The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 drastically reduced welfare spending across England and Wales. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that the withdrawal of poor relief had a lasting effect. Boys and girls exposed to reductions in welfare spending as children are more likely to hold low-skilled occupations as adults, and grandchildren of those exposed are less likely to attend school. The results illustrate the ways in which social policy can affect future generations.

This paper presents novel evidence about the effects of a permanent, large-scale, and government-implemented cash transfer program, the Uruguayan PANES/AFAM-PE. I focus on three critical dimensions of individuals' transition to adulthood: education, fertility, and labor market decisions. I use a unique combination of individual-level administrative records that exhaustively describes the year-by-year trajectory of the effects. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design that exploits the use of a poverty score to define eligibility to participate in the program, I show that the program reduces women's teenage pregnancies by 9.4p.p., increases participants' early adulthood labor market participation by 6.4p.p., months worked by 4.4, and earnings by about 12\%. The evidence on education outcomes is mixed but suggests a stronger attachment to the secondary education system. Consistent with a postponement of women's first birth being the main driver, changes in labor market outcomes are observed exclusively for women.

Despite being the only federally protected form of leave in the United States, relatively little is known about how being eligible for Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) protections affects women’s post-birth labor market outcomes. This project uses administrative data on births (Census Household Composition Key) and quarterly earnings (LEHD-EHF and JHF) to compare post-birth employment and earnings outcomes for working women who give birth after 12 months in their jobs (and are eligible for FMLA leave) to those who give birth too soon in their jobs to qualify for FMLA leave. Eligibility for FMLA leave increases the probability women are employed the quarter after they give birth by 6.0%, and the probability they are employed six years later by 4.6%. FMLA eligibility also increases women's earnings both in the short- and long-term, such that eligible women earn over $10,000 more over the first six years after giving birth.

I use the implementation and sunset of “Man in the House” rules within state welfare programs to estimate the long-term impacts of families’ access to economic resources through traditional welfare programs. “Man in the House (MITH)” rules limited families’ participation in the welfare program on an extensive margin if welfare staff suspected non-marital relationships among program participants. I find that states’ enforcement of MITH rules led to racially disparate declines in families’ participation in AFDC. The invalidation of MITH rules by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968 led to a 15 percent increase in Non-White families’ participation in AFDC. I find high school completion declined among Black cohorts graduating after MITH rules contracted access to AFDC. Conversely, educational attainment increased among Black cohorts exposed to the invalidation of MITH. These results offer new evidence of the consequences of historical U.S. welfare policies that disparately impact families’ access to public assistance.