Bruce Meyer
Biographic Data
| ID | 5648024 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bruce Meyer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bruce |
| FAMILY NAME | Meyer |
| SIGNATURE | MEYER B |
| AFFILIATIONS | National Bureau of Economic Research |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 96 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Stigma in Welfare Programs
Stigma of welfare participation is important for policy and survey design, because it reduces program take-up and increases misreporting. Stigma is also relevant to the literature on social image concerns, yet empirical evidence is scant because stigma is difficult to empirically identify. We use a novel approach to studying stigma by examining the relationship between program participation in a recipient's local network and underreporting progra…
Life and Death at the Margins of Society
We provide the first national analysis of mortality in the U.S. homeless population by linking 140,000 homeless individuals from the 2010 Census to twelve years of all-cause mortality data from the Social Security Administration (SSA). Non-elderly homeless individuals face 3.5 times the mortality risk of the housed after accounting for demographic differences and geography, with a time pattern suggesting that persistently poor health, rather than…
Evidence of Policy Effects on Infrequent but Important Outcomes—Lessons From the Medicaid Mortality Debate
This JAMA Forum discusses the importance of scientific evidence to support health policy in the context of the recent passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its cuts to Medicaid
The size and Census coverage of the U.S. homeless population
Consumption and Income Inequality in the United States since the 1960s
Recent research concludes that the rise in consumption inequality mirrors, or even exceeds, the rise in income inequality. We revisit this finding, constructing improved measures of consumption, focusing on its well-measured components that are reported at a high and stable rate relative to national accounts. While overall income inequality rose over the past 5 decades, the rise in overall consumption inequality was small. The declining quality o…
The Mielke Clovis Site (33SH26), Western Ohio, USA, Geochemical Sourcing, Technological Descriptions, Artifact Morphometrics, and Microwear
The Mielke site (33SH26) is a multicomponent locality in western Ohio, in an upland portion of the state that forms a drainage divide between the Great Lakes and Ohio River watersheds. The site possesses a prominent Clovis component that we describe here and assessed via test excavations, geochemical sourcing, technological descriptions, geometric morphometrics, microwear, and GIS analysis. Five different raw materials, whose outcrops are located…
The Use and Misuse of Income Data and Extreme Poverty in the United States
Recent research suggests that the share of US households living on less than $2/person/day is high and rising. We reexamine such extreme poverty by linking SIPP and CPS data to administrative tax and program data. We find that more than 90% of those reported to be in extreme poverty are not, once we include in-kind transfers, replace survey reports of earnings and transfer receipt with administrative records, and account for ownership of substant…
The Poverty Reduction of Social Security and Means-Tested Transfers
Many studies examine the anti-poverty effects of social insurance and means-tested transfers, relying solely on survey data with substantial errors. We improve on past work by linking administrative data from Social Security and five large means-tested transfers (SSI, SNAP, Public Assistance, the EITC, and housing assistance) to 2008-2013 Survey of Income and Program Participation data. Using the linked data, we find that Social Security cuts the…
Childhood Medicaid Coverage and Later-Life Health Care Utilization
Exploiting a discontinuity in childhood Medicaid eligibility based on date of birth, we find that more years of childhood eligibility are associated with fewer hospitalizations in adulthood. For blacks, we find a 7% to 15% decrease in hospitalizations and a suggestive 2% to 5% decrease in emergency department visits, but no similar effect for nonblacks. The effects are pronounced for utilization related to chronic illnesses and for patients livin…
The Poverty Reduction of Social Security and Means-Tested Transfers
This article is the fourth in a series to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the ILR Review. The series features articles that analyze the state of research and future directions for important themes this journal has featured over many years of publication. Starting with Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data from 2008 to 2013, the authors link administrative data from Social Security and five large means-tested transfers-Supplemen…
Household Surveys in Crisis
Household surveys, one of the main innovations in social science research of the last century, are threatened by declining accuracy due to reduced cooperation of respondents. While many indicators of survey quality have steadily declined in recent decades, the literature has largely emphasized rising nonresponse rates rather than other potentially more important dimensions to the problem. We divide the problem into rising rates of nonresponse, im…
Identifying the Disadvantaged
We discuss poverty measurement, focusing on two alternatives to the current official measure: consumption poverty, and the Census Bureau's new Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) that was released for the first time last year. The SPM has advantages over the official poverty measure, including a more defensible adjustment for family size and composition, an expanded definition of the family unit that includes cohabitors, and a definition of income…
The Under-Reporting of Transfers in Household Surveys
High rates of understatement are found for many government transfer programs and in many datasets. This understatement has major implications for our understanding of economic well-being and the effects of transfer programs. We provide estimates of the extent of under-reporting for ten transfer programs in five major nationally representative surveys by comparing reported weighted totals for these programs with totals obtained from government age…
Measuring the Well-Being of the Poor Using Income and Consumption
