Working Papers
Multiple Program Participation in the Safety Net: Incidence, Impediments, and Implications
with Derek Wu
First version: August 2025. This version: October 2025.
Multiple program participation is a defining feature of the U.S. social safety net. Half of all safety net recipients enroll in two or more programs, suggesting safety net participation should be understood based on the intensity of attachment. Yet, most studies focus on enrollment in individual programs in isolation, which can miss how policies reshape the nature of safety net attachment. We use linked administrative microdata from Virginia and a reform that streamlined SNAP, Medicaid, and TANF applications to study the implications of a multiple-program framework on take-up, targeting, and welfare analysis. Combining difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity designs, we find that the reform increased multiple-program receipt by 5%—more than any-program receipt. A partial identification analysis reveals that 20–56% of increased receipt reflects transitions from single to multiple programs, which would be missed if studying programs in isolation. These intensive-margin responders were more disadvantaged than other recipients, implying the safety net’s targeting could be improved simply by enhancing access for existing single-program recipients. Finally, evaluating the reform with multiple programs relative to single programs changes Marginal Value of Public Funds calculations by as much as 64% or -25%.Understanding the Heterogeneity of Intergenerational Mobility across Neighborhoods
with Steven N. Durlauf, Rasmus Landersø, and Salvador Navarro
First version: October 2024 (NBER). This version: March 2025.
Revision requested, Journal of Political Economy
Recent research shows significant variation in intergenerational mobility across neighborhoods in many countries, yet its causes remain unclear. This paper develops and employs a generalized mobility model to assess the roles of family selection into neighborhoods and locational characteristics in shaping this heterogeneity. Using Danish administrative data, we analyze mobility across nearly 300 larger and 2,000 smaller neighborhoods, accounting for sampling error. Family selection and sampling error explain most variation, though a small, persistent residual remains. An analysis of this "irreducible heterogeneity" suggests the presence of multiple neighborhood types and nonlinear effects of family characteristics that influence intergenerational mobility.Does "Welfare-to-Work" Work? Evaluating Long-Run Effects across a Generation of Cohorts
First Version: May 2024. This version: April 2025.
Winner of APPAM PhD Dissertation Award, Runner-up of NTA Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, Finalist of W.E. Upjohn Institute Dissertation Award
Work requirements in welfare programs are popular yet controversial. This paper provides a unified evaluation of Denmark’s "welfare-to-work" reforms by analyzing their long-term effects across 19 birth cohorts. Impacts vary by age of exposure to the reforms. Adult cohorts incur modest income losses and shift toward crime and disability insurance. In contrast, child cohorts exposed before becoming welfare-eligible reap gains in education, income, and health, likely due to parental spillovers and anticipation effects. Cost-benefit analysis shows welfare-to-work is cost-effective in the long run due to these younger cohorts. These findings help unify the literature and suggest more efficient policy designs.Long-Run Impacts of a Two-Generation Approach to Social Policy
(Draft coming soon)
“Two-generation approaches” to human capital interventions—coupling job training for mothers on welfare and daycare for their young children—have long been theorized to break intergenerational cycles of poverty and to be more effective than the sum of the effects of single interventions. This paper evaluates these hypotheses by empirically estimating the long-run impacts of such a program at a population scale. I exploit unique policy variation generated by welfare-to-work reforms and daycare expansions in Denmark to develop an instrumental variables approach that circumvents traditional issues in identifying the joint effects of two separate treatments. I find that the two-generation approach significantly increases educational attainment and self-sufficiency of children 30 years later.
Published & Forthcoming
with Lawrence E. Blume, Steven N. Durlauf, and Aleksandra Lukina
Forthcoming, Sociological Methods & Research
This paper proposes some new measures of intergenerational persistence based on the idea of characterizing the memory of origin in the stochastic process that links the socioeconomic classes of parents and children. We introduce "memory curves" for all future generations given any initial condition of class for a family dynasty, which reveal how initial conditions interact with the transition process between parents and children to create mobility and persistence. We also propose ways to aggregate information across different classes to produce overall characterizations of mobility in the population. To illustrate our measures, we estimate occupational "memory curves" using U.S. survey data. Our findings show that, on average, the memory of initial conditions dissipates largely within three generations, though there is meaningful heterogeneity in mobility rates across dynasties originating from different occupational classes.Book Chapter
with Steven N. Durlauf
This version: February 2022
Prepared for The Inequality Reader, Fifth Edition, D. Grusky, N. Dahir and C. Daviss, eds.
This essay reviews the theory and empirics of intergenerational mobility. Our review draws on models and empirical analyses of classic and more recent work from both economics and sociology. We summarize models and the surrounding empirical evidence of two key sets of mechanisms: family factors (income, education, credit constraints, household composition, and genes) and social factors (schools, neighborhood sorting, racial segregation, and peer and role model effects). We then discuss and evaluate current methods used to measure intergenerational mobility, including linear regressions and Markov chains. Theoretical models imply nonlinear relationships between parent and child status that are often ignored in practice and offer potentially different interpretations of the evidence of heterogeneity in mobility across locations, groups, and time. We conclude that the next generation of studies would benefit from a closer integration of theory with empirics.Works in Progress
The Effects of Participating in Multiple Safety Net Programs on Family Well-Being
with Derek Wu
Effects of Digitizing Safety Net Access Across the Population
with Derek Wu