Scott Schuh, Oz Shy, and Joanna Stavins Abstract: Merchant fees and reward programs generate an implicit monetary transfer to credit card users from non-card (or “cash”) users because merchants generally do not set differential prices for card users to recoup the costs of fees and rewards. On average, each cash-using household pays $151 to card-using households and each card-using household rec...

This article discusses what is known about the economic status of the aged. Numerous complexities involved in the assessment of their status are discussed. Compared with most other recent assessments, this study finds a less favorable status for the aged relative to other age groups. The focus is on an examination of detailed age groups, rather than summary aged and nonaged groups--thus providi...

This article discusses what is known about the economic status of the aged. Numerous complexities involved in the assessment of their status are discussed. Compared with most other recent assessments, this study finds a less favorable status for the aged relative to other age groups. The focus is on an examination of detailed age groups, rather than summary aged and nonaged groups-thus providin...

Since welfare reform, impoverished children in single-parent families receive less aid than under the previous system and the most disadvantaged of these children have slipped deeper into poverty. This Research-in-Brief summarizes a study that explores the economic well-being of children in low-income single-parent families since the 1996 passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportun...

We examine the social pension in South Africa, where large cash sums-about twice the median per capita income of African households-are paid to people qualified by age but irrespective of previous contributions. We present the history of the scheme and use a 1993 nationally representative survey to investigate the redistributive consequences of the transfers, documenting who receive the pension...

On January 1, 2000, Medicare extended the coverage of immunosuppression medications from 3 years to life for elderly and disabled kidney transplant recipients. This research estimates the impact of extending this lifetime coverage to all kidney transplant recipients on Medicare's cash flows. The study finds that extending coverage to all kidney transplant recipients would have increased Medicar...

Over the past decade, conditional cash transfer programs have been widely adopted in lowerand middle-income countries. Nearly every Latin American country has such a program, and pilot programs are being implemented in countries around the world, including locations in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and most recently, North America. There has been relatively consistent evidence that these prog...

In 1996, the United States eliminated the entitlement to cash assistance for low-income citizens with the passage of historic welfare reform. With the institution of time-limits on cash assistance, the policy goals of the socialwelfare system shifted from “income support” to “work support” and the welfare rolls decreased substantially. Although policy goals changed, the service-delivery structu...