Marianne Bitler

About

Marianne P. Bitler is a Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Economics at UC Davis. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, obtained in 1998, and a B.S. in Mathematics with Honors from The Pennsylvania State University, earned in 1991. Her expertise spans public economics, labor economics, health economics, and applied microeconomics. Prior to her current position, she was a professor of economics at UC Irvine and has worked at the Public Policy Institute of California, the RAND Corporation, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Trade Commission. She is a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research fellow at IZA. Additionally, she has served as a co-editor for prominent journals such as the Journal of Human Resources, the American Journal of Health Economics, and JPAM. Her research focuses on the effects of government safety net programs on disadvantaged groups, economic demography, health economics, public economics, and the economics of education.

Research topics

• Economics
• Demographic economics
• Business
• Medicine
• Labour economics

Selected publications

• The Social Safety Net in the Wake of COVID-19

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2020-09-01 · 137 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The COVID-19 crisis has led to spiking unemployment rates with disproportionate impacts on low-income families. School and child-care center closures have also meant lost free-and reduced-price school meals. Food prices have increased sharply leading to reduced purchasing power for families' limited income. The Families First Coronavirus Act and the CARES Act included robust responses including expansions to unemployment insurance (expansions in eligibility and $600 per week supplement), a one-t…

  PublisherDOI

• Means-Tested Safety Net Programs and Hispanic Families: Evidence from Medicaid, SNAP, and WIC

  The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · 2021-07-01 · 39 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Hispanic families have historically used means-tested assistance less than high-poverty peers, and one explanation for this may be that anti-immigrant politics and policies are a barrier to program participation. We document the participation of Hispanic children in three antipoverty programs by age and parental citizenship and the correlation of participation with state immigrant-based restrictions. Hispanic citizen children with citizen parents participate in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Suffering, the Safety Net, and Disparities During COVID-19

  RSF The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences · 2023-05-01 · 23 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The economic and public health crisis caused by COVID-19 was devastating and disproportionately hurt Blacks and Hispanics and some other groups. Unemployment rates and other measures of material hardship were higher and increased more during the crisis among Blacks and Hispanics than among non-Hispanic Whites. Congress authorized a historic policy response, incorporating both targeted and universal supports, and expanding both the level and duration of benefits. This response yielded the remarka…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Teacher Effects on Student Achievement and Height: A Cautionary Tale

  Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness · 2021-08-06 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We apply "value-added" models to estimate the effects of teachers on an outcome they cannot plausibly affect: student height. When fitting commonly estimated models to New York City data, we find that the standard deviation of teacher effects on height is nearly as large as that for math and reading, raising potential concerns about value-added estimates of teacher effectiveness. We consider two explanations: non-random sorting of students to teachers and idiosyncratic classroom-level variation.…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Effects of the Colorectal Cancer Control Program

  Health Economics · 2021-08-02 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Although colorectal cancer (CRC) screening is highly effective, screening rates lag far below recommended levels, particularly for low-income people. The Colorectal Cancer Control Program (CRCCP) funded $100 million in competitively awarded grants to 25 states from 2009-2015 to increase CRC screening rates among low-income, uninsured populations, in part by directly providing and paying for screening services. Using data from the 2001-2015 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and a…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• PROJECT 4: Adult Correlates of Middle-childhood Skills and Behaviors

  NIH · $9.3M · 2017

• NIH Grant R03OH008244

  NIH · $179k · 2008

• NIH Grant R03HD046485

  NIH · $179k · 2008

Frequent coauthors

• Hilary Hoynes

  279 shared

• Jonah B. Gelbach

  137 shared

• Madeline Zavodny

  University of North Florida

  69 shared

• Christopher S. Carpenter

  40 shared

• Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

  21 shared

• Tobias J. Moskowitz

  Yale University

  20 shared

• Janet Currie

  Princeton University

  15 shared

• Thurston Domina

  13 shared

Awards & honors

• Brattle Award — Distinguished Paper Prize for the Best Corpo…
• Food Safety and Nutrition Section of the American Associatio…

Similar researchers at University of California, Davis

• Giovanni Perih-69
• Katherine Erikssonh-66
• Oscar Jordah-54