Barbara Wolfe | University of Wisconsin-Madison (original) (raw)

Papers by Barbara Wolfe

Evaluation Review, Jun 1, 1985

The large growth in disability transfer program beneficiaries and expenditures from 1965-1978 and... more The large growth in disability transfer program beneficiaries and expenditures from 1965-1978 and the sizable decrease in older male labor force participation has led to public concern about both the incentive effects of and the budgetary expenditures for these programs. The Reagan administration has discussed two paths toward reducing disability benefit expenditures: removing individuals from the rolls via administrative review and reducing the generosity of benefits. These two alternative retrenchment strategies are explored in terms of both the number of beneficiaries expected to voluntarily remove themselves from the rolls if benefits are reduced and the expected economic hardships if individuals are administratively removed. Existing econometric choice modeling underlies the estimates.

Kyklos, Nov 1, 1984

SUMMARYThe growing leniency and generosity of public income support systems has been hypothesized... more SUMMARYThe growing leniency and generosity of public income support systems has been hypothesized to negatively affect work effort. The magnitude of this effect is estimated for the U. S. and the Netherlands in the 1970s, using a three‐stage Probit‐OLS model employed on micro data sets. Individuals are viewed as choosing the number of hours worked on the basis of expected labor income, expected transfer income, labor market and demographic characteristics and health. The elasticity of annual hours worked with respect to expected transfer income was estimated to be ‐0.22 for U. S. and ‐0.82 (1980) for the Netherlands. Combining these elasticities with the annual percentage increases in transfer generosity yields a yearly reduction in the number of hours worked of 0.65% for the U. S. and 2.7% for the Netherlands during the 1970s. These results suggest that growing transfers have had a substantial and negative impact on desired work effort and thus on production and economic performance, especially in the Netherlands.

Social Science Research Network, 2005

Social Science Research Network, 2010

Journal of Public Economics, Oct 1, 1993

Abstract This paper investigates an efficiency implication of Medicare's prospective payment ... more Abstract This paper investigates an efficiency implication of Medicare's prospective payment system (PPS) on the utilization of United States Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital inpatient services by elderly veterans. There is empirical evidence to suggest that non-VA hospitals are reacting to PPS by increasingly shifting veterans they expect may be high-cost to VA hospitals. We define as efficient, allocations that would occur if hospitals acted as perfect agents of the patient, then we show that some shifting would still occur if allocations were efficient. This is because VA and non-VA hospitals operate under different budget regimes, and within each diagnosis related group, veterans with different levels of illness severity (and different non-VA insurance packages) will self-select into VA and non-VA hospitals. We derive conditions of severity under which different hospital types become attractive to particular patients.

Review of Income and Wealth, Dec 1, 1991

The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of... more The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Public Finance = Finances publiques, 1993

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 1985

and research associate at the Institute for Research on Poverty. Dan Usher's original comments on... more and research associate at the Institute for Research on Poverty. Dan Usher's original comments on this chapter helped clarify the conceptual difference between inequality and uncertainty, and led to additional statistical analysis and a reinterpretation of the cross-sectional findings. The authors are indebted to him for his contribution.

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2018

AEA Randomized Controlled Trials, 2018

Social Science Research Network, 1999

PLOS ONE, Dec 11, 2013

Living in poverty places children at very high risk for problems across a variety of domains, inc... more Living in poverty places children at very high risk for problems across a variety of domains, including schooling, behavioral regulation, and health. Aspects of cognitive functioning, such as information processing, may underlie these kinds of problems. How might poverty affect the brain functions underlying these cognitive processes? Here, we address this question by observing and analyzing repeated measures of brain development of young children between five months and four years of age from economically diverse backgrounds (n = 77). In doing so, we have the opportunity to observe changes in brain growth as children begin to experience the effects of poverty. These children underwent MRI scanning, with subjects completing between 1 and 7 scans longitudinally. Two hundred and three MRI scans were divided into different tissue types using a novel image processing algorithm specifically designed to analyze brain data from young infants. Total gray, white, and cerebral (summation of total gray and white matter) volumes were examined along with volumes of the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes. Infants from low-income families had lower volumes of gray matter, tissue critical for processing of information and execution of actions. These differences were found for both the frontal and parietal lobes. No differences were detected in white matter, temporal lobe volumes, or occipital lobe volumes. In addition, differences in brain growth were found to vary with socioeconomic status (SES), with children from lower-income households having slower trajectories of growth during infancy and early childhood. Volumetric differences were associated with the emergence of disruptive behavioral problems.

Journal of Development Economics, Oct 1, 1987

Family background and school supply underlie the demand and supply for schooling, but are usually... more Family background and school supply underlie the demand and supply for schooling, but are usually ignored in empirical estimates. These considerations are investigated for two generations in Nicaragua, using unique data on adult sisters and their offspring to identify inter-versus intrafamilial effects and to control for unobserved family background. The results suggest that the standard interpretations are misleading: (1) Unobserved family background and schoolsupply factors are important in schooling determination. (2) Omission of these factors leads to overestimates of impacts of parental schooling and family size. (3) Both parental schooling and family size primarily represent unobserved family background and school supply in standard estimates.

Journal of Health Economics, Sep 1, 1987

ABSTRACT

This data file consists of 4,104 interviews of women between the ages of 15 and 45 living in Nica... more This data file consists of 4,104 interviews of women between the ages of 15 and 45 living in Nicaragua. The interviews contain current and retrospective information on economic activity; fertility and contraceptive behavior; health and nutritional status; and, other demographic data. The interviewing was conducted in three phases.