WORK IN PROGRESS

The Impact of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act on Family Child Care Provider Participation in the Child and Adult Care Feeding Program: Did it Make a Difference?

The HHFK contained several provisions meant to strengthen participation of family child care providers' in CACFP, especially outside of areas of high population density. Using administrative data from the state of Illinois, we examine the impacts of CACFP across types of communities (ranging from highly urban to rural), as characterized by NCES locale codes. We find that some but not all types of areas experienced a distinct increase in the number of family child care providers immediately after the HHFK's implementation. We also find that in many cases, these effects were not permanent. A decomposition analysis identifies the extent to which changes in CACFP participation and benefit levels across types of locales were driven by population shifts, the changes in the propensity to take up benefits and generosity of benefit levels conditional on receipt that can be plausibly attributed to HHFK, and other factors.

The Impact of Federal Nutrition Subsidies on Family Child Care Operations

In 1996, the subsidy levels under the CACFP program were reduced for family child care, while child care center operators' subsidies were unaffected. The desirability of this change has been a longstanding question. In 2011, provisions of the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act led to exogenous increases in subsidy levels for some family care providers. We evaluate how this increase affected key aspects of family providers' operations. Using unique data for the state of Illinois on individual family care establishments, we examine the impact of increased subsidies on meals and snacks served and hours of operation. Operators offering evening care are mandated to provide dinner by the state. We find that non-rural providers used the increased subsidies to extend their hours of operation into the evening and offer dinner. Overall, operating hours were longer, more meals were served with only a small offsetting reduction in snacks, and prices were unchanged.

States' Use of Federal Nutrition Program Waivers to Ease Food Insecurity during COVID (IGPA Policy Spotlight )

While federally funded safety net programs are implemented by state governments, the federal government strictly defines important features pertaining to eligibility, benefits, and administration. Sudden disruptions to established systems due to the COVID pandemic threatened to curtail access at a time when households faced sharp declines in household resources and helped state governments adapt to the unforeseen consequences of the pandemic. In response, the federal government waived many pre-COVID rules governing the programs. These include offers of additional funding to states, keeping channels of access to aid open, and adapting administration to the consequences of social distancing. This policy brief overviews the policies that have been operative during the pandemic, shows the varying degrees to which the states have leveraged this aid, and discusses the patterns of food insecurity and federal nutrition program spending around the pandemic.

More Art than Science? Gender Segregation within a College Major

The choice of college major is an important factor explaining the gender wage gap, as men systematically choose majors associated with higher earnings, and women systematically choose majors associated with lower earnings. The curriculum within a major may also be diverse. If there is vertical gender segregation, then women and men with the same major may still acquire different knowledge and skills that are of greater or lesser value in the labor market. This paper looks at the relative popularity of courses that are more "art" or more "science" within the economics major at a large elite public institution. This economics program experienced rapid growth in majors over a lengthy period. Faculty hiring efforts circa 2010 led to a great increase in the number of course offerings with substantial econometric and theoretical content. This trend culminated in the introduction of a B.S. major in 2020. I use the designations of courses for these two degrees to characterize courses in the period before the introduction of the B.S. option, a period when students were able to freely choose courses without concern for differentiated major requirements. I assess the degree of gender segregation in the two curricula and the factors determining how male and female majors choose their courses.

Early to Bed: Is There an Optimal Age to Establish a Bedtime?

There is a longstanding debate and large literature about the impact of the age of entry to formal schooling on children's development, including cognitive and socio-behavioral outcomes. The age of school entry is also likely to have an important impact on the child's household. We estimate the causal impact of earlier school entry on how children are parented, identifying effects on affection, parenting stress, restrictions on television viewing, and activities that parents do with their children. Identification is achieved via state rules on school start ages. Children who begin school earlier are estimated to face more restrictions on television viewing than age-peers in the grade below. In particular, there is an increase in restrictions on late-night viewing, which is indicative of having a bedtime. Dynamic findings provide evidence that it is more difficult to initiate a bedtime with an older child, as children who enter school earlier remain more likely to have an enforced bedtime in later grade school and middle school than lower-grade age peers.