Most children in the United States will spend at least part of their childhood living apart from one of their parents; the child support system is designed to ensure that they nonetheless receive financial support. While the system is largely effective when noncustodial parents have substantial regular earnings, many noncustodial parents,…

Accumulated evidence from dozens of cash transfer (CT) programs across the world suggests that there are few interventions that can match the range of impacts and cost-effectiveness of a small, predictable monetary transfer to poor families in developing countries. However, individual published impact assessments typically focus on only one…

We present evidence of a positive relationship between school starting age and children's cognitive development from ages 6 to 18 using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and large-scale population-level birth and school data from the state of Florida. We estimate effects of being old for grade (being born in September vs. August) that are…

This article discusses the implication of the implementation of anti-poverty policy in both the United Kingdom and the United States. International studies of child poverty usually find that the United States and United Kingdom are at the bottom of the league table in terms of child poverty. Indeed, the U.S. and U.K do not fare well in…

Current U.S. policy initiatives to improve the U.S. education system, including No Child Left Behind, test-based evaluation of teachers, and the promotion of competition are misguided because they either deny or set to the side a basic body of evidence documenting that students from disadvantaged households on average perform less well in school…

States require a measure of poverty that captures all family resources net of taxes and nondiscretionary expenses and uses thresholds reflecting current needs in the state to assess the well-being of families under current and alternative policies. This paper describes the implementation of a poverty measure for the State of Connecticut based on…

For more than 30 years the United States has unsuccessfully struggled to reform its often maligned and massively abused immigration policies. Matters went awry following the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. There were unexpected consequences. Intended to remove the overtly discriminatory features of the "national origins"…

Non-monetary indicators of deprivation are now widely used in studying poverty in Europe. While measuring financial resources remains central, having reliable information about material deprivation adds to the ability to capture poverty and social exclusion. Non-monetary indicators can help improve the identification of those experiencing poverty…

In December of 2009, many within the American community of analysts, policymakers, and program managers are looking expectantly at the possibility of change in the basic measure used to gauge poverty in the United States. A broad consensus has emerged that the current official measure of poverty in the United States is deeply flawed, in the income…

Poverty is generally defined as income or expenditure insufficiency, but the economic condition of a household also depends on its real and financial asset holdings. This paper investigates measures of poverty that rely on indicators of household net worth. We review and assess two main approaches followed in the literature: income-net worth…

The Stages-of-Progress methodology helps identify context-specific reasons associated with households' movements into or out of poverty. Developed in 2002, it was used over the next seven years for examining the experiences of 35,567 households in 398 diverse communities of India, Kenya, Uganda, Peru, and North Carolina. This essay looks at the…

The first thing many learn about international poverty measurement is that European nations apply a "relative" poverty threshold and that they also do a better job of reducing poverty. Unlike the European model, the "absolute" U.S. poverty threshold does not increase in real value when the nation's standard of living rises,…

The measurement of poverty and social exclusion is analytically and operationally relevant at all levels of policymaking. Here our focus is on national governments making policy in a global or multinational context such as the European Union (EU). In this process, social indicators are playing a growing role, and we need to stand back and examine…

At the Joint OECD/University of Maryland Conference on "Measuring Poverty, Income Inequality, and Social Exclusion: Lessons from Europe" (held in Paris, 2009), many of the conference papers focused on alternative measures of income, evaluating their impacts on inequality and poverty. The conference papers highlighted the impact of making…

I review theories and evidence on wage-setting institutions and labor market policies in an international comparative context. These include collective bargaining, minimum wages, employment protection laws, unemployment insurance (UI), mandated parental leave, and active labor market policies (ALMPs). Since it is unlikely that an unregulated…