Here is a great article in the Boston Globe about social class differences between summer residents and year round residents in the Berkshires. It talks about how hard many people have to work to bring in enough income with the jobs that are available here. It also includes a couple of BCC students. Basically, it […]
There have been a lot of arguments about government subsidies to individuals (food stamps, TANF, fuel assistance) lately and their impact on behavior. The general assumption is that giving people cash means they won’t work. The reality is much more complicated than this and it turns out that most people do not make significant changes […]
The New York Times has an excellent blog post on how changes in Federal and State funding of college education have increased inequality in our society.
A study was recently released by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez from Harvard and U.C. Berkeley. This has been widely reported in the press as the Harvard Mobility Study. The results are not entirely radical, but they are important. The short story is that mobility (a change in class status from […]
Since there has been a lot in the news about the budget deal and food stamps, I thought it might be worthwhile to have some data to inform the discussion. This is the Federal Government’s page on eligibility for food stamps (SNAP) before any changes were made. The maximum income after deductions (for child care […]
Here is an interesting op-ed in the New York Times about unemployment insurance. It examines some of the economic assumptions behind the value of unemployment insurance and issues it may create in the labor market. It clearly examines the outcomes that we are worried about – that people on unemployment insurance will not want to […]
