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Below are descriptions of my research in four areas:
1. Child Care and Child Care Subsidies
2. Rural Labor Markets and Regional Economics
3. Jobs, Earnings and Worker Turnover in Supermarkets
4. Welfare Reform and Poverty
1. CHILD CARE and CHILD CARE SUBSIDIES
Child care subsidies have become a critical work support program for many low-income families. My research has examined the dynamics of participation in the child care subsidy program, why parents stop using subsidies, parents’ employment while using subsidies, and the relationship between the price of child care and subsidies. Some of these studies are described below.
Why Do They Leave? Child Care Subsidy Use in Oregon.
By Deana Grobe, Roberta B. Weber and Elizabeth E. Davis, 2006
ABSTRACT: Child care assistance has emerged as a major support for low-income working parents and an increasingly important part of the nation’s welfare policy. This study fills an important gap about child care subsidy participation by exploring why parents leave the subsidy program in Oregon. Descriptive analyses using administrative data show unexpectedly high levels of employment stability and low levels of family mobility, suggesting that instability in other parts of participants’ lives does not explain a substantial portion of exits. Many families appear to remain eligible after exit based on earnings and participation in other means-tested assistance programs. Estimates from a Cox regression model show that subsidy policies were associated with exits. Being in the last month of an eligibility period increased the likelihood of exiting the subsidy program by two to three times. This result suggests that lengthening eligibility period could increase the stability of subsidy usage and possibly subsidized child care arrangements.
Report available from the Oregon Child Care Research Partnership
http://www.hhs.oregonstate.edu/familypolicy/occrp/
Minnesota Child Care Policy Research Partnership (MCCPRP)
The Minnesota Child Care Policy Research Partnership is a collaboration among several state agencies, counties, child care resource and referral agencies, and university researchers. Coordinated by the Minnesota Department of Human Services, the partnership brings together researchers and policy-makers from the Minnesota Department of Human Services and Department of Economic Security, several county child care units and CCR&Rs, the University of Minnesota, Child Trends and several nationally prominent researchers. The goal of this broadly based partnership is to foster sound research on child care issues of importance to policy-makers at the state, local, and national level. MCCPRP's research agenda is designed to answer critical questions about how affordability, quality and accessibility affect outcomes for families and children. The MCCPRP conducted several studies on:
- Quality of Child Care
- Parents' Choice of Type of Child Care
- Employment, Earnings and Job Stability of Parents Receiving Child Care Assistance
- Impact of Tiered Reimbursement on the Market for Child Care
- Impact of Child Care Assistance on the Market for Child Care
The Influence of Local Price and Availability on Parents’ Choice of Child Care.
By Elizabeth E. Davis and Rachel Connelly
Published in Population Research and Policy Review, Volume 24, Number 4 August, 2005.
ABSTRACT: The striking variation in patterns of child care usage across states reflects differences in family characteristics, but may also reflect exogenous differences in local child care markets. Type of care selected will be influenced by the availability, cost, and accessibility of supply in the child care market as well as by family and child characteristics and cultural preferences. This study contributes to the growing literature on parental demand for child care by using a recent detailed data set from the state of Minnesota. We link household-level data on child care usage and family characteristics with county-level data on average provider rates and availability by type of care in order to estimate multinomial logit models analyzing the family, child and market characteristics that predict type of care. Our analysis shows that using a relative or friend to care for a child is largely determined by availability, and choice of family care providers is most responsive to price for employed mothers. The types of care chosen by mothers who are not in the paid labor force differ substantially from the choices of employed mothers and their use of center care is influenced by the prices of both center and family providers. Attitudes towards relative care are also shown to influence type of care chosen.
Child Care Subsidies, Low-Wage Work and Economic Development
By Elizabeth E. Davis and Marcie Jefferys
International Journal of
Economic Development 9(3):122-158, 2007.
IJED_Davis_Jefferys.pdf
Abstract: Public spending for work supports like child care subsidies has been
greatly increased in recent years to “make work pay’ and to encourage
the labor force participation of low-income parents. This study tracked changes
in earnings and employment sectors over three years for parents receiving child
care subsidies in Minnesota. Employment of these parents was more concentrated
in a few sectors of the economy than for the workforce as a whole. The overall
pattern of concentration of employment did not change over the three years,
but parents who moved into or stayed in the health care sector received higher
average wages and experienced greater wage growth. Given the importance of
the health care sector for community development and projected future shortages
of healthcare workers, opportunities for linking work supports like child care
subsidies with training and employment in these fields could improve outcomes
for both families and communities.
Working in Minnesota: Parents’ Employment and Earnings in the Child Care Assistance Program
By Marcie Jefferys and Elizabeth E. Davis, 2004
Working_in_Minnesota.pdf
Still Working in Minnesota? Follow-Up Study on Parents’ Employment and Earnings in the Child Care Assistance Program
By Elizabeth E. Davis and Marcie Jefferys, 2005
Still_Working.pdf
Child Care Assistance and the Market for Child Care in Minnesota
By Elizabeth E. Davis and NaiChia Li, 2005
CCAP_and_Childcare_Market.pdf
Other studies by the MCCPRP are available on the Minnesota DHS website under Child Care-Research. http://www.dhs.state.mn.us/
A Multi-State Study of the Duration of Child Care Subsidy Use
This project was a collaborative effort in five states (Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon and Texas) to compare the dynamics of child care subsidy use across different types of families and across states. Analysts created comparable longitudinal datasets tracking children in families receiving child care subsidies from state administrative data. The main outcomes of interest included median duration of subsidy receipt and rate of return to the subsidy program following an exit. The report finds that the states served very different populations and provided very different services under the state-run programs. The length of subsidy use was short in all five states, as shown by median spell lengths ranging from 3 to 7 months. The proportion of children returning to the subsidy system within 12 months ranged from 35 to 58 percent. Funding for the study was provided in part by the Child Care Bureau, ACF, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Dynamics of Child Care Subsidy Use: A Collaborative Study of Five States.
