scholarly journals Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government—Fighting Poverty: Lessons from Recent U.S. History

2000 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca M Blank

Welfare reform efforts in the 1990s aimed at reducing welfare dependence and moving women into work. Public assistance use fell and labor force participation among mothers rose at a stunning rate over the decade. Poverty declined, but at a slower rate. These changes are causally related to the strong macroeconomy, welfare reform efforts, and other policy changes, especially the EITC and minimum wage expansions. This paper concludes that all of these effects reinforced each other, producing very large behavioral changes. It is too early to predict the effects of these changes on long-term family well-being.

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 520-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Secret ◽  
Claudia Peck-Heath

This study investigated the relationship between maternal labor force participation and the general health and school performance of school-age children in public assistance families. Data were obtained from face-to-face interviews with 97 mothers drawn froma random sample of public assistance recipients in one community. Using a measure of maternal labor force participation over the course of several years, logistic regression analysis revealed positive, but complex, relationships. Children whose mothers had recent, current, or long-term employment were in better health than children whose mothers had been unemployed for more than 2 years. Children’s school performancewas positively associated with either long-term unemployment or long-term employment, suggesting that the stability of maternal labor force participation, rather than work status per se, was an important factor. The study maintains a needed focus on child outcomes and provides an important conceptualization of maternal labor force participation for use in future welfare reform studies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 450-476
Author(s):  
Valerie Mueller ◽  
Emily Schmidt ◽  
Dylan Kirkleeng

We use the Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey to evaluate the extent women are included in Myanmar’s dynamic transformation process and the relative barriers that prohibit their inclusion between 2005 and 2010. Women play an active role in the labor force during a period of massive structural change. Their growing importance is substantiated by their increasing placement in manufacturing jobs near and away from home. Despite their increasing labor force participation, women’s engagement in manufacturing is negatively associated with household welfare. This may be a function of a gender pay gap or reflect households’ inability to substitute the labor of women to complete specific tasks related to household production. Future investments in surveys in Myanmar will improve our ability to identify which factors systematically provide an enabling environment for female labor participation, mobility, and improvements in well-being.


2018 ◽  
Vol 117 (802) ◽  
pp. 310-314
Author(s):  
Aaron Reeves

[S]hort-term policy changes can have long-term effects on the health and well-being of the population.


Daedalus ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 144 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa F. Berkman ◽  
Axel Boersch-Supan ◽  
Mauricio Avendano

Population aging in the United States poses challenges to societal institutions while simultaneously creating opportunities to build a more resilient, successful, and cohesive society. Work organization and labor-force participation are central to both the opportunities and challenges posed by our aging society. We argue that expectations about old age have not sufficiently adapted to the reality of aging today. Our institutions need more adaptation in order to successfully face the consequences of demographic change. Although this adaptation needs to focus especially on work patterns among the “younger elderly,” our society has to change its general attitudes toward work organization and labor-force participation, which will have implications for education and health care. We also show that work's beneficial effects on well-being in older ages are often neglected, while the idea that older workers displace younger workers is a misconception emerging from the “lump-of-labor” fallacy. We conclude, therefore, that working at older ages can lead to better quality of life for older people and to a more productive and resilient society overall.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahidur Rahman Khandker ◽  
Hussain Akhterus Samad ◽  
Nobuhiko Fuwa ◽  
Ryotaro Hayashi

Are subsidies to female education worth supporting to enhance socioeconomic and demographic changes? This paper examines whether or not the Female Secondary Stipend and Assistance Program (FSSAP) in Bangladesh matters. If it does, how much and in what way—on both observed short- and long- term outcomes associated with female education? How did FSSAP impact the education of children, and boys in particular? The paper also explores the impact on female labor force participation, as well as age at marriage, fertility, and other effects on society.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michihito Ando ◽  
Masato Furuichi ◽  
Yoshihiro Kaneko

Abstract Although a public long-term care (LTC) program is a potentially important factor for the labor supply of female informal caregivers, there are only a handful of individual-level studies on this topic and the macro-level impacts of LTC programs are still largely unknown. Exploiting the introduction of nationwide long-term care insurance (LTCI) in Japan and utilizing a synthetic control method, we examine how LTCI introduction has altered the trends of public expenditures on in-kind benefits for the elderly, public health expenditure, and female labor force participation. The estimation results using the panel data of OECD countries (1980–2013) suggest that LTCI introduction substantially increased the in-kind benefits for the elderly by around one percentage point of GDP 10 years after LTCI introduction, but we do not find a positive effect on the labor force participation for middle-aged women. The fact that we do not observe any positive LTCI effects on middle-aged female labor force participation on a macro level implies that positive LTCI effects on female labor supply observed in some previous microlevel studies may be cancelled out by some other factors or are small enough to be detected under a general-equilibrium setting.


Author(s):  
Richard Alba ◽  
Nancy Foner

This chapter looks at the economic situations of the immigrants. They have uprooted themselves in the search for better economic prospects, but profound changes in the economic structures of the rich societies of the West in recent years raise serious doubts about whether their aspirations will be fulfilled and therefore about the starting point for the next generation. The chapter then explores the implications of growing labor market inequality and precarious work for the economic incorporation of immigrants, including rates of labor force participation, unemployment, and risks of poverty. The emphasis is on how immigrants are doing compared to natives in the countries where they live, with the emphasis on low-status immigrants.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document