Recent theoretical work suggests that means and asset-tested social insurance programs can explain the low savings of lower income households in the United States. We assess the validity of this hypothesis by investigating the effect of Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income women and children, on savings behavior. We do so using data on asset holdings from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and on consumption from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, matched to information on the eligibility of each household for Medicaid. Exogenous variation in Medicaid eligibility is provided by the dramatic expansion of this program over the 1984-1993 period. We document that Medicaid eligibility has a sizeable and significant negative effect on wealth holdings; we estimate that in 1993 the Medicaid program lowered wealth holdings by 17.7 percent among the eligible population. We confirm this finding by showing a strong positive association between Medicaid eligibility and consumption expenditures; in 1993, the program raised consumption expenditures among eligibles by 5.2 percent. We also exploit the fact that asset testing was phased out by the Medicaid program over this period to document that these Medicaid effects are stronger in the presence of an asset test, confirming the importance of asset testing for household savings decisions.

One goal of federal housing policy is to improve the prospects of children in poor families. This paper examines the effect of public housing participation on housing quality and educational attainment. Using the SIPP, we show that living in projects is associated with more negative outcomes for children, although this appears to be due to unobserved heterogeneity. We control for the endogeneity of project participation using TSIV techniques which combine information on project participation from the CPS with information on outcomes from the Census. We find that project households are less likely to suffer from overcrowding or live in high-density complexes. Project children are less likely to have been held back. Thus, our results run counter to the stereotype that housing projects harm children.

The number of participants in the SSI program grew by 1.1 million from 1987 to 1993. This paper examines the role of Medicaid on the SSI participation decision. I use the rapid growth in average Medicaid expenditure as a proxy for its value. OLS estimates of Medicaid's effect may be biased because of omitted variables bias and measurement error. I therefore apply two-stage least squares to estimate Medicaid's effect, using average Medicaid expenditure for blind SSI recipients as an instrument. These estimates show that rising Medicaid expenditure significantly increased SSI participation among adults with low permanent incomes, explaining 20% of the growth. q 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: H51; I18; I38

Approximately 20 percent of female headed households with children receive government-subsidized housing. For those who receive housing subsidies, the subsidies are often worth more than all other welfare benefits combined. Despite its value and prevalence, there is comparatively little empirical evidence on how public housing in the United States affects economic behavior.

This article assesses the importance of recei¨ing supplemental health insurance on ( ) participation in Supplemental Security Income SSI for the elderly. The implemen-( ) tation of the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary QMB program offered a substitute for Medicaid, and expanded health insurance eligibility to a higher income le¨el. Using a sample of elderly respondents aged 66 to 75, I find that the QMB program reduced SSI participation. More than half of the QMB participants were pre¨iously co¨ered by SSI and Medicaid. The calculations suggest that the QMB program was not as Ž expensi¨e as it might first appear because of reductions in SSI expenditure. JEL . H53, I38, J14 *I am grateful to

The empirical relationship between trade protection and economic growth is surprisingly fragile, as shown in a number of other papers. After demonstrating this empirical sensitivity, we address one possible explanation for these findings: that the relationship is nonlinear. Following the endogenous growth literature, we test for the possibility that the relationship between trade barriers and growth is contingent on measures of comparative advantage. The findings suggest that these nonlinearities do in fact exist -in particular, the correlation between tariffs and growth is strongest and positive for capital-abundant countries -and are robust to the choice of control variables.

Economic scholars in indonesia tends to focus more on market rather than household behavior. This could be caused by their assumption that household behavior often irrational from convensional economic perspective. This paper argue that irrationality behavior is not proven empirically. It is shown that the behavior is economic deterministic; like preference on their child’s gender, time allocation and bargaining process in household. The result shows that females are more preferred than males and this can be explained by economic logic. Nevertheless, position and bargaining power of fem&es still weak in hcusehold. It has proven empirically by some estimation methods with some restrictions. The final objective is the integration of economic science with other social sciences in household behavior analysis in Indonesia

Lucas - Rapping model is considered as successful model to explain the labor force in America. We are apply this model on Indonesian case to analyze the fluctuation of labor force and to know wether the shift on labor supply and unemployment is a function of current real wage or not. We also intend to analyze behaviour of household to respond the real wage change. From demand side, we can trace out how deep the education role on labor force quality. The conclusion may be helpfull on determining appropriate policy on education sector. We use data from BPS including Indikator Ekonomi dan Keuangan, Statistik Ketenagakerjaan (Sakernas), Keadaan Pekerja/Karyawan di Indonesia, Survei Sosial dan Ekonomi Nasional (SUSENAS) or Survei Penduduk Nasional (Supas). The rest of data is collected from international sources such as Summers Hestona PennWorld Table, data Barro and Lee and data Bank Dunia.