How Did Older Workers Fare in 2009?

Presents findings on 2009 unemployment and labor participation rates, length of unemployment, and earnings for workers age 55 and older, compared with past trends and with younger workers. Analyzes data by gender, race/ethnicity, education, and industry

Will Health Care Costs Bankrupt Aging Boomers?

Using the Urban Institute's dynamic microsimulation model, projects 2010-40 income, out-of-pocket medical expenses, and insurance premiums for Americans age 65 and older, excluding long-term care costs, assuming no changes in healthcare costs or policy

Unemployment Rate Soars for Older Men With Limited Education

Examines the unemployment rate of adults age fifty-five and older by gender, industry, education level, and race/ethnicity. Highlights rising rates among older men in construction and manufacturing, those with limited education, and Latino/Hispanic men

Insurance in Extended Family Networks

We investigate partial insurance and group risk sharing in extended family networks. Our approach is based on decomposing income shocks into group aggregate and idiosyncratic components, allowing us to measure the extent to which each is insured, having accounted for public insurance programs. We apply our framework to extended family networks in the United States by exploiting the unique intergenerational structure of the PSID. We find that over 60% of shocks to household income are potentially insurable within family networks. However, we find little evidence that the extended family provides insurance for such idiosyncratic shocks

Migration and Informal Insurance

We document that an experimental intervention offering transport subsidies for poor rural households to migrate seasonally in Bangladesh improved risk sharing. A theoretical model of endogenous migration and risk sharing shows that the effect of subsidizing migration depends on the underlying economic environment. If migration is risky, a temporary subsidy can induce an improvement in risk sharing and enable profitable migration. We estimate the model and find that the migration experiment increased welfare by 12.9%. Counterfactual analysis suggests that a permanent, rather than temporary, decline in migration costs in the same environment would result in a reduction in risk sharing

Migration and Informal Insurance

Do new migration opportunities for rural households change the nature and extent of informal risk sharing? We experimentally document that randomly offering poor rural households subsidies to migrate leads to a 40% improvement in risk sharing in their villages. We explain this finding using a model of endogenous migration and risk sharing. When migration is risky, the network can facilitate migration by insuring that risk, which in turn crowds-in risk sharing when new migration opportunities arise. We estimate the model and find that welfare gains from migration subsidies are 42% larger, compared with the welfare gains without spillovers, once we account for the changes in risk sharing. Our analysis illustrates that (a) ignoring the spillover effects on the network gives an incomplete picture of the welfare effects of migration, and (b) informal risk sharing may be an essential determinant of the takeup of new income-generating technologies

Migration and Informal Insurance

Do new migration opportunities for rural households change the nature and extent of informal risk sharing? We experimentally document that randomly offering poor rural households subsidies to migrate leads to a 40% improvement in risk sharing in their villages. Our model of endogenous migration and risk sharing shows that risky and temporary migration opportunities can induce an improvement in risk sharing enabling profitable migration. Accounting for improved risk sharing, the migration experiment increased welfare by 12.9%. However, permanent declines in migration costs improve outside options for households and can lead to reductions in risk sharing. The short-run experimental results for migration subsidies can differ from the longer-run impacts of a policy that permanently subsidizes migration

School Grants and Education Quality : Experimental Evidence from Senegal

The effect of increasing school resources on educational outcomes is a central issue in the debate on improving school quality. This paper uses a randomized experiment to analyze the impact of a school grants program in Senegal, which allowed schools to apply for funding for improvements of their own choice. The analysis finds positive effects on test scores at lower grades that persist at least two years. These effects are concentrated among schools that focused funds on human resource improvements rather than school materials, suggesting that teachers and principals may be a central determinant of school quality

Decentralizing education resources: school grants in Senegal

We report on the design and fabrication of high performance 800-1000 nm high power lasers using an asymmetric waveguide structure. The structure offers lower beam divergence, improved power kink and reduced resistively