Research

I provide the first estimates of teacher value added on college admissions test scores, using administrative data from North Carolina to estimate the impacts of high school teachers on students’ ACT performance. I then estimate the impacts of ACT score value added on college enrollment, college choice, and college performance. Assignment to a math teacher with high ACT score value added increases on-time 4-year college enrollment and decreases 2-year college enrollment. Assignment to an English teacher with high ACT score value added increases enrollment in selective colleges, conditional on 4-year college enrollment. Both math and English teachers with high ACT score value added increase freshman college GPA and credits and decrease freshman dropout, conditional on college enrollment. My results suggest that high school teachers have significant scope to influence the accumulation of college-relevant cognitive skills.

Using administrative data from North Carolina, I study the decision to take multiple college admissions tests in the presence of universal ACT testing. I find that low-income students are less likely than their peers to take the SAT in addition to the state-mandated ACT, and that they improve upon their initial ACT scores by less when doing so. Taken together, these disparities decrease low-income students’ rankings in the test score distribution when evaluating students on their maximum score rather than their initial ACT score. I provide evidence that income gaps in multiple test-taking are partially driven by differential responses to the ability signal sent by a student’s initial ACT score.

Whether income support programs disincentivize marriage and disrupt family stability has long generated policy debate. We provide an update to this literature and examine the causal impacts of monthly unconditional cash transfers on preregistered measures of single parenthood and family stability during children’s first three years of life. Among mothers cohabiting at birth, cash transfers increase marriage during the year after birth. Considering countervailing influences on changes in marriage and cohabitation over time, we find no overall impact on single parenthood, defined as living without any romantic partner, positive impacts on family stability, and no evidence of marital dissolution.

How household time and money allocation decisions in response to government anti-poverty programs vary across recipient families is not well understood. Moreover, large changes in the demographic composition of U.S. children may compromise our ability to learn from past studies leveraging historical variation in social policies. Using data from a large-scale, multi-site, U.S.-based randomized controlled study we examine heterogeneity in the causal impacts of a monthly unconditional cash transfer on monetary and time investments in a 2018-19 birth cohort of children. This randomized controlled study offers a unique opportunity to assess the heterogenous impacts of a poverty reduction intervention in a setting where benefit eligibility is independent of household demographic characteristics. The effects of the unconditional cash transfer on net household income, earnings, and general household expenditures were qualitatively similar for families irrespective of race or ethnicity, even given initial differences in family structure, government benefit receipt, and employment. However, money and time investments in children differed. Latino families increased child-focused expenditures, equivalent to nearly one-third of the cash transfer, with no effect on maternal employment or time spent with children. Among Black families, maternal work hours decreased and time spent with children on early learning activities increased, with no impact on child-focused expenditures. Estimates also reveal heterogeneous expenditure responses on child-specific goods by income source. Latino families exhibit a higher marginal propensity to consume government income on child-specific goods relative to maternal earned income, consistent with mental accounting of government benefits, while Black families have a higher marginal propensity to spend maternal earned income on child-specific goods. Heterogeneous impacts across family investment mechanisms suggest that unconditional cash transfers offer flexibility to accommodate diverse family circumstances and preferences, providing insights relevant to efficient resource targeting.

The U.S. food-based safety net has proven successful in reducing food insecurity and decreasing hunger. Nevertheless, many families remain financially stretched to meet nutrition and food needs. This paper summarizes previously published findings coupled with new analyses of data through the third year of follow-up on the effects of a monthly unconditional cash gift on outcomes related to food security, spending, and consumption from the Baby’s First Years study.

Children represent the largest indirect beneficiaries of the U.S. social welfare system. Yet, many questions remain about the direct benefits of cash aid to children. The current understanding of the impacts of cash aid in the U.S. is drawn primarily from studies of in-kind benefits, tax credits, and conditional cash aid programs. A corresponding economics literature focuses on the role of income and the labor supply responses of parents, parenting skills, and early education as family investment mechanisms that reduce socioeconomic inequality in children’s well-being. In contrast to the U.S., dozens of low- to middle-income nations use direct cash aid—conditional or unconditional—as a central policy strategy, with demonstrated positive effects across a host of economic and health measures and selected aspects of children’s health and schooling. This paper reviews the economic research on U.S. safety net programs and cash aid to families with children and discusses what existing studies reveal about the impacts of cash aid on family investment mechanisms and children’s outcomes. We specifically highlight gaps in understanding the impacts of unconditional cash aid on children. We then review nine contemporary unconditional cash transfer programs and discuss their promise and limitations in filling the U.S.-based economic evidence gap. 

Despite unprecedented increases in women’s college attendance and labor force participation over the last century, large gender differences in pay persist even for graduates of elite universities. Can these gender differences in salary be explained by observed differences in graduates’ skills and preparation, such as choice of major? Using unique data from the University of Virginia Career Center, I apply linear Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition models as well as unconditional quantile decomposition methods to measure the extent to which differences in early career compensation can be explained by observable differences in productive characteristics. I find that the explained share varies greatly across the pay distribution. In particular, at the low end of the salary distribution, the gender pay gap is larger and is only partially accounted for by gender differences in college major choice, industry choice, and internship experience. At the middle of the pay distribution, the gender pay gap can be almost entirely attributed to observable gender differences in these characteristics. Interestingly, at the high end of the salary distribution, gender differences in college major choice, industry choice, and internship experience suggest that the gender pay gap should be even larger than what is observed in the data. My results suggest that female graduates in high-paying majors and industries do not encounter a “glass ceiling” at the beginning of their careers. Rather, female UVA graduates either receive preferential labor market treatment, are more competent than male peers in the same majors and industries, or demand compensating wage differentials to account for differences in preferences for certain high-paying positions.