and overt prostitution in Amsterdam. In our empirical design, we exploit the spatial discontinuity in the location of brothel windows created by canals, combined with a policy that forcibly closed some of the windows near these canals. To pin down their effect on housing prices, we apply a

This paper provides novel evidence on how a sharp increase in labor force participation among older women affects the provision of informal care to their older parents. Based on data from Understanding Society – The UK Household Longitudinal Study, we use an instrumental variable approach that exploits a unique reform that increased the female State Pension age by up to six years. Our results provide

We study basic information treatments regarding sexual orientation using randomized experiments in three countries with strong and widespread anti-gay attitudes: Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Participants who received information about the economic costs to society of sexual orientation discrimination were significantly more likely than those in a control group to support equal employment opportunities

This study provides the first empirical evidence on the extent of self-employment within the U.S. justice-involved population. Using linked tax return and Criminal Justice Administrative Records System data, we find that 28 percent of individuals with criminal records are self-employed. Justice-involved individuals are 22 percent more likely to rely solely on self-employment. The Paycheck Protection

One major criticism of Universal Basic Income is that unconditional cash transfers discourage recipients from working. Evidence to date has largely relied on targeted and/or conditional transfer programs. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions from such programs because universal transfers may induce a positive demand shock by distributing cash to a large portion of the population, which may

For the first time in U.S. history, after decades of unprecedented growth in interior immigration enforcement disproportionately impacting Latinos, ten percent of the U.S. House of Representatives is Hispanic. Using congressional district-level data on all candidates participating in general elections to the U.S. House of Representatives between 2008 and 2018, we show that intensified immigration enforcement

We study how health insurance eligibility affects financial distress for young adults using the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) dependent coverage mandate─the part of the ACA that requires private health insurance plans to cover individuals up to their 26th birthday. We examine the effects of both gaining and losing eligibility by exploiting the mandate's implementation in 2010 and its automatic disenrollment

Master's degree enrollment and debt have increased substantially in recent years, raising important questions about the labor market value of these credentials. Using a field experiment featuring 9,480 job applications submitted during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, I examine employers’ responses to job candidates with a Master of Business Administration (MBA), which represents one-quarter

Participation in non-parental child care arrangements is now the norm for preschool-age children in the U.S. However, child care services are becoming increasingly expensive for many families, and quality is highly uneven across providers and sectors, raising questions about the impact of child care costs and quality on parental employment and child development. The U.S. policy landscape is dominated

The previous expansion of EdTech as a substitute for traditional learning around the world, the recent full-scale substitution due to COVID-19, and potential future shifts to blended approaches suggest that it is imperative to understand input substitutability between in-person and online learning. We explore input substitutability in education by employing a novel randomized controlled trial that

Children of teen mothers have worse academic, labor market, and behavioral outcomes in the United States, but it is not clear whether these poor outcomes are caused by having a young mother or driven by selection into teen motherhood. Understanding the reasoning behind poor child outcomes is important for designing effective policies to improve child trajectories. Simple correlations using data from

The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) is happy to announce the winners for this year's Excellence in Refereeing Awards. Each year, three individuals are recognized for their contributions in providing the journal with timely, constructive, and insightful refereeing service over the past publication year. As recognition of JPAM's appreciation, the winners are each presented with a certificate

Children of teen mothers have worse academic, labor market and behavioral outcomes in the United States, but it is not clear whether these poor outcomes are caused by having a young mother or driven by selection into teen motherhood. Understanding the reasoning behind poor child outcomes is important for designing effective policies to improve child trajectories. Simple correlations using data from

This paper examines the incidence of the cost burden associated with expanding public health insurance to low-income adults in the context of the Affordable Care Act. Using data from the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey (MEPS), I exploit exogenous variation in Medicaid eligibility rules across states, income groups and time. I find that public insurance eligibility reduced mean out-of-pocket spending

Using administrative data from Maine to quantify the effect of vocational rehabilitation (VR) services on employment outcomes for transition-age youth with disabilities, we exploited the variation in VR counselors’ propensity to develop Individualized Plans for Employment (IPEs) for VR youth as an instrument for service receipt. We found that among the estimated 36 percent of VR clients on the margin

