Intro; Table of Contents; 1. Introduction: It's Not a Crisis; 2. Causes of Discontent; 3. The Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration; 4. Is America's Immigration System Broken?; 5. From Global to Local: Toward Integration or Exclusion?; 6. The Balance Sheet: Economic Costs and Benefits of Immigration; 7. Refugees and Discontent; 8. Crime, Terrorism, and Immigration; 9. Addressing the Discontent; Notes; Index
"We study the effect of the Food Stamp Program (FSP) on consumption patterns in families headed by low-educated single mothers in the U.S. using the Consumer Expenditure Surveys for 1994-2004. Our analysis suggests that the food stamp caseload does not have any statistically significant association with per capita expenditure on food in families headed by low-educated single mothers. We find that state and federal welfare reforms during the 1990s lowered the food stamp caseload by approximately 18 percent and the introduction of the Electronic Benefit Transfer cards and simplified reporting procedures for recertification of food stamps increased participation by about seven percent. However, we do not find any evidence that these policies had any effect on total food expenditure, nor do we find any consistent evidence that the policies affected expenditures on specific food items"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site
In: The future of children: a publication of The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Band 24, Heft 1, S. 61-78
Better-educated parents generally have children who are themselves better educated, healthier, wealthier, and better off in almost every way than the children of the less educated. But this simple correlation does not prove that the relationship is causal. Neeraj Kaushal sifts through the evidence from economics and public policy and reviews large national and international studies to conclude that, indeed, education has large intergenerational payoffs in many areas of children's lives, and that these payoffs persist over time.
Kaushal shows that, if anything, traditional measures of returns to education—which focus on income and productivity—almost certainly underestimate the beneficial effects that parents' education has on their children. She reports causal positive effects not only on children's test scores, health, and behavior, but also on mothers' behaviors that can affect their children's wellbeing, such as teenage childbearing and substance use. Her findings suggest that, as a component of two-generation programs, helping parents extend their education could go a long way toward reducing inequality across generations and promoting children's healthy development.
Thus the rationale for two-generation programs that boost parents' education is compelling. However, Kaushal cautions, the U.S. education system reinforces socioeconomic inequality across generations by spending more money on educating richer children than on educating poorer children. By themselves, then, two-generation programs will not necessarily ameliorate the structural factors that perpetuate inequality in this country.