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Cutting Benefits by 50% to Combat Youth Unemployment—Do Young People Get Back to Work Sooner?

comparison of unemployment duration before and after benefit reduction

Policies aimed at tackling youth unemployment are a key priority for policymakers because unemployment when young is known to have adverse long-term effects. One proposed measure is to make unemployment benefits for young people less generous. However, opportunities to study the effects of benefit cuts on the young are rare. A sharp cut to benefits in response to the Great Recession allowed Aedín Doris, Donal O’Neill, and Olive Sweetman (Maynooth University) to examine the effects on youth unemployment in Ireland.
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Early-Life Access to Food Stamps Has Long-Run Benefits for Children’s Health

Access to food stamps reduces poor health

In the United States, 25 percent of all children and nearly 15 percent of the total population received food stamp benefits in 2011. The program is hotly debated among politicians—there have been several cuts to the program in recent years, and more cuts are currently proposed, including cuts specifically targeted at documented immigrants.

Despite its importance and uncertain future, there is very little evidence on the effect of the Food Stamp program on its beneficiaries. In a new JHR paper, Chloe N. East investigates the effects of restrictions on immigrants’ access to Food Stamps.
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Does Going to School with Immigrant Children Impair Learning?

elementary school girls

As immigration continues to dominate political debates, a growing number of policymakers and citizens are concerned that the presence of immigrant children in schools may harm native children’s learning outcomes. Existing evidence on this question, however, is quite mixed. Laurent Bossavie (World Bank) aims to contribute to the discussion with a new study on learning outcomes of children who share schools with immigrants.
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No Evidence of Labor Market Disruptions Due to Sick Pay Mandates

Do paid sick leave mandates damage employment levels?

The United States is one of very few OECD countries where employers provide sick pay only voluntarily. This has led to a situation where a third of private-sector full time-employees had no access to paid sick leave in 2011 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among low-income, part-time, and service-sector workers, more than 80 percent had no access to paid time off when they were sick. In response, over the past years, a dozen states and several dozen cities have passed sick pay mandates. A major criticism by opponents of such mandates is that they would disrupt labor markets, destroy jobs, and lead to lower wages. But if we compare labor markets in places with mandates with similar places without mandates, what are the results?
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Study Finds We Might Not Select the Best Bundled Insurance Plans for Our Needs

woman with questions

Choosing the right health insurance plan is difficult. People typically face large menus of plans that differ on various dimensions, like what health services are covered and how insurer co-pays are structured. A further layer of complexity is that plans for one set of services (e.g., drugs) are often bundled with plans for a different set of services (e.g., hospital). This “product bundling” affects the choice environment and may in turn affect the choice strategy a person uses. A recent study published in the Journal of Human Resources asks, “Do we get it right?”
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Text-Messaging Parents Can Help Kids Learn to Read—Especially If the Curriculum Is Personalized and Differentiated

Reading growth with text-messaging

Educational interventions based on behavioral economics principles have shown promise for combatting some of the persistent disparities in education outcomes. Researchers have studied text-messaging “nudges” and found them to be successful at all levels of education, from pre-K to the transition to college.

With this in mind, Christopher Doss, Erin M. Fahle, Susanna Loeb, and Benjamin York dug deeper to look at how personalizing text messages to the recipient could make a difference. Their work aims to identify the importance of personalization and differentiation within a text-messaging program designed to help parents of kindergarteners support the literacy development of their children at home.
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Text-Messaging Program READY4K! Supports Early Literacy Development in the Home

Sample Ready4K texts

Racial and socioeconomic gaps in academic achievement begin early in life, with large gaps in skills present by the time children enter kindergarten. One factor contributing to this educational inequality is the great variation in home learning experiences.

Researchers and practitioners have taken a variety of approaches to help parents support the literacy development of their children. Examples include interventions during doctors’ visits or hosting workshops for parents at schools. Unfortunately, these traditional approaches are hampered by their relative infrequency and/or substantial demands on parents’ time.

Benjamin York, Susanna Loeb, and Christopher Doss wondered whether something as common as a text message could improve the home learning experience. “In this study, we field a randomized control trial to test the efficacy of a text messaging intervention that leverages lessons from behavioral economics on overcoming barriers to adult behavior change.”
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Does an Inheritance Make You Work Less?

Andrew Carnegie

Many people are dying wealthier and leaving larger estates. At the same time, the old-age economic dependency ratio—the number of people aged 65 and over as a percentage of the total labor force—will increase in many parts of the world. During his life, Gilded Age millionaire philanthropist Andrew Carnegie asserted that a large inheritance causes people to work less. If this is true, the old-age dependency ratio may worsen even further, and it would be useful to design sensible tax policies for bequests and inheritances accordingly. Researchers Erlend E. Bø, Elin Halvorsen, and Thor O. Thoresen explore the effect of inherited wealth on labor force participation in their recent study.
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When the Fire Goes Out, Children Face Lasting Effects: Evidence from the Indonesian Forest Fires

pregnant woman

Recent devastating wildfires have drawn attention to how climate change is expected to make weather phenomena more unpredictable and wildfires more frequent and difficult to control. Little is known about how the accompanying air pollution affects long-term outcomes in children, who are especially vulnerable to its effects.

Maria Rosales-Rueda and Margaret Triyana analyzed the impacts of early-life exposure to the 1997 Indonesian forest fires on children’s long-term health outcomes in Indonesia. These fires were among the most intense fires in Indonesia’s history, emitting levels of particulate matter similar to the hazardous haze from agricultural burning or chronic exposure to indoor air pollution generated by the use of biomass fuels.
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