What's New at IRP
In 2008–09:
Winter-Spring 2008–09 |
Fall 2008 |
Spring 2008 |
Winter-Spring 2007–08
Winter-Spring 2008-09
Research: New Projects, Thematic Seminar Series, and Conferences
Training, Mentoring, and Visitors
Dissemination of Research and Outcomes
Research: New Projects, Thematic Seminar Series, and Conferences
Administration for Children and Families Award: IRP recently
won a competitive research agreement with ACF and the newly formed Wisconsin
Department of Children and Families (DCF) to conduct a set of integrated
data-development, analysis, and evaluation activities designed to generate
an improved capacity to analyze TANF administrative data, and to merge
data from TANF, FoodShare (food stamps), Medicaid/BadgerCare, child welfare,
child support, Unemployment Insurance, and the National Directory of New Hires.
This award will allow us to better consolidate our data and research efforts
and to help the DCF better serve the needs of the State of Wisconsin and
its clients.
National Science Foundation Award: This new award will support
the addition of middle-income nations (e.g., China, India, Brazil) to the
Luxembourg Income Study database, which currently features only rich OECD
nations, and to begin conducting research on the new data.
Fathers Conference: In September 2009, our
conference will bring together scholars and policymakers to examine strategies
for reducing barriers to marriage and father involvement, designing child
support and other public policies to encourage the involvement of fathers,
and coping with fathers who have multiple child support responsibilities.
Representatives of the Obama Administration will be in Madison to respond
to the ideas put forth at the conference.
State Innovations Conference: In July 2009, our conference
will bring together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners whose work
focuses on improving the well-being of families, especially vulnerable families,
to discuss recent state-level policy innovations and lessons learned from
them. This meeting will facilitate the sharing of information across state
agencies while also better informing researchers of the types of work that
will help state agencies better serve needy families and children.
Healthy Families
Seminar Series: This year, James Kemple,
MDRC; Andrew Sum, Northeastern University; Kathryn Edin, Harvard Kennedy
School; Kristin Anderson Moore, Child Trends; Maria Cancian, UW–Madison;
and Sara McLanahan, Princeton University, are all coming to present
their work on assessing the role of public policies in ensuring healthy,
supportive families.
Additional information on other new research projects (e.g.,
Gates Award, Sutton Trust Award, and others); on other recent conferences
("Pathways to Self-Sufficiency," "Changing Poverty," "State
of Agents," and "Faith-Based Social Services"); as well
as information about the 9th Robert Lampman
Lecture; the 18th and 19th
Annual Summer Research Workshops; and the Summer
2008 Microeconometrics Workshop can also be found at the IRP Web site (www.irp.wisc.edu).
Training, Mentoring, and Visitors
Graduate Research Fellows (GRF) Program: The GRF program,
founded by IRP in spring 2003 with nine students, is in its 6th year with
32 promising students under the tutelage of Carolyn Heinrich, IRP's
associate director of research and training. This rigorous program prepares
future poverty researchers for every aspect of their career, including
substantive policy and research discussions; methodological training; professional
training on the IRB process, journal article submission, and proposal development;
and support of students' dissemination of research and conference attendance.
Students meet with every major thematic speaker who comes to campus to
discuss research development, evaluation, and research presentations. This
program is a major development over the types and levels of training that
we all received when in Madison and it sets IRP apart as a unique leader in
research training at the doctoral level.
Summer Dissertation Support: Four students (Benjamin Cowan,
Malcolm Gold, Callie Langton, and Marci Ybarra) received support that enabled
them to concentrate on their dissertation, the topics of which include the
effect of teenagers' expectations of future schooling outcomes on their risky
behavior in high school, such as drug and alcohol use and truancy; and earnings
and income patterns of low-income new mothers who rely on welfare during maternity-related
job interruptions, and exits from the welfare application process.
Dissertation Fellowship: The recipient of the 2008–09 fellowship,
Fabian Pfeffer, is examining intergenerational wealth effects in the United
States and Germany. The 2009–2010 award will be made to one of the 32 GRFs,
but is open only to those GRFs that have applied for one or more outside dissertation
funding opportunities.
Visiting Scholars: IRP is hosting six Visiting Scholars: Rodney
J. Andrews, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy,
Postdoctoral Fellow, Research Institute for Quantitative Social Science,
Harvard University; Angel L. Harris, Assistant Professor
of Sociology and African American Studies, Princeton University, and Faculty
Associate, Office of Population Research, Joint Ph.D. Program in Social
Policy, also at Princeton; Julia B. Isaacs, Child and Family
Policy Fellow, Economic Studies, Brookings Institution; Fernando
Antonio Lozano, Assistant Professor of Economics, Pomona College,
and National Poverty Center Postdoctoral Fellow, Ford School of Public Policy,
University of Michigan; John Micklewright, Professor of
Social Statistics and Policy Analysis, School of Social Sciences, University
of Southampton, United Kingdom; and Udaya Waglé,
Assistant Professor, School of Public Affairs and Administration, Western
Michigan University, Local Research Affiliate, National Poverty Center,
Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan.
Dissemination of Research and Outcomes
FOCUS: The fall issue features: "The
new global labor market" by Richard B. Freeman; "Improving
individual success for community-college students" by Susan Scrivener;
"A
primer on U.S. welfare reform" by Robert Moffitt; "Rethinking
the safety net: Gaps and instability in help for the working poor" by
Scott W. Allard; and "A
longitudinal perspective on income inequality in the United States and
Europe" by Markus Gangl.