There is a paucity of research on the causal relationship between arts learning and educational outcomes. Investigating these relationships has become imperative as policymakers increasingly prioritize empirical evidence of educational impacts, which often leads to curriculum narrowing that favors traditionally-tested subjects. Employing a randomized controlled trial with 42 elementary and middle schools

Recent policy debate on minimum wages has focused not only on raising the minimum wage, but on eliminating the tip credit for restaurant workers. We use data on past variation in tip credits—or minimum wages for restaurant workers—to provide evidence on the potential impacts of eliminating (or reducing) the tip credit. Our evidence points to higher tipped minimum wages (smaller tip credits) reducing

In May 2018, Scotland introduced a minimum unit price on alcohol. We examine the impact of this policy on traffic fatalities and drunk driving accidents. Using administrative data on the universe of vehicle collisions in Britain and a range of quasi-experimental modeling approaches, we do not find that the policy had an effect on road crash deaths and drunk driving collisions. The results are robust

Cancian, M., Heinrich, C. L., Chung, Y. (2013). Discouraging Disadvantaged Fathers’ Employment: An Unintended Consequence of Policies Designed to Support Families. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 32, 758–784. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.21707 In Table 1, some of the standard deviation (SD) values were incorrect. The values are now corrected, and the updated table is as follows: Table 1.

This paper measures the effects of subsidies in the Affordable Care Act on adverse financial outcomes using administrative tax data and credit data on financial outcomes. Using a difference-in-differences design with propensity score reweighting, I find that at $100 per capita, ACA premium tax credits and cost-sharing reduction subsidies reduced consumer bankruptcies and severe auto delinquency by

We examine how incentives for test prep varied between math and English language arts (ELA) on U.S. state accountability exams. We collected data on exam structure for grade 3 to 8 tests in six states that are the setting for most U.S. research in literatures where accountability matters. We show that math exams typically measured ability more precisely for students on the margin of achieving proficiency

Nearly half of students who enter college do not graduate. The majority of efforts to increase college completion have focused on supporting students before or soon after they enter college, yet many students drop out after making significant progress towards their degree. In this paper, we report results from a multi-year, large-scale experimental intervention conducted across five states and 20 broad-access

Value-based payment programs, also known as pay-for-performance, use financial incentives to motivate providers to invest in quality and are a critical part of Medicare health care reform. This study examines the first year of the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing program, a nationally representative cluster randomized experiment implemented by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in 2016

Policymakers are often interested in understanding the impact of an intervention on specific subgroups, not just an overall population. But analyzing subgroup impacts poses challenges. Subgroup estimates are noisier than whole population estimates due to smaller sample sizes. In addition, within the null hypothesis significance testing framework, the chance of a statistically significant impact estimate—where

INTRODUCTION Congress is currently considering legislation, the Build Back Better Act, that would significantly increase federal support for early childhood education and care (ECEC). This legislation is recognition of how fundamental childcare systems are to the U.S. economy. Most families rely on nonparental care for their young children (e.g., formal or informal childcare, extended family, friends

Across these essays, we are in agreement with David Blau that: (a) early childhood education and care (ECEC) is critical to children's development and requires significant additional investment; (b) targeted and universal programs provide children—especially low-income children—short- and long-term benefits (Cascio, forthcoming; Cascio & Schanzenbach, 2013; Gray-Lobe, Pathak, & Walters, 2021); and

The CDC reports that the association between bullying and suicides among teenagers has generated “concern, even panic,” but policies aimed at combatting bullying have received little attention from researchers. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we find that state-level anti-bullying laws (ABLs) reduce bullying victimization, depression, and suicidal ideation, with the largest estimated

In 2010, Congress reauthorized the Post-9/11 GI Bill by changing reimbursement rates from by-state maximums to a nationwide limit. This policy created exogenous variation in financial aid for veterans at private universities. We detect changes in tuition only for for-profit colleges, where we estimate a 1 percent pass-through rate. This response is mainly from states with decreased benefits; colleges

Official poverty estimates for the United States are presented annually, based on a family unit's annual resources, and reported with a considerable lag. This study introduces a framework to produce monthly estimates of the Supplemental Poverty Measure and official poverty measure, based on a family unit's monthly income, and with a two-week lag. We argue that a shorter accounting period and more timely