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NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
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6 February 2012

Immigrants, Welfare Reform, and the U.S. Safety Net

Beginning with the 1996 federal welfare reform law, many U.S. safety net programs -- not only cash welfare assistance for families with children, but also food stamps, Medicaid, SCHIP, and SSI -- eliminated eligibility for legal immigrants who previously had been eligible on the same terms as citizens. Using data from the Current Population Survey for 1995-2010 and focusing on children, Marianne Bitler and Hilary Hoynes find that among low-income households with children, immigrant households have come to rely more heavily on earnings, and less on the safety net, than native households. Participation in safety net programs has declined for immigrants compared to natives during the period they study, and the declines were largest for food stamps and SSI. Using variation across states in the magnitude of the Great Recession, their results also show that labor market contractions have led to larger increases in poverty rates for children in immigrant-headed households than in native‐headed households.

3 February 2012

Does Gender Matter for Political Leadership?

While very few women ran for mayor of a U.S. city in 1970, about one-third of the elections in the 2000s have involved a female candidate. Using data on U.S. mayoral elections from 1950 to 2005, Fernando Ferreira and Joseph Gyourko find that the gender of the mayor has no effect on policy outcomes related to the size of local government, the composition of municipal spending and employment, or crime rates. However, female mayors appear to have higher political skills, putting them at an advantage as incumbents over comparable male candidates. Interestingly, electing a female mayor does not change the long-run political success of other female mayoral candidates in the same city, or of female candidates in local congressional elections.

2 February 2012

Perceptions of Ballot Secrecy Influence Voter Turnout

Alan Gerber, Gregory Huber, David Doherty, Conor Dowling, and Seth Hill ran an experiment by providing registered voters in Connecticut with information about ballot secrecy protections prior to the November 2010 general election. The researchers find that these letters increased turnout for registered citizens who had not voted before, but not for those who had previously voted. These results suggest that even though the secret ballot is a long-standing institution in the United States, providing basic information about ballot secrecy can affect the decision to participate in elections.
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