January 30, 2024
How Sensitive Are Single Mothers’ Work Decisions to a Change in Incentives? Correcting Misperceptions of the Evidence
Estimates of how employment responds to changes in single mothers’ return to work are central to evaluating policies such as child tax credit expansions. A review of decades of research finds that commonly used labor supply elasticity estimates cluster around 0.75, with averages of roughly 0.8 across both literature reviews and original studies. These findings indicate that the assumption of a 0.75 elasticity in policy analyses is consistent with the broader empirical literature rather than an outlier estimate.
October 11, 2023
Changing the Official Poverty Measure Would Help Rich States and Hurt Poor States
Earlier this year, a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report recommended elevating the Supplemental Poverty…
October 5, 2023
Changing the Official Poverty Measure Would Help Rich States and Hurt Poor States
In this post I discuss the policy implications of declaring the Supplemental Poverty Measure the…