The spring Focus will feature articles based on the papers presented
at the spring 2008 Changing Poverty conference: "Poverty levels and
trends in comparative perspective" by Daniel Meyer and Geoffrey Wallace;
"Economic change and the structure of opportunity for less-skilled workers"
by Rebecca Blank; "Family structure, childbearing, and parental employment"
by Maria Cancian and Deborah Reed; "Immigration and poverty in the U.S."
by Steven Raphael and Eugene Smolensky; "Enduring influences of childhood
poverty" by Katherine Magnuson and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal; "Mobility
in the U.S. in comparative perspective" by Markus Jäntti; "Trends
in income support" by John Karl Scholz, Robert Moffitt, and Benjamin
Cowan; "The role of family policies in antipoverty policy" by
Jane Waldfogel; "Improving educational outcomes for poor children" by
Brian Jacob and Jens Ludwig; "Workforce development as an antipoverty
strategy" by Harry Holzer; "Health care for the poor" by
Katherine Swartz; "Poverty politics and policy" by Mary Jo Bane;
and "What does is it mean to be poor in a rich society?" by Robert
Haveman.
IRP's Web Site: A rich poverty research and policy
resource, IRP's Web site (www.irp.wisc.edu)
features the full text of every issue of Focus,
1976 to the present; IRP's Discussion
Papers Series, 1966 to the present,
comprising some 1,360 papers; a set of frequently asked
questions about
poverty that are among the most popular pages on the site; and a fully
searchable publications database, which allows users to view citations
and full records of publications, as well as export and print bibliographies,
which was recently updated to include bibliographies of IRP affiliates’ most
recent work, from 2005 to early 2008.
Electronic Mailing Lists You Can Join
(To subscribe to IRP listservs, visit http://www.irp.wisc.edu/aboutirp/contact.htm.)
- Fast Focus: IRP just introduced this single-topic,
electronic-only publication, which will summarize recent IRP research between
issues of the Focus newsletter. Coming later this fall will be the
first two issues: Carolyn Heinrich on the growing use of third-party entities
in the design, execution, and management of public policy; and Jennifer Noyes
and Maria Cancian on the role of faith in program outcomes.
- Poverty Dispatches: Biweekly
messages with links to Web-based news items dealing with poverty, welfare
reform, and related topics. Each Dispatch lists links to current news
in popular print media.
- What’s New at IRP: Quarterly
messages with IRP news, including recent publications, seminar schedules,
conferences, IRP Affiliates’ awards and honors, and other general
Institute news.
- Publications Alert: Periodic
notification of and links to recently released Discussion Papers, Special
Reports, and issues of Focus. Hear first about our newest working
papers, including a dynamite analysis of the strong positive effects
of Food Stamps on birth weight in the Deep South in the late 1960s
by Doug Almond, Hilary Hoynes, and Diane Schanzenbach (Discussion Paper
No. 1359-08).
- Announcements: A semi-monthly
compilation of poverty-related employment and research opportunities.
Fall 2008
Timothy Smeeding is New Director
On August 1, 2008, Timothy M. Smeeding became IRP’s eleventh Director,
taking over for Maria Cancian, who served for 4 years. An internationally
known scholar, Smeeding is Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of
Public Affairs and Economics at the UW–Madison La Follette School of Public
Affairs and founder and Director Emeritus of the Luxembourg Income Study.
He comes to Madison from Syracuse University, where he was Director of
the Center for Policy Research.
A UW alumnus and student of Robert Haveman (economics, 1975), Smeeding has
been an IRP research affiliate since 1980. His research interests include the
economics of public policy, especially social policy and at-risk populations;
poverty and income distribution; income transfers; socioeconomic mobility;
tax policy; and health economics.
Visit http://www.irp.wisc.edu/aboutirp/directormessage.htm for
further information about Smeeding and his vision for IRP. On September 4,
he launched the 2008–09 seminar series with a discussion of his research
goals and expectations for IRP.
The presentation can be found online at http://www.irp.wisc.edu/newsevents/seminars/Presentations/Smeeding_9_4_08.pdf
(September 19, 2008)
Summer-Event Summary
Summer Research Workshop: June 16–19, 2008, organized
by Robert Moffitt, John Karl Scholz, Robert Hauser, and Jeffrey Smith.
Visit http://www.irp.wisc.edu/newsevents/workshops/2008/srw2008agenda.htm to
see the participants and agenda.
Robert J. Lampman Lecture: June 18, 2008, presented by
Robert Haveman, John Bascom Professor Emeritus of Economics and Public
Affairs, “What Does It Mean to be Poor in a Rich Society?” Visit http://www.irp.wisc.edu/newsevents/other/lampman/HavemanLampmanLect2.pdf to
see presentation slides.
A State of Agents? Conference: July 24–25, 2008, organized
by Carolyn Heinrich, Director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs
and IRP Associate Director of Research and Training. Visit http://www.irp.wisc.edu/newsevents/conferences/stateofagents.htm for
a description of the conference and the agenda.
Applied Microeconometrics Workshop: August 4–6, 2008,
hosted and co-sponsored by IRP and taught by Guido Imbens and Jeffrey Wooldridge;
other co-sponsors were the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, the
UW Center for Demography and Ecology, the University of Southern California
(USC) Institute for Economic Policy Research, and the USC Southern California
Population Research Center. Visit http://www.irp.wisc.edu/newsevents/workshops/appliedmicroeconometrics/appliedmicroeconometrics.htm for
further information.
(September 19, 2008)
Three New Seminar Series Launched
IRP’s thematic seminar series this year will focus on Healthy
Families: Assessing the Role of Public Policies and will
feature talks by James Kemple of MDRC; Andrew Sum, Northeastern University;
Kathryn Edin, Harvard Kennedy School; Kristin Anderson Moore, Child Trends;
Maria Cancian, UW–Madison; and Sara McLanahan, Princeton University (see
schedule below for dates and times).
