Immigrant Participation in Social Assistance Programs* The share of foreigners in the German social assistance program exceeds their population share and continues to grow. This study tests whether higher foreigner welfare dependence is due to foreign-native differences in behavior as opposed to exogenous characteristics. The determinants of welfare dependence are analyzed using data from the G...

Recent studies of credit access among low-income households find that payday loans can exacerbate, rather than alleviate, financial distress. I find that households with payday loan access are also more likely to use food assistance benefits and less likely to make child support payments required of non-resident parents. These findings suggest that borrowers in distress turn to transfer program...

Channels of Labour Supply Responses of Lone Parents to Changed Work Incentives In this paper, we investigate the response of female lone parents to two reforms to the welfare system in Australia. We look at changes to both hours and participation and focus on the channels of adjustment, in particular the role of job changes for adjustment in hours. We highlight the relationship between policy d...

In this paper we analyze the attitudes of residents of transition countries with speci…c focus on whether they have a strong taste for income redistribution. We implement emprical strategies to test the implications of the basic theoretical models in the literature regarding preferences for redistribution. Empirical models of survey respondent’s preference for redistribution, willingness to pay...

Most work by economists has been inconclusive when seeking a consistent relationship between income-support programs (like Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)) and births to unwed women (or, as the literature traditionally terms it, illegitimacy). But a recent study (Kimenyi and Mbaku (1995)) reports a large, positive and statistically-significant relationship when data are weighted ...

This paper characterizes a stationary Markov-perfect political equilibrium where agents vote over income taxation that distorts educational investment. Agents become rich or poor through educational investment, and the poor have a second chance at success. The results show the following concerning the cost of a second chance. First, when the cost is low, the economy is characterized by high lev...

This paper presents a non-parametric microsimulation methodology for assessing the determinants of changes in income inequality and poverty. One great advantage of this method over alternatives is that it is not very demanding in terms of modelling labour supply and household behaviour while still providing a plausible link between changes in overall labour market conditions and the full househ...

A class of inequality measures that is a natural companion to the popular Lorenz curve is the class of measures that are linear in incomes. These measures, which include the Gini and S-Gini coefficients, can be interpreted as ethical means of relative deprivation feelings. Their change through the tax and benefit system can be decomposed simply as a sum of progressivity indices for individual t...

We use an OLG model with heterogenous agents where agents can choose between a low deductibleand a high deductible health insurance. In addition, they can save tax free in a health savings account (HSA) if they choose the high deductible insurance. We study the effect of transitioning from a system with private health insurance for young agents and Medicare for old agents to a system with HSAs ...

This paper examines the impact of a change in the German child benefit system in 1996, which led to a large increase in lump sum transfers to families with children. We analyze the impact on the labor force participation of family members as well as on household consumption directed to children. Comparing behavioral changes of adults with children with behavioral changes of adults without child...