AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 4, April 1999
The Digest
A free monthly publication featuring non-technical summaries of research on topics of broad public interest
Women in the phase-out of the EITC are more than 5 percent less likely to work, and if they are already working, work as much as 20 percent fewer hours per year.
After a decade in near total obscurity, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) was expanded in the tax acts of 1986, 1990, and 1993 to become the largest cash-transfer program for lower-income families with children. Introduced in 1975 as a modest program to offset the Social Security payroll tax, the EITC is...
Article
More could be done to treat major depression in 1995 than in 1991 for a given budget.
After health expenditures rose at an alarming pace for much of the post World War ll period, the increases in the 1990s have been relatively anemic, much to the relief of policymakers, business managers, and health professionals. But what accounts for this welcome trend?
Economists typically start delving into the forces driving trend change by dividing nominal spending by an...
Article
It was not contagion from Thailand that made other countries vulnerable to financial crisis. They were vulnerable because of their own home-grown problems.
The specter of the International Monetary Fund or some other international institution riding to the "rescue" of a country in financial distress has become such a routine event in the 1990s that, increasingly, it invites only the cursory scrutiny that accompanies the common place. But in Under What Circumstances,...
Article
...there is a 'striking and easily observable' clustering of immigrants in high-benefit states.
In Immigration and Welfare Magnets (NBER Working Paper No. 6813) , NBER Research Associate George Borjas concludes that "the generous welfare benefits offered by some states have magnetic effects and alter the geographic sorting of immigrants in the United States." He finds that there is a "striking and easily observable" clustering of immigrants in high-benefit states,...