Another new seminar series, the Visiting
Scholars seminar
series, will feature the 2008–09 IRP Visiting Scholars: Rodney J. Andrews, RWJF
Scholar in Health Policy, Harvard University; Udaya Waglé, Asst. Professor
of Public Affairs and Administration, Western Michigan University, and Local
Research Affiliate, National Poverty Center; Fernando Antonio Lozano, Pomona
College and National Poverty Center Postdoctoral Fellow; and Angel Harris,
Asst. Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, Princeton University,
and Faculty Associate of the Princeton Office of Population Research (see schedule
below for dates and times).
IRP has also established the Meet
the New IRP Affiliate seminar series, which will feature
(at this writing; more may be added): Zhen Zeng, Asst. Professor of Sociology,
UW–Madison; Maximilian Schmeiser, Asst. Professor of Consumer Science,
UW–Madison; Roberta Riportella, Professor and Chair, Dept. of Consumer
Science, UW–Madison; Health Policy Specialist, University of Wisconsin-Extension;
and Katherine White, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, UW–Madison
(see schedule below for dates and times).
(September 19, 2008)
Seminar Schedule
IRP seminars take place on Thursdays from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in room
8417 Sewell Social Science Building, 1180 Observatory Drive, unless otherwise
noted. For updates and further details, visit http://www.irp.wisc.edu/newsevents/seminars.htm.
(September 19, 2008)
Fall Semester
September 4, 2008
“Welcome to the IRP
Seminar Series for 2008–2009, and General Introduction to My Research
Goals and Expectations for IRP”
Timothy Smeeding, New IRP Director and Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor
of Public Affairs, La Follette School of Public Policy
September 18
IRP Seminar Series: Healthy Families: Assessing the Role
of Public Policies
“Improving
Labor Market Outcomes and Transitions to Adulthood: Evidence from Career
Academies”
James Kemple, Director or the K-12 Education Policy Area, MDRC
September 25
A Meet the New IRP Affiliate Seminar
“The Myth of Glass Ceiling: Evidence from a Stock-Flow Analysis of Workplace
Authority Attainment”
Zhen Zeng, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UW–Madison
October 9
IRP Visiting Scholars Seminar Series
“Application Behavior, Rank, and Targeted Recruitment: An Examination
of Alternatives to Traditional Affirmative Action Policies”
Rodney Andrews, RWJF Scholar, Harvard University & IRP Visiting Scholar
October 16
“Community Resilience in New Orleans East: Deploying the Cultural Toolkit
within a Vietnamese-American Community”
Emily Chamlee-Wright, Elbert H. Neese Professor of Economics, Beloit College
October 23
IRP Visiting Scholars Seminar Series
“Working Poverty in Michigan: Magnitudes, Socio-Demographic Determinants,
and Their Changes between 1998 and 2007”
Udaya Waglé, Assistant Professor, School of Public Affairs and Administration,
Western Michigan University & IRP Visiting Scholar
October 30
Meet the New IRP Affiliate Seminar Series
"The Impact of Fatness on Disability Insurance Application by
the Non-Elderly," (coauthored with Richard Burkhauser and John
Cawley)
Maximilian Schmeiser, Assistant Professor, Department of Consumer Science,
UW–Madison
Monday, November 10
IRP Seminar Series: Healthy Families: Assessing the Role
of Public Policies
"Vanishing Dreams: A 15 Year Reappraisal"
Andrew M. Sum, Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Labor
Market Studies at Northeastern University, Boston
November 13
Meet the New IRP Affiliate Seminar Series
“Health Insurance and School Lunch: Covering Poor Kids and
Families”
Roberta Riportella, Professor and Chair, Department of Consumer Science,
UW–Madison; Health Policy Specialist, University of Wisconsin-Extension
November 20
“Components of Change in the Relative Size of the Foreign-Born
Population, 1960–2000”
Franklin D. Wilson, William H. Sewell-Bascom Professor Emeritus of
Sociology, UW–Madison
Tuesday, November 25
Title TBA (healthy families related)*
Co-Sponsored with LaFollette School of Public Affairs
Ariel
Kalil, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Director of the
Center for Human Potential and Public Policy, University of Chicago’s
Harris School of Public Policy
*Note: This seminar begins at noon in the La
Follette School of Public Policy conference room
December 4
IRP Visiting Scholars Seminar Series
“The Evolution of Worker's Schedule Flexibility in the U.S. Labor Force:
Evidence from the CPS”
Fernando Antonio Lozano, Assistant Professor of Economics, Pomona College,
National Poverty Center Postdoctoral Fellow, 2008–09, & IRP Visiting
Scholar
December 11
A Meet the New IRP Affiliate Seminar
“Migration, Poverty, and Place in the Context of the Return Migration
to the U.S. South”
Katherine White, College of Agricultural & Life Sciences, UW–Madison
Spring Semester
February 5, 2009
IRP Seminar Series, Healthy Families: Assessing the Role of Public
Policies
“Fragile Fathers: The Meaning of Family for Low-Income Unmarried
Urban Men”
Kathryn Edin, Professor of Public Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy
School
February 12
IRP Seminar Series, Healthy Families: Assessing the Role of Public
Policies
“Healthy Marriage: What Is it, and Why Does it Matter?”
Kristin A. Moore, Senior Scholar & Program Area Director, Child Trends
March 26
IRP Seminar Series, Healthy Families: Assessing the Role of Public
Policies
“Is Child Support the Problem or Solution?”
Maria Cancian, Professor of Public Affairs and Social Work, and IRP Affiliate,
UW–Madison
April 9
“How Reliable are Income Data Collected with a Single Question?”
