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The Digest

Public Beliefs about Inflation
Article
In People’s Understanding of Inflation (NBER Working Paper 32497), Alberto Binetti, Francesco Nuzzi, and Stefanie Stantcheva present new survey results on the American public’s views on inflation. The survey collected information about individuals’ demographics, income, news sources, and voting habits as well as their opinions on the causes and distributional results of inflation. The survey was conducted between March and May 2024 using the Lucid internet platform. The...

Does Remediation of Criminal Records Raise Job Prospects?
Article
Criminal record remediation laws are partially designed to increase employment opportunities for individuals charged with crimes. More than a third of working-age American adults have a criminal record. At least two-thirds of employers perform background checks and they are less likely to hire a job applicant who has been charged with a crime, even if the individual was not convicted. This may limit these individuals’ job market prospects and may be particularly damaging for...

The Reporter

Program Report: Children and Families
Article
Author(s): Janet Currie & Anna Aizer
On July 1, the Program on Children was renamed the Program on Children and Families. This change, which better captures the range of research carried out by its 171 affiliates, in part marks a return to the program’s roots. In 1993, the late Alan Krueger launched an NBER project on the Economics of Families and Children. It subsequently became a program and has been known as the Program on Children since 1997.1 Broadening the program name recognizes the complex web of...

Clearing the Air: Historical Air Pollution and Health
Article
Author(s): Karen Clay & Edson R. Severnini
Air pollution has serious and longstanding negative effects on human health. The primary focus of research on air pollution in the United States since the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 has been the health implications of particulate matter. In comparison, there has been relatively little work on air pollution and health in historical periods, even though air pollution was much higher in earlier times than it is today. Research on historical air pollution...

The Bulletin on Retirement & Disability

Disability Insurance Benefits and Household Composition
Article
 Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) “family maximum” rules cap the benefits that can be paid to a disabled worker’s family at the lower of 85 percent of the worker’s average indexed monthly earnings and 150 percent of their primary insurance amount. The effect of these rules is that family payments are the same whether a DI beneficiary has one or many dependents, and when DI beneficiaries have low benefit determinations, there are no payments for dependents at...

Medicare vs Medicaid: Cost and Health Outcomes
Article
It costs the government more to cover the same beneficiary under Medicare than Medicaid, according to a study of disabled individuals who aged from one program into the other.In Medicaid vs Medicare: Evidence from Medicaid to Medicare Transitions at 65 (NBER RDRC Paper NB20-15), Timothy Layton, Nicole Maestas, Daniel Prinz, Mark Shepard, and Boris Vabson find that most of the difference stems from higher payment rates to providers rather than from...

The Bulletin on Health

Decision-Making by Medical Surrogates for End-of-Life Patients
Article
 As the population ages, the need for surrogate decision-makers for patients near the end of their lives is rising. When hospitalized older adults are unable to actively participate in decisions about their care, surrogates must make choices, often with limited information. Advance care planning with written directives may improve surrogate decision-making, but directives have limitations: preferences may change after completion, directions may not apply to the ultimate...

Effects of Insurance Coverage on Infertility Treatments, Childbearing, and Wellbeing
Article
 Between 1995 and 2010, the share of births in Sweden that involved assisted reproductive technologies (ART) rose from 2 to 10 percent. These treatments range from low-cost drugs to costly and invasive interventions, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF).In The Economics of Infertility: Evidence from Reproductive Medicine (NBER Working Paper 32445), Sarah Bögl, Jasmin Moshfegh, Petra Persson, and Maria Polyakova provide new evidence on the...

The Bulletin on Entrepreneurship

Immigration Policy and Entrepreneurs’ Choice of Startup Location
Article
Immigrants play a significant role in the entrepreneurial landscape. In the United States, immigrants are 80 percent more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans. More than half of America's billion-dollar startup companies trace their roots to immigrant founders. There is limited research, however, on the factors that influence immigrants' decisions about where to locate their startup businesses. In The Effect of Immigration Policy on Founding...

Explaining Geographic Disparities in the Commercialization of Academic Research
Article
A significant amount of corporate innovation, including in dynamic industries such as software and biotech, is the direct result of university-based research. Consequently, policymakers around the globe have sought to promote the diffusion and successful commercialization of academic research in the private sector. In The Wandering Scholars: Understanding the Heterogeneity of University Commercialization (NBER Working Paper 32069), Josh Lerner, Henry...