The Net Benefits of Raising Bachelor's Degree Completion Through the City University of New York Ace Program

SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

The Benefits and Costs of Paid Parental Leave in the United States

Social Service Review · 2025-05-21 · 1 citations

To inform US policy debates about the introduction of a national paid leave program, we conduct a benefit-cost analysis of its introduction. We identify high-quality, quasi-experimental studies on the impact of paid parental leave on infants and parents. Using both the most conservative estimates and the mean estimates from this review, we estimate that every $1,000 investment in paid parental leave would generate, respectively, $7,251 and $29,369 in net social benefits. We use these estimates to conduct a microsimulation of the benefits and costs of two national paid parental leave policy proposals with variations in eligibility and wage replacement rates. The proposed national 4-week program’s initial fiscal cost would be under $2 billion and generate long-term net social benefits with a present discounted value of either $13 billion or $55 billion. The initial fiscal costs and long-term net social benefits of the 12-week program would be about 3.7 times larger.

The Persistence of Food Security Status Across Generations

The Journal of Human Resources · 2025-08-08 · 1 citations

<h3>Abstract</h3> The persistence of disadvantage across generations is a central concern for social policy in the United States. While an extensive literature has focused on income mobility, much less is known about the persistence of material hardship. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we estimate the intergenerational persistence of food insecurity. Childhood food insecurity is associated with at least 10 percentage points higher probability of food insecurity as an adult, with estimates varying by severity of childhood exposure, life-course timing, and accounting for endogeneity and underreporting. We explore potential mechanisms behind this persistence related to perceptions, behaviors, and human capital.

The Net Benefits of Raising Bachelor’s Degree Completion through the City University of New York ACE Program

National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-06-01

In 2015, the City University of New York (CUNY) launched a new program-Accelerate, Complete, and Engage (ACE)-aimed at improving college graduation rates.A randomizedcontrol evaluation of the program found a nearly 12 percentage point increase in graduation five years after college entry.Using this impact estimate and national data on earnings by gender, age, and degree status; we estimate incremental expected long-run benefits and costs for participants, as well as intergenerational effects for the children of participants, relative to "business as usual" for the control group.Our main estimate indicates net social benefits of more than $48,000 over a lifetime per participant from greater earnings and labor force attachment, improvements in health, and savings in public transfers.A major contribution of our analysis is the estimation of secondgenerational benefits.Including intergenerational benefits for children who grow up in newly higher-earning families nearly triples this estimate, to over $130,000 in net social benefits per participant.These results are sensitive to assumptions about whether the impact on graduation after five years persists indefinitely, or whether the control group eventually catches up.Still, net social benefits are strongly positive even under our most conservative assumptions.

A benefit‐cost analysis of child care subsidy expansions: The New York State case

Contemporary Economic Policy · 2025-05-25

Abstract Proposals to expand child care assistance have proliferated at the national and state levels. This paper uses a novel approach to estimate the benefits and costs of providing child care subsidies to families up to three times the federal poverty line while supplementing child care worker compensation — a recently‐enacted reform in New York State. We estimate a net present value of $12.14 billion in yearly social benefits relative to a yearly fiscal cost of $1.61 billion. We also examine the time path of benefits and costs, impacts of alternative program designs, and the sensitivity of our main findings.

Childhood Welfare Exposure and Economic Outcomes for Adult Daughters and Sons

SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

The Benefits and Costs of Paid Family Leave

SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

The Benefits and Costs of Paid Family Leave

National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-12-01

National paid family leave programs have been repeatedly proposed in the United States in recent years.To inform policy discussions, we provide a benefit-cost analysis of introducing such a program.We systematically identify high-quality, quasi-experimental studies on the impact of paid leave on infants and parents.Using the most conservative estimates or the mean estimates from this literature, we estimate that every $1,000 investment in paid parental leave would generate, respectively, $7,275 or $29,406 in present discounted net social benefits.We use these estimates to conduct a microsimulation of benefits and costs of two policy proposals with different eligibility and wage replacement rates.The first, a 4-week program, would have an initial fiscal cost of under $2 billion and net social benefits of $13 (conservative) or $55 billion (mean).The corresponding figures for the 12-week program are about 3.7 times larger, suggesting that either version would likely generate high returns.

Poverty and Disadvantage throughout Childhood in the United States

Child Indicators Research · 2024-10-14 · 2 citations

Bootstrapping quantile correlations with an application for income status across generations

Economics Letters · 2023-05-06 · 1 citations