John Micklewright, Professor of Social Sciences, University of Southampton,
Southampton United Kingdom and IRP Visitor
April 16
IRP Seminar Series, Healthy Families: Assessing the Role of Public
Policies
“Family Instability and Child Outcomes”
Sara McLanahan, William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs
at Princeton University
April 23
“The Feminization of Forced Removal: Why Poor Women are More Likely to
Get Evicted than Poor Men”
Matthew Desmond, Doctoral Student, Department of Sociology, UW–Madison
May 7
IRP Visiting Scholars Seminar Series
Title TBA
Angel Harris, Assistant Professor of Sociology and African American Studies;
Faculty Associate: Office of Population Research, Center for Research on
Child Wellbeing; and Joint Degree Program in Social Policy, Princeton University
and IRP Visiting Scholar
New Affiliates
Marcia (Marcy) J. Carlson, Associate Professor of Sociology,
Department of Sociology, UW–Madison. Carlson’s primary research
interests center on the links between family contexts and the wellbeing
of children and parents, including implications for relevant public policies.
Her most recent work is focused on father involvement, co-parenting, union
formation, and couple relationship quality among unmarried parents—a
demographic group at high risk of poverty. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology
(demography) from the University of Michigan in 1999, completed a postdoctoral
fellowship at Princeton University (Center for Research on Child Wellbeing)
from 1999 to 2001, and was an Assistant/Associate Professor at the Columbia
University School of Social Work from 2001 to 2008. Prior to graduate school,
she worked for three years on social policy issues in Washington, DC.
John C. Ham, Professor, Department of Economics, University
of Southern California, Associate Director, Southern California Population
Research Center. Ham’s research is in the areas
of labor economics, health economics, experimental economics and econometrics.
He has looked at the effect of different Manpower Training programs on
the duration of employment and the duration of nonemployment of disadvantaged
women. He has also addressed issues that come up in the policy evaluation
of labor market programs using duration models. Ham has examined static
and dynamic linear regression models of children’s health insurance
take-up across private and public health insurance resulting from expansions
in public coverage such as SCHIP. Current research includes an examination
of eating disorders among young women and an evaluation of the Kids ‘n’ Fitness
program implemented in four California schools.
Maximilian (Max) Schmeiser, Assistant Professor of Consumer
Science, UW–Madison. Schmeiser’s current research interests
are in three main areas: What are the economic causes and consequences
of the increasing prevalence of obesity? Which measure of fatness best
predicts various health and socioeconomic outcomes? How does the Earned
Income Tax Credit alter the economic decisions of low-income families?
Zhen Zeng, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UW–Madison.
Zeng’s research includes examination of Asian Americans’ earnings
disadvantage, personality development in late midlife, the contextual determinants
of racial boundaries in adolescent friendship, and a longitudinal analysis
of Asian Immigrants’ earnings assimilation. Zhen
Zeng's home page.
(September 19, 2008)
Visiting Scholars
Rodney J. Andrews, Institute for Quantitative Social
Science, Harvard University. Andrews received his Ph.D. in economics from
the University of Michigan in 2007. His dissertation evaluated the impact
of legal challenges to affirmative action and the resulting policy responses
to minority educational outcomes. He plans to examine the impact of early-onset
psychiatric disorders on various labor market outcomes of African-Americans
and Caribbean-Americans. The research is intended to shed light on yet
another aspect of health disparities.
Angel L. Harris, Department of Sociology, Princeton University.
Harris' research interests are in understanding the causes of social inequality
in the U.S. Since education is the primary formal mechanism for upward
socioeconomic mobility within the U.S., he is focused on racial and gender
disparities in academic outcomes among adolescents. .
Fernando Antonio Lozano, Department of Economics, Pomona
College. Lozano has devoted his research to understanding the determinants
of labor market and education success by Hispanics in the United States.
He argues that there are several mechanisms in which religious participation
among Hispanics may be associated with better labor market outcomes and
consequently poverty reduction. He believes the labor market performance
of Hispanics in the United States will be a key determinant of their future
prosperity, and it is imperative to understand what determinants may alleviate
poverty among this demographic group.
Udaya Waglé, School of Public Affairs and Administration,
Western Michigan University. Waglé has a strong research background and
publication record focusing on economic inequality, poverty, and other
issues experienced by socioeconomically marginalized groups. He is currently
examining changes and determinants of working poverty in the financially
struggling state of Michigan during the 1990s and 2000s using CPS data.
This includes two projects, the role of the Food Stamps Program in increasing
economic security in the US, and the role of population heterogeneity and
social policies in determining poverty outcomes in high-income OECD countries.
(September 19, 2008)
Julia
B. Isaacs, Child and Family Policy Fellow, Economic
Studies, Brookings Institution, will be a periodic visitor at IRP
in 2008–20009. Isaacs focuses on public investments in children
and how children are affected by national budgetary policies. A former
federal budget analyst, she also researches the economic mobility of
children and families across the income spectrum.
(September 19, 2008)
IRP Affiliates’ Awards and Honors
Carolyn
Heinrich, UW–Madison Professor of Public Affairs, Department
of Economics Faculty Affiliate, and IRP Associate Director of Research
and Training, became Director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs
on July 1, 2008, taking over for Barbara Wolfe.
Pamela
Herd, UW–Madison Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and
Sociology and IRP Affiliate, has won a $30,000 Rockefeller Foundation
Innovation Award to Strengthen Social Security for Vulnerable Groups.
She will use the award to develop a proposal to improve Social Security
benefits for older low-income women who raised children. Selected by
the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI),
Herd and 11 other recipients from across the United States will meet
this fall to discuss their proposals. An advisory committee of NASI experts
selected the 12 policy scholars after thorough review of a large number
of proposals.
Timothy Smeeding,
Director of the Institute for Research on Poverty, Arts and Sciences Distinguished
Professor of Public Affairs and Economics, and Director Emeritus of the
Luxembourg Income Study, will be awarded an honorary degree from Stockholm
University in late September 2008. Smeeding is being recognized for his
contributions to the Luxembourg Income Study, a research center and cross-national
data archive located in Luxembourg, which he founded in 1983.