By Marcia K. Meyers, Laura R. Peck, Elizabeth E. Davis, Ann Collins, J. Lee Kreader, Annie Georges, Roberta Weber, Deanna Schexnayder, Daniel Schroeder, Jerome A. Olson.
New York: National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University, July 2002. Report available from NCCP at http://www.nccp.org/pub_dcc02.html
Continuity and Stability: Dynamics of Child Care Subsidy Use in Oregon.
By Roberta B. Weber and Elizabeth E. Davis.
New York: National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University, July 2002. http://www.nccp.org/pub_sor02.html
The Dynamics of Child Care Subsidy Use by Rural Families in Oregon.
By Elizabeth E. Davis and Roberta B. Weber.
American Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 83 no. 5 (December 2001): 1293-1301.
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2. RURAL LABOR MARKETS and REGIONAL ECONOMICS
The Impact of the 1990s Economic Boom on Less-Educated Workers in Rural America.
By Elizabeth E. Davis and Stacie A. Bosley. 2005.
Working paper available at Rural Poverty Research Center
http://www.rprconline.org/wpcurrent.htm
ABSTRACT: This study uses National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) data to investigate the impact of local labor market conditions on the earnings of rural non-college-educated workers. The results suggest that local economic conditions in the late 1990s did have a positive effect overall on wages for men with no more than a high school degree and for women regardless of education. Further, there is evidence of a difference between metro and nonmetro labor markets, suggesting that the 1990s boom helped urban less-educated workers but not those in rural areas. The metro - nonmetro difference is most apparent for male workers.
Local Labor Market Conditions and the Jobless Poor: How Much Does Local Job Growth Help in Rural Areas?
By Elizabeth E. Davis, Laura Connolly and Bruce Weber. 2003.
Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, vol. 28 (3, December 2003): 503-518.
How Much Does Local Job Growth Improve Employment Outcomes of the Rural Working Poor?
By Elizabeth E. Davis and Bruce A. Weber. 2002.
Review of Regional Studies, vol.32, (no. 2, 2002): 255-274.
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3. JOBS, EARNINGS and WORKER TURNOVER IN SUPERMARKETS
Supermarket Human Resource Practices and Competition from Mass Merchandisers
By Elizabeth E. Davis, Matthew Freedman, Julia Lane, Brian McCall, Nicole Nestoriak, and Timothy Park. 2006.
Published in American Journal of Agricultural Economics, December 2006.
ABSTRACT: The rise of supercenters and the entry of Wal-Mart into food retailing have dramatically altered the competitive environment in the industry. This paper explores the impact of such changes on the labor market practices of traditional food retailers. We use longitudinal data on workers and firms to construct new measures of compensation and employment, and examine how these measures evolve within and across firms in response to changes in product market competition. An additional feature of the analysis is to combine rich case study knowledge about the retail food industry with the new matched employer-employee data from the Census Bureau. We compare a set of human resource practices using measures based on the matched employer-employee data to an index based on survey data and case studies. The consistency between the two approaches suggests that the measures are capturing important differences in supermarket human resource practices and policies. Analysis of administrative data combined with case study observations strengthens our understanding of the diversity of human resource practices in the retail food industry.
Product Market Competition and Human Resource Practices:
An Analysis of the Retail Food Sector. 2006.
By Elizabeth E. Davis, Matthew Freedman, Julia Lane, Brian McCall, Nicole Nestoriak, and Timothy Park
Working paper available on Social Science Research Network
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=717403
This paper builds on the previous work by more directly testing the relationship between supercenter competition and supermarket human resource practices. We create location-specific measures of competition from supercenters using geocoded establishment data and control for the distance from each supermarket to its competitors. While we find evidence of considerable heterogeneity in human resource practices across retail food establishments, these practices are quite persistent even in the face of new external competition. Technology, changing consumer preferences, and competition from non-traditional food retailers have led to major changes in supermarket operations, pricing and supply chain strategies over the past decade. Yet, in terms of human resource practices, these firms seem slow to respond to external forces. Indeed, the margin of change in the industry appears to be through entry and exit.
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4. WELFARE REFORM and POVERTY
Accounting for the Decline in AFDC Caseloads: Welfare Reform or the Economy?
By James P. Ziliak, David N. Figlio, Elizabeth E. Davis and Laura S. Connolly.
Journal of Human Resources, v.35 (Summer 2000): 570-586.
ABSTRACT: We use state-level monthly panel data to assess the relative contributions of the macroeconomy and welfare reform in accounting for the 1993-96 decline in Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) caseloads. Our results suggest that the decline in per capita AFDC caseloads is attributable largely to the economic conditions in states and not to waivers from federal welfare policies. Nationwide, we attribute 66 percent of the decline to the macroeconomy. However, we do find substantial heterogeneity in the impact and timing of alternative waivers on AFDC caseloads. States with waivers impacting parental responsibilities experienced greater caseload declines than states with waivers that made work more attractive. Overall, our model predicts that had it not been for the influence of economic factors, welfare reform would not have led to any decrease in aggregate caseloads.
Welfare and food stamps caseloads in three states: rural-urban contrasts.
By Reinschmiedt, Lynn; Henry, Mark; Weber, Bruce A.; Davis, Elizabeth E.; Lewis, Willis.
Columbia, MO: Rural Policy Research Institute, 1999. (P99-10) 28p., 28cm.
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