Bruce D. Meyer, James X. Sullivan, Measuring the Well-Being of the Poor Using Income and Consumption, The Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 38, Special Issue on Income Volatility and Implications for Food Assistance Programs (2003), pp. 1180-1220
Ethnic and Racial Self-Employment Differences and Possible Explanations
We show that entrepreneurship rates differ substantially across 60 ethnic and racial groups in the United States.These differences exist within broad combinations of groups such as Asians and Hispanics, and are almost as great after regression controls, including age, education, immigrant status, and time in the country.We then provide evidence on a number of theories of entrepreneurship.An ethnic/racial group's self-employment rate is positively…
A longitudinal analysis of the young self-employed in Australia and the United States
The impact of the potential duration of unemployment benefits on the duration of unemployment
Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Spells
This paper tests the effects of the level and length of unemployment insurance (UI> benefits on unemployment durations.The paper particularly studies individual behavior during the weeks just prior to when benefits lapse.Higher UI benefits are found to have a strong negative effect on the probability of leaving unemployment.However, the probability of leaving unemployment rises dramatically just prior to when benefits lapse When the length of ben…
Classification-Error Models and Labor-Market Dynamics
Measurement error is often a severe problem in longitudinal data such as labor-market flows. Two correction methods have been used for labor-market flows, but the methods tend to adjust the data in opposite directions. One method shows a rigid labor market with long unemployment spells, whereas the other shows the opposite. Because the methods appear theoretically similar, one might interpret the differing results as an indictment of both procedu…
Household Surveys in Crisis
Household surveys, one of the main innovations in social science research of the last century, are threatened by declining accuracy due to reduced cooperation of respondents. While many indicators of survey quality have steadily declined in recent decades, the literature has largely emphasized rising nonresponse rates rather than other potentially more important dimensions to the problem. We divide the problem into rising rates of nonresponse, im…
Identifying the Disadvantaged
We discuss poverty measurement, focusing on two alternatives to the current official measure: consumption poverty, and the Census Bureau's new Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) that was released for the first time last year. The SPM has advantages over the official poverty measure, including a more defensible adjustment for family size and composition, an expanded definition of the family unit that includes cohabitors, and a definition of income…
The Mielke Clovis Site (33SH26), Western Ohio, USA, Geochemical Sourcing, Technological Descriptions, Artifact Morphometrics, and Microwear
The Mielke site (33SH26) is a multicomponent locality in western Ohio, in an upland portion of the state that forms a drainage divide between the Great Lakes and Ohio River watersheds. The site possesses a prominent Clovis component that we describe here and assessed via test excavations, geochemical sourcing, technological descriptions, geometric morphometrics, microwear, and GIS analysis. Five different raw materials, whose outcrops are located…
Consumption and Income Inequality in the United States since the 1960s
Recent research concludes that the rise in consumption inequality mirrors, or even exceeds, the rise in income inequality. We revisit this finding, constructing improved measures of consumption, focusing on its well-measured components that are reported at a high and stable rate relative to national accounts. While overall income inequality rose over the past 5 decades, the rise in overall consumption inequality was small. The declining quality o…
The Poverty Reduction of Social Security and Means-Tested Transfers
This article is the fourth in a series to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the ILR Review. The series features articles that analyze the state of research and future directions for important themes this journal has featured over many years of publication. Starting with Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data from 2008 to 2013, the authors link administrative data from Social Security and five large means-tested transfers-Supplemen…
The size and Census coverage of the U.S. homeless population
Classification-Error Models and Labor-Market Dynamics
Measurement error is often a severe problem in longitudinal data such as labor-market flows. Two correction methods have been used for labor-market flows, but the methods tend to adjust the data in opposite directions. One method shows a rigid labor market with long unemployment spells, whereas the other shows the opposite. Because the methods appear theoretically similar, one might interpret the differing results as an indictment of both procedu…
The impact of the potential duration of unemployment benefits on the duration of unemployment
Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Spells
This paper tests the effects of the level and length of unemployment insurance (UI> benefits on unemployment durations.The paper particularly studies individual behavior during the weeks just prior to when benefits lapse.Higher UI benefits are found to have a strong negative effect on the probability of leaving unemployment.However, the probability of leaving unemployment rises dramatically just prior to when benefits lapse When the length of ben…
A longitudinal analysis of the young self-employed in Australia and the United States
Ethnic and Racial Self-Employment Differences and Possible Explanations
We show that entrepreneurship rates differ substantially across 60 ethnic and racial groups in the United States.These differences exist within broad combinations of groups such as Asians and Hispanics, and are almost as great after regression controls, including age, education, immigrant status, and time in the country.We then provide evidence on a number of theories of entrepreneurship.An ethnic/racial group's self-employment rate is positively…
Measuring the Well-Being of the Poor Using Income and Consumption