(September 19, 2008)
New: Affiliates’ Publications List, 2005–08, Online
IRP has mounted on its Web site a fully searchable database listing bibliographic
information for the poverty-related journal articles, books, and book chapters
of the Institute’s affiliates from 2005 to early 2008. Visit http://irp.wisc.edu/publications/searchpubs.htm for
search guidelines and a link to the database search engine.
(September 19, 2008)
Recent Discussion Papers
“The Association between Children’s Earnings and Fathers’ Lifetime
Earnings: Estimates Using Administrative Data”
Molly Dahl and Thomas DeLeire
Full Text: DP
1342-08
Knowledge of the degree of intergenerational mobility in an economy is essential
for assessing the fairness of the earnings distribution. In this paper, we
provide estimates of the degree of intergenerational mobility in the United
States using administrative earnings data from the Social Security Administration’s
records. These data contain nearly career-long earnings histories for a large
sample of U.S. fathers, and their children’s earnings around an age
that is likely to be a good proxy for lifetime earnings. We examine two different
measures of mobility: (1) the association between fathers’ and children’s
log earnings (the intergenerational elasticity or IGE) and (2) the association
between fathers’ and children’s relative positions in their respective
earnings distributions (or the intergenerational rank association or IRA).
We show that estimates of the IGE are quite sensitive to choice of specification
and sample and range from 0.26 to 0.63 for sons and from 0 to 0.27 for daughters.
That is, a 10 percent increase in fathers’ earnings is associated with
a 3 percent to 6 percent increase in sons’ earnings and a 0 percent
to 3 percent increase in daughters’ earnings. By contrast, our estimates
of the IRA are robust to both specification and sample choices and show that
a 10 percentile increase in a father’s relative position is associated
with roughly a 3 percentile increase in his son’s and roughly a 1 percentile
increase in his daughter’s relative earnings positions. Nonparametric
estimates of the IRA show relatively more immobility among the children of
men below the 10th percentile and above the 80th percentile of lifetime earnings.
“Expanding New York State’s Earned Income Tax Credit Program:
The Effect on Work, Income, and Poverty”
Maximilian D. Schmeiser
Full Text: DP
1341-08
Given its favorable employment incentives and ability to target the working
poor, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has become the primary antipoverty
program at both the federal and state levels. However, when evaluating
the effect of EITC programs on income and poverty, governments generally
calculate the effect using simple accounting, where the value of the state
or federal EITC benefit is added to a person’s income. These calculations
omit the behavioral incentives created by the existence of these programs,
the corresponding effect on labor supply and hours worked, and therefore
the actual effect on income and poverty. This paper simulates the full effect
of an expansion of the New York State EITC benefit on employment, hours
worked, income, poverty, and program expenditures. These results are then
compared to those omitting labor supply effects. Relative to estimates excluding
labor supply effects, the preferred behavioral results show that an expansion
of the New York State EITC increases employment by an additional 14,244
persons, labor earnings by an additional $95.8 million, family income by
an additional $84.5 million, decreases poverty by an additional 56,576 persons,
and increases costs to the state by $29.7 million. These results emphasize
the importance of modeling labor supply behavior when analyzing the impact
of the EITC.
“Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation”
Guido W. Imbens and Jeffrey M. Wooldridge
Full Text: DP
1340-08
Many empirical questions in economics and other social sciences depend
on causal effects of programs or policies. In the last two decades much research
has been done on the econometric and statistical analysis of the effects of
such programs or treatments. This recent theoretical literature has built
on, and combined features of, earlier work in both the statistics and econometrics
literatures. It has by now reached a level of maturity that makes it an important
tool in many areas of empirical research in economics, including labor economics,
public finance, development economics, industrial organization and other areas
of empirical micro-economics. In this review we discuss some of the recent
developments. We focus primarily on practical issues for empirical researchers,
as well as provide a historical overview of the area and give references to
more technical research.
“Expanding Wallets and Waistlines: The Impact of Family Income on the
BMI of Women and Men Eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit”
Maximilian D. Schmeiser
Full Text: DP
1339-08
The rising rate of obesity has reached epidemic proportions and
is now one of the most serious public health challenges facing the US.
However, the underlying causes for this increase are unclear. This paper
examines the effect of family income changes on body mass index (BMI) and
obesity using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979
cohort. It does so by using exogenous variation in family income in a sample
of low-income women and men. This exogenous variation is obtained from
the correlation of their family income with the generosity of state and
federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program benefits. Income is found
to significantly raise the BMI and probability of being obese for women
with EITC-eligible earnings, and have no appreciable effect for men with
EITC-eligible earnings. The results imply that the increase in real family
income from 1990 to 2002 explains between 10 and 21 percent of the increase
in sample women’s
BMI and between 23 and 29 percent of their increased obesity prevalence.
“Long-Term Effects of Public Low-Income Housing Vouchers on Work, Earnings,
and Neighborhood Quality”
Deven Carlson, Robert Haveman, Thomas Kaplan, and Barbara Wolfe
Full Text: DP
1338-08
The federal Section 8 housing program provides eligible low-income
families with an income-conditioned voucher that can be used to lease privately
owned, affordable rental housing units. This paper extends prior research
on the effectiveness of housing support programs in several ways. We use
a quasi-experimental, propensity score matching research design, and examine
the effect of housing voucher receipt on neighborhood quality, earnings,
and work effort. Results are presented for a wide variety of demographic
groups for up to five years following voucher receipt. The analysis employs
a unique longitudinal dataset that was created by combining administrative
records maintained by the State of Wisconsin with census block group data.
The results of our propensity score matching procedure show voucher receipt
to have no effect on neighborhood quality in the short-term, but positive
long-term effects. Furthermore, the results indicate that on average voucher
receipt causes lower earnings in the initial years following receipt, but
that these negative earnings effects dissipate over time. Finally, we find
that recipient responses to voucher receipt differ substantially across
demographic subgroups.
