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Contents -- Preface -- Part I. Introduction -- Chapter 1. The Health Effects of Social and Economic Policy: The Promise and Challenge for Research and Policy - James S. House, Robert F. Schoeni, George A. Kaplan, and Harold Pollack -- Part II. Education Policy -- Chapter 2. Education and Health: Evaluating Theories and Evidence - David M. Cutler and Adriana Lleras-Muney -- Chapter 3. Health Effects of Human Development Policies - Daniel P. Keating and Sharon Z. Simonton -- Part III. Income Transfer Policy

The objective of this study is to examine the extent to which benefits received from the Unemployment Insurance Program displace assistance that the unemployed receive from their extended family. Using data from a supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, it is found that the unemployed receive private support & that these private networks are fairly pervasive; 29% of those receiving Unemployment Insurance benefits also receive cash transfers from their family or friends. Moreover, it is found that unemployment benefits displace familial support by as much as 24-40 cents per dollar. 4 Tables, 1 Appendix, 28 References. Adapted from the source document.

Forty-two percent of immigrant workers in the United States are women, yet almost all of the evidence on the economic performance of immigrants is based on analyses of men. This study begins to fill the void by examining differences in a wide array of labor market outcomes between U.S.-born and immigrant women, and among immigrant women born in different countries or regions of the world, using the 1970, 1980 and 1990 censuses. Immigrant women were less likely to participate in the labor force, and this gap increased to 7 percentage points by 1990. However, the share of self-employed and the number of weeks and hours worked among employed women were roughly the same for immigrants and natives throughout the 1970–1990 period. The gap in unemployment and weekly wages widened in favor of natives between 1970 and 1990, with a gap in median wages of 14 percent in 1990. However, immigrants born in the United Kingdom and Canada, Europe, Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines, and the Middle East have had steady or improved wages and unemployment relative to U.S.-born women. At the same time, immigrants from Mexico and Central America, who now represent one-quarter of all immigrant women, have experienced relatively high unemployment and low earnings, and these differences have increased, with the wage gap reaching 35 percent in 1990. Disparities in completed years of schooling can explain a substantial share of the differences in labor market outcomes.

This paper examines the economic resources of homeless adults using a unique data set from Los Angeles. The homeless rely on a variety of sources for income; the two most common sources are the government and the family. Over 58% received government transfers in the 30 days prior to the interview, while one‐third had received cash assistance from a family member or friend. Familial transfers in the form of shared housing and meals also are important. While familial transfers buffer declines in income among the homeless, private support networks are not pervasive enough to overcome the severe difficulties the homeless face. Moreover, it is unclear why such a high share of the homeless do not participate in government assistance programs, although the evidence suggests that transaction costs are likely to be an important factor.

The end of the Cold War brought profound changes to defense‐dependent sectors of the civilian economy. The aerospace industry has been at the vortex of these contractions. Based on the assumption that aerospace workers suffered unique hardships, the federal government established special programs to assist them. This study tests that broad assumption using unique administrative data from California. Although some aerospace workers suffered substantially, their experiences were not appreciably different from those of non‐aerospace durable goods workers, which calls into question the rationale for special assistance to workers in defense‐dependent industries.