Bruce D. Meyer, James X. Sullivan, Measuring the Well-Being of the Poor Using Income and Consumption, The Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 38, Special Issue on Income Volatility and Implications for Food Assistance Programs (2003), pp. 1180-1220
The Under-Reporting of Transfers in Household Surveys
High rates of understatement are found for many government transfer programs and in many datasets. This understatement has major implications for our understanding of economic well-being and the effects of transfer programs. We provide estimates of the extent of under-reporting for ten transfer programs in five major nationally representative surveys by comparing reported weighted totals for these programs with totals obtained from government age…
Identifying the Disadvantaged
We discuss poverty measurement, focusing on two alternatives to the current official measure: consumption poverty, and the Census Bureau's new Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) that was released for the first time last year. The SPM has advantages over the official poverty measure, including a more defensible adjustment for family size and composition, an expanded definition of the family unit that includes cohabitors, and a definition of income…
Household Surveys in Crisis
Household surveys, one of the main innovations in social science research of the last century, are threatened by declining accuracy due to reduced cooperation of respondents. While many indicators of survey quality have steadily declined in recent decades, the literature has largely emphasized rising nonresponse rates rather than other potentially more important dimensions to the problem. We divide the problem into rising rates of nonresponse, im…
The Poverty Reduction of Social Security and Means-Tested Transfers
Many studies examine the anti-poverty effects of social insurance and means-tested transfers, relying solely on survey data with substantial errors. We improve on past work by linking administrative data from Social Security and five large means-tested transfers (SSI, SNAP, Public Assistance, the EITC, and housing assistance) to 2008-2013 Survey of Income and Program Participation data. Using the linked data, we find that Social Security cuts the…
Childhood Medicaid Coverage and Later-Life Health Care Utilization
Exploiting a discontinuity in childhood Medicaid eligibility based on date of birth, we find that more years of childhood eligibility are associated with fewer hospitalizations in adulthood. For blacks, we find a 7% to 15% decrease in hospitalizations and a suggestive 2% to 5% decrease in emergency department visits, but no similar effect for nonblacks. The effects are pronounced for utilization related to chronic illnesses and for patients livin…
The Poverty Reduction of Social Security and Means-Tested Transfers
This article is the fourth in a series to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the ILR Review. The series features articles that analyze the state of research and future directions for important themes this journal has featured over many years of publication. Starting with Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data from 2008 to 2013, the authors link administrative data from Social Security and five large means-tested transfers-Supplemen…
The Use and Misuse of Income Data and Extreme Poverty in the United States
Recent research suggests that the share of US households living on less than $2/person/day is high and rising. We reexamine such extreme poverty by linking SIPP and CPS data to administrative tax and program data. We find that more than 90% of those reported to be in extreme poverty are not, once we include in-kind transfers, replace survey reports of earnings and transfer receipt with administrative records, and account for ownership of substant…
Consumption and Income Inequality in the United States since the 1960s
Recent research concludes that the rise in consumption inequality mirrors, or even exceeds, the rise in income inequality. We revisit this finding, constructing improved measures of consumption, focusing on its well-measured components that are reported at a high and stable rate relative to national accounts. While overall income inequality rose over the past 5 decades, the rise in overall consumption inequality was small. The declining quality o…
The Mielke Clovis Site (33SH26), Western Ohio, USA, Geochemical Sourcing, Technological Descriptions, Artifact Morphometrics, and Microwear
The Mielke site (33SH26) is a multicomponent locality in western Ohio, in an upland portion of the state that forms a drainage divide between the Great Lakes and Ohio River watersheds. The site possesses a prominent Clovis component that we describe here and assessed via test excavations, geochemical sourcing, technological descriptions, geometric morphometrics, microwear, and GIS analysis. Five different raw materials, whose outcrops are located…
The size and Census coverage of the U.S. homeless population
Stigma in Welfare Programs
Stigma of welfare participation is important for policy and survey design, because it reduces program take-up and increases misreporting. Stigma is also relevant to the literature on social image concerns, yet empirical evidence is scant because stigma is difficult to empirically identify. We use a novel approach to studying stigma by examining the relationship between program participation in a recipient's local network and underreporting progra…
Life and Death at the Margins of Society
We provide the first national analysis of mortality in the U.S. homeless population by linking 140,000 homeless individuals from the 2010 Census to twelve years of all-cause mortality data from the Social Security Administration (SSA). Non-elderly homeless individuals face 3.5 times the mortality risk of the housed after accounting for demographic differences and geography, with a time pattern suggesting that persistently poor health, rather than…
Evidence of Policy Effects on Infrequent but Important Outcomes—Lessons From the Medicaid Mortality Debate
This JAMA Forum discusses the importance of scientific evidence to support health policy in the context of the recent passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its cuts to Medicaid
Economics (17 works) · Demographic economics (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Demography (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Income, Poverty, and Inequality (6 works) · Economic growth (5 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (5 works) · Labour economics (5 works) · Econometrics (4 works)