The Long-Run Effects of Disruptive Peers

MacroeconomicsThere's a great deal of research on how classmates can affect test scores and discipline in school, but what about later in life? In Working Paper 1605, PERC's Rex Grey Professor of Economics Mark Hoekstra, Scott E. Carrell of UC Davis, and Elira Kuka of Southern Methodist University, look at the long-term impact of childhood peers, particularly with respect to labor market outcomes in adulthood

Replication data for: "Quantifying the Benefits of Social Insurance: Unemployment Insurance and Health"

Review of Economics and Statistics: Forthcomin

Child Poverty, the Great Recession, and the Social Safety Net in the United States

In this paper, we comprehensively examine the effects of the Great Recession on child poverty, with particular attention to the role of the social safety net in mitigating the adverse effects of shocks to earnings and income. Using a state panel data model and data for 2000 to 2014, we estimate the relationship between the business cycle and child poverty, and we examine how and to what extent the safety net is providing protection to at-risk children. We find compelling evidence that the safety net provides protection; that is, the cyclicality of after-tax-and-transfer child poverty is significantly attenuated relative to the cyclicality of private income poverty. We also find that the protective effect of the safety net is not similar across demographic groups, and that children from more disadvantaged backgrounds, such as those living with non-Hispanic black or Hispanic, single, or particularly immigrant household heads-or immigrant spouses, experience larger poverty cyclicality than non-Hispanic white, married, or native household heads with native spouses. Our findings hold across a host of choices for how to define poverty. These include measures based on absolute thresholds or more relative thresholds. They also hold for measures of resources that include not only cash and near cash transfers net of taxes but also several measures of medical benefits

The Long-Run Effects of Disruptive Peers

Retirement_SavingsThere's a great deal of research on how classmates can affect test scores and discipline in school, but what about later in life? In Working Paper 1605, the authors look at the long-term impact of childhood peers, particularly with respect to labor market outcomes in adulthood