AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 6, June 2006
The Digest
A free monthly publication featuring non-technical summaries of research on topics of broad public interest
"When a sex offender moves into a neighborhood, houses within a one-tenth mile area around the sex offender's home fall."
If a registered sex offender, reformed or not, moves into your immediate neighborhood, it's bad financial news. The potential price for your home likely has been trimmed substantially.
Economists Leigh Linden and Jonah Rockoff measure the impact of living in close proximity to such a convicted criminal in There Goes the Neighborhood? Estimates...
Article
"Children's outcomes have worsened since the program was introduced along a variety of behavioral and health dimensions. "
The percent of mothers who work in the paid labor force in North America has been rising, and the increased demand for childcare accompanying the rise of two-earner couples has captured the attention of public policymakers. In both Canada and the United States, there are large subsidies for early child care for low-income families, with modest tax...
Article
"The more rapid access to drugs on the market enabled by the Prescription Drug User Fee Act saved the equivalent of 180 to 310 thousand life-years BETWEEN 19XX AND XXXX."
In virtually all developed countries, regulatory authorities provide public oversight of the safety and efficacy of prescription drugs prior to their being approved for marketing. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducts such oversight. A central tradeoff facing the FDA...
Article
"Changes in family structure - notably a doubling of the percent of families headed by a single woman - can account for a 3.7 percentage point increase in poverty rates, more than the entire rise in the poverty rate from 10.7 percent to 12.8 percent since 1980."
Over the past 45 years, the United States has experienced an ever-growing standard of living, with real GDP per capita more than doubling between 1959 and 2004. In contrast, living standards among some...