Reform Through Labor

Labor Law and Its Reform

Demographics, Social Security Reform, and Labor Supply

At this point, it is nearly impossible to escape discussion of the aging of the baby boom and its implications for Social Security. No set of reasonable demographic and economic assumptions yields a forecast of long-term solvency for the program as it exists today (Board of Trustees 1997; Congressional Budget Office (CBO) 1997). Some reform is necessary. The open questions are which reforms and...

The Labor Supply Effects of Welfare Reform

Some of the ideas in this paper were inspired by communications with David Card, Patricia Ruggles, and Bruce Meyer. I am also grateful to Daniel McMurrer for providing me with spreadsheets describing the Urban Institute's methodology for estimating the effects of welfare work requirements. Ken Kline provided excellent research assistance. The research for this paper was conducted with financial...

The Labor Market Effects of Welfare Reform

The recent reform of the federal welfare system was meant to encourage recipients to leave welfare and enter the workforce. If the reform is successful there are likely to be effects felt throughout the low–skilled end of the labor market. As former welfare recipients enter the labor market, they may exert downward pressure on wages or displace employment of others already in the labor market. ...

Welfare Reform and the Labor Market

This paper reviews the basic theoretical models that are appropriate for analyzing different types of welfare reforms, and the related empirical literature. We first present the canonical labor supply model of a classical welfare program, and then extend this basic framework to include in-kind transfers, incomplete take-up, human capital, preference persistence, and borrowing and saving. The em...