“On-the-Job Search, Minimum Wages, and Labor Market Outcomes in an
Equilibrium Bargaining Framework”
Christopher Flinn and James Mabli
Full Text: DP
1337-08
We look at the impact of a binding minimum wage on labor market
outcomes and welfare distributions in a partial equilibrium model of matching
and bargaining in the presence of on-the-job search. We use two different
specifications of the Nash bargaining problem. In one, firms engage in
a Bertrand competition for the services of an individual, as in Postel-Vinay
and Robin (2002). In the other, firms do not engage in such competitions,
and the outside option used in bargaining is always the value of unemployed
search. We estimate both bargaining specifications using a Method of Simulated
Moments estimator applied to data from a recent wave of the Survey of Income
and Program Participation. Even though individuals will be paid the minimum
wage for a small proportion of their labor market careers, we find significant
effects of the minimum wage on the ex ante value of labor market careers,
particularly in the case of Bertrand competition between firms. An important
futures goal of this research agenda is to develop tests capable of determining
which bargaining framework is more consistent with observed patterns of
turnover and wage change at the individual level.
“Childlessness and the Economic Well-Being of Elders”
Robert D. Plotnick
Full Text: DP
1336-08
Using the Health and Retirement Survey, this study examines the
relationship between childlessness and four indicators of elders’ economic
well-being: income, receipt of disability and income-tested benefits, and
wealth. The study estimates separate models for currently married persons,
currently single women, and currently single men using standard OLS and
logit, quantile regression, linear and logit random effects, and two propensity
score models. Compared to married parents, childless married couples tend
to have slightly more income and about 5 percent more wealth. Unmarried
childless men enjoy no income advantage over unmarried fathers, but have
24–35
percent more wealth. Childlessness has the strongest relationship with
unmarried women’s economic well-being. Compared to elderly unmarried
mothers, unmarried childless women have, on average, 13–31 percent more
income and about 35 percent more wealth. The strength of these relationships
tends to increase as one moves up the distribution of income or wealth,
especially for unmarried women. Childless unmarried men are more likely
to use income-tested benefits while childless unmarried women are less
likely to do so.
(September 19, 2008)
Spring 2008
Guggenheim Fellowships to Wolfe and Danziger
Two former IRP directors, Barbara Wolfe (1994–2000) and Sheldon Danziger
(1983–1988), received 2008 Guggenheim Fellowships. Wolfe, UW–Madison Professor
of Economics, Population Health Sciences, and Public Affairs, and current
Director of the La Follette School of Public Policy, was awarded a fellowship
to study the tie between income and health disparities. Danziger, University
of Michigan Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, and co-director of
the National Poverty Center, will examine four decades’ of antipoverty
policies.
Wolfe and Danziger were among the 190 Fellows named on April 3 by the
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation as 2008 awardees. The Fellows were selected
from a pool of more than 2,600 scholars, scientists, and artists, with
awards totaling $8,200,000.
(April 4, 2008)
Winter-Spring 2007-08
Focus 25:2: Pathways to Self-Sufficiency
The latest issue of Focus was recently published and is available
in full text on IRP’s Web site, at http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus.htm.
It features articles drawn from some of the papers presented at IRP’s
fall 2007 Pathways to Self-Sufficiency conference and a brief essay by conference
organizers Carolyn Heinrich and John Karl Scholz.
The other articles in this issue are: “Effects of Welfare and Antipoverty
Programs on Participants’ Children” by Greg J. Duncan, Lisa Gennetian,
and Pamela Morris; “Improving Educational Outcomes for Disadvantaged
Children” by David N. Figlio; “The Employment Prospects of Ex-Offenders” by
Steven Raphael; and “The Growing Problem of Disconnected Single Mothers” by
Rebecca Blank and Brian Kovak.
(March 5, 2008)
In April 2008 IRP will hold a working conference that brings together faith-based
service providers, policymakers, and evaluators interested in faith-based services
for hard-to-serve populations. The conference's overall goal will be to outline
issues important to the evaluation of these programs.
This working conference is being organized by Jennifer Noyes and Maria Cancian,
Institute for Research on Poverty, with support from the Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, and from the Bradley Foundation.
(March 5, 2008)
IRP is hosting a small working conference May 29 and 30, 2008, to discuss a
new set of commissioned papers that consider trends and determinants of poverty
and inequality, the evolution of poverty-related policy, and the consequences
of poverty for families and children. A book based on the conference
to be published by the Russell Sage Foundation will continue the seminal book
series on poverty policy and research, which includes Fighting
Poverty (1986),
Confronting Poverty (1994), and Understanding
Poverty (2001).
The book will be edited by Maria Cancian and Sheldon Danziger, with financial
support from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation,
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and from the Russell Sage Foundation.
(March 5, 2008)
Summer Research Workshop
IRP will again host the annual workshop at which invited social scientists
present recent research on topics affecting low-income individuals and families.
Workshop organizers are Robert Moffitt, John Karl Scholz, Robert Hauser,
and Jeffrey Smith.
(March 5, 2008)
A State of Agents? Conference
In summer 2008 IRP will host a research conference, A
State of Agents? Third Party Governance and Implications for Human Services, that will address important
issues raised by public policy and management scholars regarding the burgeoning
number of third-party entities that play increasingly central roles in the
design, management, and execution of public policy. A central goal of this
conference is to advance new ideas and theoretical arguments for research
and generate new empirical evidence that sharpens the debate over the extent
and impact of the increasing use of agents of the state to implement public
policy.
This conference is being organized by Carolyn Heinrich, with financial support
from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services; and from the University of Arizona,
School of Public Administration and Policy; Eller College of Management University
of Washington; and the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs University
of Southern California, School of Policy, Planning, and Development.
