Abstract: This project evaluates the lifetime and intergenerational impact of place on socioeconomic outcomes stemming from the Orphan Train Movement, the relocation of approximately 300,000 orphaned and surrendered children in New York City to families across the U.S. from 1853 to 1929. Utilizing a "first-in-first-out" mechanism that generated quasi-random assignment of children across the U.S., we estimate the effect of place, defined as a set of institutional characteristics, on a broad set of measures for Orphan Train riders and their descendants. To do this, we develop a novel dataset by digitizing information from historical ledgers, research documents, and state-level censuses during this period to identify children in participating orphanages. We link these data to a panel of complete-count decennial U.S. Censuses from 1850 to 1940. We find that riders who were placed in more residentially developed, wealthy, and populous counties have higher lifetime occupational income scores, have fewer children, and are less likely to farm. These effects persist into the subsequent generation.
Abstract: Mothers considering placing a child for adoption face information and time constraints. We use a unique dataset from one of the largest private adoption agencies in the U.S. that records mothers' search and adoption decisions to characterize their decision-making. We establish several stylized patterns of mothers' behavior and show that these patterns conform to a model of search with deadlines. Evidence of decision inattention in the choice of adoptive families is present, implying the design of search platforms may be consequential for the welfare of the child. Building on the evidence of search behavior in the data, we use time remaining in pregnancy at the start of the search to measure search intensity. We estimate the welfare effect of the U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision to repeal national access to abortion using a sufficient statistics approach. Our preferred interpretation shows that the policy decreased the welfare of mothers considering adoption by at least nine percentage points. The deleterious effects of the Dobbs decision concentrate on minority mothers.
“The Efficacy of Advocacy in Foster Care"
I examine the effects of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) volunteers on foster children's permanency and future welfare outcomes.
“Measuring the Impact of Male Unemployment on Intrafamily Outcomes” with Matthew Eaton and Miranda I. Lambert
We study the impact of male job loss on health and education for individuals in the household.
“Southern Lynchings and Children's Educational Attainment” with Mary Kate Batistich, Kalena E. Cortes, and Kendall J. Kennedy
We measure how exposure to racially motivated violence during childhood impacts school attainment through digitizing historical records.
We examine prospective adoptive families' preferences regarding children and test how information affects the formation of those preferences.
Abstract: This paper explores the implementation of a price-level targeting regime compared to an inflation targeting regime in the basic New Keynesian framework. Additionally, expectations are defined under a baseline method and an alternative method. Both monetary policy regimes implement Survey of Professional Forecasters' data as survey expectations for the baseline method and conversely use adaptive expectations as the alternative method of defining expectations. The results of the simulation show price-level targeting is preferred to inflation targeting under a favorable inflation shock if expectations are defined by the baseline method. However, inflation targeting provides a better result than price-level targeting if expectations are defined under the alternative method. This result raises important questions in defining expectations but does not dismiss an adoption of price-level targeting as a potentially superior rule in a monetary policy regime.