If you’ll be at APPAM, consider joining for the Kershaw Award Lecture on Thurs at 3:30pm. I’ll discuss new research on the intergenerational persistence of poverty: How does it compare to other measures of mobility? How it has evolved in the US? Which policies are effective in reducing it? & more.

New WP: We study how minimum wage increases affect poverty and food hardship in the U.S from 1981-2019. Different from recent work, we study the Supplemental Poverty Measure + two measures of food hardship, factor in cost-of-living differences, and more. www.iza.org/publications...

4/ Are the resources well-targeted? Yes! The cost per individual moved out of deep poverty is substantially less for the Targeted CTC relative to SNAP, EITC, or TANF cash assistance. By design, the Targeted CTC is primarily reaching the lowest-income HHs.

3/ Does it reduce poverty? Yes! The Targeted CTC could reduce child poverty rates for the average state by 10%, and could reduce deep child poverty by 21%. Not bad given its price-tag, which I’ll show next.

3/ How to fund a Targeted CTC? I propose that states use their TANF MoE resources to cover the bulk of the costs (read paper to get into the weeds of MoE and why it works). The average state could cover 61% of the targeted CTC costs using MoE funds (otherwise, less than 2% of state revenues).

2/ What does the Targeted CTC look like? It is designed precisely to reach families who do not receive the full benefit value of the federal CTC due to low earnings. When combined, the federal + Targeted CTCs create a universal child benefit that does not increase fams' effective marginal tax rates.

What's your take on why this all-in-one academic platform (submissions across several journals, conferences, and reviews all in one unified dashboard) does not exist? People actually like Editorial Manager? ManuCentral is too hard to leave? (Mock-up made in 5 mins; robots get credit for the title).

Happy Mämmi Day (or week/month) to those who celebrate! 🇫🇮

Ha! If we're going NBA analogies, then I'm inclined to offer a more dimensionally-accurate rendering. (Muggsy Bogues was my childhood hero).

New at @jpube.bsky.social w/ @lukaslehner.bsky.social & @natewilmers.bsky.social: Personal earnings inequality declined in the US from 2010-2022, but household income inequality continued its decades-long rise. What explains the discordant inequality trends? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Not sure if generative AI has increased my research productivity yet, but I am very certain that it has made the "TANF is not dead, we're bringing it back to life!" part of my PowerPoint slides infinitely more thrilling.

What explains recent declines in income inequality in the European Union? Despite rising within-country inequality from 2007-2019, EU-wide inequality declined sharply due to upward convergence in market earnings among its poorest member states. More here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Now online at Nature Human Behaviour: "Consumption Responses to an Unconditional Child Allowance in the U.S." We study how the 2021 CTC expansion affected family expenditures using observed (rather than reported) consumption data from 1.3 million establishments. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Are we still posting our favorite figures? 📉📈