(March 5, 2008)
IRP Hosts Applied Microeconometrics Workshop
August 4-6, 2008, IRP will host an Applied Microeconometrics Workshop taught
by Guido Imbens, Harvard University, and Jeffrey Wooldridge, Michigan State University
In this workshop Guido Imbens and Jeffrey Wooldridge will discuss developments
in micro-econometrics over the last decade and a half. The focus will be on
methods that are relevant for, and ready to be used by, empirical researchers,
and the workshop is aimed exactly at such researchers. In contrast to much of
the published literature in the more technical econometrics and statistics
journals, we focus on practical issues important in implementation of the methods
and for reading and understanding of the literature. There will be little discussion
of technical details, for which we will refer to the literature.
Visit IRP’s Web site at www.irp.wisc.edu for
syllabus and registration information and forms. This workshop
is being organized with financial support from the Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. Co-Sponsors include the University of Wisconsin Center for Demography
and Ecology, the Wisconsin Center for Education Research and the University
of Southern California IEPR/SCPRC.
(March 5, 2008)
Seminars
IRP seminars take place on Thursdays from 12:15
to 1:30 p.m. in room 8417 Sewell Social Science Building, 1180 Observatory
Drive. For updates and further details, visit http://www.irp.wisc.edu/newsevents/seminars.htm.
February 21
IRP Seminar Series: Who
Can and Should Fight Poverty?
"Poverty Research and the Anti-Poverty Agenda"
Alice O'Connor,
Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
February 26
Public presentation by Robert
C. Granger, President of the William T. Grant Foundation
February 28
"Associations of Family Structure States and Transitions with Children’s
Wellbeing During Middle Childhood"
Lawrence Berger and Katherine
Magnuson, School of Social Work, UW–Madison
March 6
"Intergenerational Transmission of Welfare Dependency: The Effects of Length
of Exposure"
Oscar Mitnik, Department
of Economics, University of Miami and IRP Visiting Scholar
March 12
"Place Matters: A Review of Poverty and Development Challenges in Amenity-Rich
Areas, Declining-Resource-Dependent Areas, and Chronically Poor Regions”
Cynthia Mildred Duncan, Director of the Carsey Institute, University of New
Hampshire, cosponsored by IRP with the Havens Center: 4 p.m., room 206 Ingraham
Hall
March 13
"Does Community Participation Produce Dividends in Social Investment Fund Projects?"
Carolyn
Heinrich, La Follette School of Public Affairs, UW–Madison
March 27
IRP Seminar Series: Who
Can and Should Fight Poverty?
"What States and Localities Can do to Strengthen Labor and Fight Poverty"
Richard Freeman, Herbert S. Ascherman
Professor of Economics, Harvard University
April 3
IRP Seminar Series: New Perspectives in Social Policy
"The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can’t
Help the Poor"
Charles Karelis, Research Professor of Philosophy, The George Washington University
Daniel M. Hausman, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Philosophy, UW-Madison, will
be the discussant. (See below for further details.)
April 10
"The Fourth Way: Big States, Big Business, and the Evolution of the Earned
Income Tax Credit"
Pamela
Herd, La Follette School of Public Affairs and Sociology, UW–Madison
[Paper
available in pdf format]
April 17
"Economic Integration and Earnings Volatility: Evidence from Sweden"
Tomas Korpi, Professor of Sociology,
Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University, and IRP
Visitor
April 21
3470 Social Science Building, 12:00-1:30
Race & Ethnicity brownbag series co-sponsored with IRP & WCER
Prudence Carter, Associate Professor in the School of Education, Stanford University
April 24
IRP Seminar Series: Who
Can and Should Fight Poverty?
"The Role of the Faith Factor in Crime Prevention, Prisoner Reentry, and Poverty"
Byron Johnson,
Department of Sociology and Co-Director of the Baylor Institute for Studies
of Religion, Baylor University
May 1
"The Size of Health Selection Effects"
Alberto Palloni,
Board of Trustees Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University
May 5
8417 Social Science Building, 12:00-1:30
Race & Ethnicity brownbag series co-sponsored with IRP
William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor and
Director of the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program, Harvard University
May 8
"Economic Mobility of Black and White Families"
Julia Isaacs, Child and Family Policy Fellow, Brookings Institution
(March 5, 2008)
2008 New Perspectives in Social Policy Seminar
Charles Karelis, author of The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of
the Well-Off Can’t Help the Poor (2007, Yale University Press) and
Research Professor of Philosophy, The George Washington University, will
present the 2007-2008 lecture in the IRP “New Perspectives in Social
Policy” seminar series April 3, 2008, 8417 Social Science Building.
Daniel M. Hausman, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Philosophy, UW-Madison,
will be the discussant.
(March 5, 2008)
2008 Robert Lampman Lecture
Robert Haveman will deliver the 2008 Lampman Lecture June 18 at 4-6 p.m.
at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Pyle Center.
(March 5, 2008)
New Affiliates
Markus
Gangl, Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, focuses
much of his research on social stratification, with a particular focus on
analyses of labor markets, unemployment, poverty, and income inequality;
the social consequences of economic inequality; and the relationship between
educational policies and educational inequality in Western societies.
Katherine
J. Curtis White, Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology, University of
Wisconsin–Madison, focuses her research on racial and gender inequality among
participants of the Great Migration; racial inequality in early twentieth-century
Puerto Rico; and U.S. poverty and racial inequality in the South, 1970-2000.
Roberta Riportella,
Associate Professor of Consumer Science, School of Human Ecology, Health Policy
Specialist - Family Living Program, University of Wisconsin-Cooperative Extension,
is an applied medical sociologist/health services researcher and focuses her
work on consumer health education; improving access to health care coverage;
and public-health policy evaluation.
