Research

Synthesis of Research and Resources to Support At-Risk Youth

This report for the Youth Demonstration Development Project highlights what is known broadly about the needs, circumstances, and outcomes for at-risk youth; theoretical perspectives and intervention approaches to serve them, including risk/resilience and capital development frameworks; and the Administration for Children and Families' programs that serve at-risk youth. The report also discusses implications of the research for the development of a conceptual framework for serving at-risk youth.

Connecting At-Risk Youth to Promising Occupations

This brief provides information for programs and organizations that serve at-risk youth transitioning to adulthood. Part of the Administration for Children and Families’ Youth Demonstration Development issue brief series, it explores occupations in health care and construction that hold promise for a quick path to employment without extensive up-front education or training.

Advancing the Self-Sufficiency and Well-Being of At-Risk Youth: A Conceptual Framework

This report presents a conceptual framework for efforts to prepare at-risk youth for healthy adult functioning and self-sufficiency. Produced as part of the Youth Demonstration Development project for the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, the framework explains how we can build our knowledge about what works for at-risk youth, by implementing and testing research-informed interventions to promote youth’s resilience and human capital.

Severe Deprivation in America: An Introduction

Poverty researchers from across the social sciences have the opportunity to reach collectively toward a new paradigm—not just a new way of thinking but a whole different approach to the study of vulnerability, violence, and marginality, one that carries methodological, policy-relevant, and normative implications. Most research is rooted in theories now a few decades old. These theories have stood the test of time because they are incisive, sweeping, and validated.

Employment Insecurity among the Working Poor

While social scientists have documented severe consequences of job loss, scant research investigates why workers lose their jobs. We explore the role of housing insecurity in actuating employment insecurity, investigating if workers who involuntarily lose their homes subsequently involuntarily lose their jobs. Analyzing novel survey data of predominately low-income working renters, we find the likelihood of being laid off to be between 11 and 22 percentage points higher for workers who experienced a preceding forced move, compared to observationally identical workers who did not.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending more than half of their income on housing, and eviction has become ordinary, especially for single mothers. In vivid, intimate prose, Desmond provides a ground-level view of one of the most urgent issues facing America today. As we see families forced  into shelters, squalid apartments, or more dangerous neighborhoods, we bear witness to the human cost of America’s vast inequality—and to people’s determination and intelligence in the face of hardship.

The Impact of Market Size and Composition on Health Insurance Premiums: Evidence from the First Year of the Affordable Care Act

Under the Affordable Care Act, individual states have discretion in how they define coverage regions, within which insurers must charge the same premium to buyers of the same age, family structure, and smoking status. We exploit variation in these definitions to investigate whether the size of the coverage region affects outcomes in the ACA marketplaces. We find large consequences for small and rural markets.

The Market Impacts of Product Patents in Developing Countries: Evidence for India

In 2005, as the result of a World Trade Organization mandate, India implemented a patent reform for pharmaceuticals that was intended to comply with the 1995 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Exploiting variation in the timing of patent decisions, we estimate that a molecule receiving a patent experienced an average price increase of just 3-6 percent, with larger increases for more recently developed molecules and for those produced by just one firm when the patent system began.

The Impact of Disability Benefits on Labor Supply: Evidence from the VA's Disability Compensation Program

Combining administrative data from the U.S. Army, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Social Security Administration, we analyze the effect of the VA's Disability Compensation (DC) program on veterans' labor force participation and earnings. We study the 2001 Agent Orange decision, a unique policy change that expanded DC eligibility for Vietnam veterans who served in theatre but did not expand eligibility to other veterans of this era, to assess the causal effects of DC enrollment.

Consumption Inequality and Family Labor Supply

We examine the link between wage and consumption inequality using a life-cycle model incorporating consumption and family labor supply decisions. We derive analytical expressions for the dynamics of consumption, hours, and earnings of two earners in the presence of correlated wage shocks, nonseparability, progressive taxation, and asset accumulation. The model is estimated using panel data for hours, earnings, assets, and consumption. We focus on family labor supply as an insurance mechanism and find strong evidence of smoothing of permanent wage shocks.

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