Temporary Help Service Firms' Use of Employer Tax Credits: Implications for Disadvantaged Workers' Labor Market Outcomes

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.temporary help, disadvantaged, welfare, welfare-to-work, tax credit, Hamersma, Heinrich

New York’s Recovery Drove National COVID-19 Case Reduction

National COVID-19 trends mask large differences in trends across U.S. states. Reductions in March & April were due almost entirely to declines in New York. The failure of other states to enact strong physical distancing protocols and/or reopening too early has led to our current national surge in cases

Expanding Public Insurance Eligibility Increases Substance Use Treatment Provider Acceptance of Public Insurance and Increases Adolescent Access to Treatment

Expanding eligibility thresholds for Medicaid and CHIP leads to increased access to and use of substance use treatment among adolescents

Temporary Help Service Firms\u27 Use of Employer Tax Credits: Implications for Disadvantaged Workers\u27 Labor Market Outcomes

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

Pregnancy Medicaid Expansions and Fertility: Differentiating between the Intensive and Extensive Margins

The theoretical and empirical links between public health insurance access and fertility in the United States remain unclear. Utilizing a demographic cell-based estimation approach with panel data (1987-1997), we revisit the large-scale Medicaid expansions to pregnant women during the 1980s to estimate the heterogeneous impacts of public health insurance access on childbirth. While the decision to become a parent (i.e., the extensive margin) appears to be unaffected by increased access to Medicaid, we find that increased access to public health insurance positively influenced the number of high parity births (i.e., the intensive margin) for select groups of women. In particular, we find a robust, positive birth effect for unmarried women with a high school education, a result which is consistent across the two racial groups examined in our analysis: African American and white women. This result suggests that investigating effects along both the intensive and extensive margin is important for scholars who study the natalist effects of social welfare policies, and our evidence provides a more nuanced understanding of the influence of public health insurance on fertility

Information Shocks and Social Networks

The relationships between social networks and economic behavior have been well-documented. However, it is often difficult to distinguish between the role of information sharing and other features of a neighborhood, such as factors that are common to people of the same ethnicities or socio-economic opportunities, or uniquely local methods of program implementation. We seek to gain new insight into the potential role of information flows in networks by investigating what happens when information is disrupted. We exploit rich microdata from Florida vital records and program participation files to explore the effects of neighborhood social networks on the degree to which immigrant WIC participation during pregnancy declined in the "information shock" period surrounding welfare reform. We compare changes in WIC participation amongst Hispanic immigrants living in neighborhoods with a larger concentration of immigrants from their country of origin to those with a smaller concentration of immigrants from their country of origin, holding constant the size of the immigrant population and the share of immigrants in the neighborhood who are Hispanic. We find strong evidence to support the notion that social networks mediated the information shock faced by immigrant women in the wake of welfare reform.