(March 5, 2008)
Visiting Scholar
Oscar Mitnik is an Assistant Professor at the Economics
Department of the University of Miami. He will be in residence at IRP from
March 3 through March 14, 2008. On March 6, he will present a seminar at
IRP. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Mitnik’s interests include labor economics, applied econometrics, and
applied microeconomics. His recent research has focused primarily on the determinants
and effects of policies oriented to help welfare recipients (and low-income
individuals in general) to become self-sufficient, and on the econometric methods
for program evaluation. A recent publication is "Nonparametric Tests for
Treatment Effect Heterogeneity," with R. K. Crump, V. J. Hotz, & G.
W. Imbens, 2007, forthcoming in The Review of Economics and Statistics.
IRP’s Visiting Scholar program began in 1998 and IRP invites applications
from U.S.-based social science scholars from underrepresented racial and ethnic
groups to visit IRP, interact with its faculty in residence, and become acquainted
with the staff and resources of the Institute. Applications are currently being
accepted for 2008-09, see details at http://www.irp.wisc.edu/initiatives/funding/vscholars.htm.
(March 5, 2008)
IRP Affiliates’ Awards And Honors
The Russell Sage Foundation announced support for a project to study how poverty
may affect brain development and what lies behind the income gradient of
health, “Toward Improving Our Understanding of the Tie between Income
and Health,” which was submitted by Barbara Wolfe, IRP Affiliate, Director
of the La Follette School of Public Affairs, former IRP Director, and Professor
of Economics and Population Health Sciences, UW-Madison.
Wolfe and investigators—Seth Pollack, Professor of Psychology and Letters
and Science Distinguished Professor, UW-Madison; William N. Evans, Professor,
Department of Economics and Econometrics, University of Notre Dame; and Teresa
E. Seeman, Professor, Division of Geriatrics, Geffen School of Medicine at
UCLA—will analyze a new longitudinal database of children in the United
States, the NIH MRI Study of Normal Brain Development, to explore the relationship
between socioeconomic status, the development of the human brain, and aspects
of cognitive functioning related to children’s school readiness. Additional
support will be provided by IRP.
(March 5, 2008)
New Discussion Papers
IRP Discussion Papers
“Temporary Help Service Firms’ Use of Employer Tax Credits: Implications
for Disadvantaged Workers’ Labor Market Outcomes”
Sarah Hamersma and Carolyn Heinrich
Full Text: DP
1335-08
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 workers? We examine the
distinct effects of THS employment and WOTC/WtW subsidies using administrative
and survey data. Results indicate that WOTC/WtW-certified THS workers have
higher earnings than WOTC-eligible but uncertified THS workers. However, these
workers have shorter job tenure and lower earnings than WOTC/WtW-certified
workers in non-THS industries. Panel estimates suggest that these effects do
not persist over time.
“Welfare Reform: The U.S. Experience”
Robert Moffitt
Full Text: DP
1334-08
The reform of the cash-based welfare program for single mothers in the US which
occurred in the 1990s was the most important since its inception in 1935. The
reforms imposed credible and enforceable work requirements into the program
for the first time, as well as establishing time limits on lifetime receipt.
Research on the effects of the reform have shown it to have reduced the program
caseload and governmental expenditures on the program. In addition, the reform
has had generally positive average effects on employment, earnings, and income,
and generally negative effects on poverty rates, although the gains are not
evenly distributed across groups. A fraction of the affected group appears
to have been made worse off by the reform.
“Human Services Systems Integration: A Conceptual Framework”
Thomas Corbett and Jennifer L. Noyes
Full Text: DP
1333-08
It is generally believed that the human services structure is most accurately
described as an array of potentially related programs that deliver distinct
benefits or services to narrowly defined target populations. As a whole, the
configuration of services available to support and assist families in their
efforts to become self-sufficient can be complex, confusing, redundant, and
incoherent. The opposite of this approach to organizing and delivering human
services is often coined ‘systems integration.’ Building on lessons
learned from the field, the authors provide a conceptual framework for understanding
the systems integration concept and approach to human services delivery.
“The Stability of Shared Child Physical Placements in Recent Cohorts
of Divorced Wisconsin Families,” Lawrence M. Berger, Patricia R. Brown,
Eunhee Joung, Marygold S. Melli, and Lynn Wimer
Full Text: DP
1329-07
This paper describes the living arrangements of children in Wisconsin
families with sole mother and shared child physical placements following parental
divorce and explores the stability of these arrangements during (approximately)
the next three years. Contrary to prior research in this area, results provide
little evidence that children in shared placement spend less time in their
father’s care about three years after a divorce than they did at the
time of the divorce. In contrast, children with sole mother placement appear
to progressively spend less time in their father’s care in the years
following a divorce, and a considerable proportion of these children spend
little or no time in their father’s care about three years after divorce.
Brookings Institution Discussion Paper
Paper on Brookings Web site: http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/12_taxcredit_scholz.aspx?emc=lm&m=210713&l=34&v=477926
“Employment-Based Tax Credits for Low-Skilled Workers,” John Karl
Scholz, IRP Affiliate and former Director and a Visiting Fellow in Economic
Studies at Brookings Institution in 2007-2008, recently released a discussion
paper which introduces policy recommendations designed to address interrelated
problems faced by families in low-income communities. The paper is part of
a series of Hamilton Project discussion papers published by the Brookings Institution.
(March 5, 2008)
A Decade of ‘W-2’: An Interview
Are Wisconsin’s low-income families better off or worse off since the
state launched its welfare reform initiative called Wisconsin Works (W-2) ten
years ago? Bob Jacobson of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families (WCCF)
posed this question in fall 2007—W-2’s tenth anniversary—to
two Wisconsin Works experts. The
interview, of IRP Researcher Jennifer Noyes, a former Wisconsin Department
of Workforce Development administrator, and Pam Fendt, Director of the Good
Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods Coalition, was published in WisKids Journal,
a WCCF publication.
(March 5, 2008)
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