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About the Author(s)

Lucie Schmidt 400 pix

Lucie Schmidt is professor of economics at Smith College, a research associate affiliated with the NBER’s Program on Children, and a coeditor of the Review of the Economics of the Household.  She is an empirical microeconomist working in the fields of labor and health economics and the economics of the family. 

Schmidt has worked extensively on social safety net programs in the United States, with a particular focus on programs for individuals with disabilities. Other research areas include retirement security and the economics of marriage and fertility decisions. She has received grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Social Security Administration-funded Retirement and Disability Research Centers at the University of Michigan and at the NBER.

Schmidt’s work has been published in the Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Health Economics, American Journal of Health Economics, Social Security Bulletin, and Demography, among others.  She has an AB in government from Smith College and a PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan. 

Lara Shore-Sheppard 400 pix

Lara Shore-Sheppard is the Kimberly ’96 and Robert ’62 Henry Professor of Economics and chair of the Economics Department at Williams College. She is a research associate affiliated with the NBER’s Programs on Children and the Economics of Education.

Shore-Sheppard is an applied microeconomist whose work focuses on assessing the impact of publicly provided health insurance and examining the interactions between public insurance, private insurance, cash and food assistance programs, and employment. She is currently researching the relationship between family living arrangements, the social safety net, and the well-being of children and seniors in multigenerational families.

Shore-Sheppard has published in a number of academic journals, including the Journal of Health Economics, American Journal of Health Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Labor Economics, and Journal of Public Economics. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Agriculture, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation, where she will be a visiting scholar in 2022–23. She received her BA from Amherst College and her MA and PhD from Princeton University.

Tara Watson 400 pix

Tara Watson is a research associate in the NBER Health Economics Program and Program on Children. She is an applied microeconomist whose work focuses on the US safety net, health, and immigration.

Watson is professor of economics at Williams College, where she has taught since 2004 and chaired the Program in Public Health and the Faculty Steering Committee. She was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomic Analysis at the US Department of the Treasury in 2015–16, and was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan in 2007–09. In 2022–23, Watson will be a David M. Rubenstein Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She is a coeditor of The Journal of Human Resources.

Watson’s research has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health, among others. Her forthcoming book, The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in the Age of Fear, will be published by the University of Chicago Press.

Watson earned her BA from Wesleyan University in 1996 and her PhD from Harvard University in 2003. She enjoys hiking, cooking, and traveling.

Endnotes

1. The Effect of Safety Net Programs on Food Insecurity,” Schmidt L, Shore-Sheppard L, Watson T. NBER Working Paper 19558, October 2013, and Journal of Human Resources 51(3), Summer 2016, pp. 589–614.   Go to ⤴︎
2. The Effect of Safety Net Generosity on Maternal Mental Health and Risky Health Behaviors,” Schmidt L, Shore-Sheppard L, Watson T. NBER Working Paper 29258, September 2021.   Go to ⤴︎
3. The Impact of the ACA Medicaid Expansion on Disability Program Applications,” Schmidt L, Shore-Sheppard L, Watson T. NBER Working Paper 26192, August 2019, and American Journal of Health Economics 6(4), Fall 2020, pp. 444–476.     Go to ⤴︎
4. The Impact of Expanding Public Health Insurance on Safety Net Program Participation: Evidence from the ACA Medicaid Expansion,” Schmidt L, Shore-Sheppard L, Watson T. NBER Working Paper 26504, revised December 2021.   Go to ⤴︎

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