National Bureau of Economic Research

The members of the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth (CRIW) have elected Research Associate Karen Dynan of Harvard University to succeed Katharine Abraham of the University of Maryland as CRIW Chair. Dynan’s research focuses on consumer spending, household finance, and applied macroeconomics. Before moving to Harvard, she served as Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the US Department of the Treasury (2014–17), and was a Co-Director of the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. She spent almost two decades at the Federal Reserve Board, where she was the Assistant Director of the…

In Health Inequality and Economic Disparities by Race, Ethnicity, and Gender (NBER Working Paper 32971 an earlier version, NBER RDRC Paper NB23-11), Nicolò Russo, Rory McGee, Mariacristina De Nardi, Margherita Borella, and Ross Abram use data from the Health and Retirement Study over the period 1996–2018 to evaluate measures of health inequality in middle age and the consequences of such health disparities. 

They consider two health measures: self-reported health status, measured by the response to a survey question that asks individuals to rate their health as excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor, and...

Unemployment can jeopardize the ability of households to purchase enough food. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when unemployment rose rapidly, 27 percent of households with children reported that they could not always afford enough food. In The Effects of Lump-Sum Food Benefits during the COVID-19 Pandemic on Spending, Hardship, and Health (NBER Working Paper 33199), Lauren L. Bauer, Krista J. Ruffini, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach examine the effects of a transfer program that provided vouchers for food purchases to American families with children during this...

Digital health technologies, such as remote monitoring devices and telemedicine services, have attracted considerable interest due to their potential to reduce healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes. These innovations could, however, exacerbate health disparities if adoption rates are lower among underserved communities.

In Equity and Efficiency in Technology Adoption: Evidence from Digital Health (NBER Working Paper 32992), researchers Itzik Fadlon, Parag Agnihotri, Christopher Longhurst, and Ming Tai-Seale analyze a remote...

The US safety net provides a wide variety of supports for low-income families from food assistance like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to wage subsidies like the Earned Income Tax Credit. However, receipt of these benefits among eligible households is not automatic — households must actively apply to each program from which they seek benefits. Enrollment processes often include lengthy procedures associated with demonstrating need or complying with other eligibility criteria during both the initial application and recertification periods.

The benefits of completing these administrative requirements are substantial — for example, the average SNAP participant receives roughly $2,500 per year in benefits. However, recent research on administrative burdens in government programs suggests that…

Sociologists have argued that “third places” like cafés, which provide opportunities for individuals to socialize and exchange ideas outside of home and work, improve neighborhood life. But what about the relationship between such places and economic activity? In Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés (NBER Working Paper 32604), researchers Jinkyong Choi, Jorge Guzman, and Mario L. Small use data on US business registrations between 1990 and 2022 from the Startup Cartography Project to examine whether the opening of a Starbucks in a neighborhood with no previous cafés affects local entrepreneurship...