Publications
The Effect of Compulsory Schooling Laws and Child Labor Restrictions on Fertility: Evidence from the Early 20th Century
[The Journal of Population Economics]
[The Journal of Population Economics]
Working Papers
Abstract This paper examines the intergenerational effects of a welfare reform that increased welfare benefits generosity and eased eligibility requirements for single mothers in Israel. Using large-scale restricted administrative data and a difference-in-difference design, I find that the rise in single mothers’ welfare participation rates following the reform had a significant impact on their children's long-term economic outcomes. Girls exposed to the reform in childhood were likelier to be on welfare themselves as young adults, while boys experienced a long-lasting increase in labor supply and earnings. The results suggest that generous welfare programs can have beneficial consequences for boys growing up in single-parent households.
Media coverage: TheMarker (Hebrew)
Abstract The long-term unemployed sometimes lack basic soft skills needed to enter and succeed in the labor market. We examine whether it is possible to develop or enhance these skills among adults by using a large-scale randomized control trial (RCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of an Active Labor Market Program (ALMP) that targets income-support claimants in Israel. In this program, participants receive personalized treatment composed of weekly sessions with occupational trainers and motivational group workshops. We find that the program increased participants’ employment rate by 7.9 percentage points and decreased income support recipiency by 10.5 percentage points relative to the control group. The effects are larger among individuals with a lower attachment to the labor market and lower likelihood of employment such as high-school dropouts and those with a longer history of welfare dependence. The program also boosted the employment of participants’ non-treated husbands but had no effect on participants’ non-treated wives. There is no evidence of displacement effects on the control group. The analysis of the mechanisms at work shows that the program had positive and significant effects on participants’ soft skills, mainly among those with no recent employment spell, who gradually joined the labor market after participation in the program. In contrast, it induced individuals who had a recent employment spell to go back to employment soon after their allocation to the program. We conclude that unemployed income-support claimants with no recent employment spells can benefit considerably from interventions that aim to improve their soft skills.
Media coverage: Globes (Hebrew)
Work in progress
The Effects of Reducing Unconditional Cash Transfers on Families in Israel (with Naomi Gershoni, Raina Gihleb and Hani Mansour)
A Broader Perspective on Active Labor Market Programs: Examining Long-Term and Intergenerational effects
(with Analia Schlosser)
(with Analia Schlosser)
Policy papers (Hebrew)