Publications | Faculty and Impact | Goldman School of Public Policy

The Impact of Demographics on Housing and Non-Housing Wealth in the United States

in The Economic Effects of Aging in the United States and Japan, edited by Michael D. Hurd and Naohiro Yashiro. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1997, 153-194. (with Daniel McFadden)

1997-01-04

Published Version (2MB)

The Effectiveness of Financial Work Incentives in DI and SSI: Lessons from Other Transfer Programs

in Disability, Work and Cash Benefts, edited by Jerry Mashaw, Virginia Reno, Richard Burkhauser, and Monroe Berkowitz. Upjohn: Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1996, 189-222. (with Robert Moffitt)

1996-01-03

Published Version (1MB)

Welfare Transfers in Two-Parent Families

Econometrica, Volume 64 No. 2, 295-332, March 1996

1996-01-02

Published Version (4MB)

Has the Decline in Benefits Shortened Welfare Spells?

American Economic Review, Volume 84 No. 2, 43- 48, 1994. (with Thomas MaCurdy)

1994-01-01

Published Version (814KB)

Pensions in the Trenches: How Pension Spending is Affecting U.S. Local Government Now

Anzia, Sarah F. Forthcoming. “Pensions in the Trenches: How Pension Spending is Affecting U.S. Local Government.” Urban Affairs Review.

Some experts claim that U.S. local governments are experiencing dramatic increases in pension expenditures and that pension spending is crowding out government services. Others maintain that serious pension problems are limited. This issue is important to political scientists, urban scholars, and policy practitioners, but no existing studies—nor the datasets they rely on— allow evaluation of whether pension expenditures are rising or how they are affecting local government. This article analyzes a new dataset of the annual pension expenditures of over 400 municipalities and counties from 2005 to 2016. I find that pension expenditures rose almost everywhere over this period, but there is significant variation in that growth. On average, local governments are not responding to rising pension spending by increasing revenue. They are instead shrinking their workforces. Moreover, I find that the magnitude of the employment reductions due to pensions varies with key features of the political environment.

Programs

People & Community

Faculty & Impact

Career Services

Recent Publications

The Impact of Demographics on Housing and Non-Housing Wealth in the United States

The Effectiveness of Financial Work Incentives in DI and SSI: Lessons from Other Transfer Programs

Welfare Transfers in Two-Parent Families

Has the Decline in Benefits Shortened Welfare Spells?

Pensions in the Trenches: How Pension Spending is Affecting U.S. Local Government Now

Power and Participation Among Latina/o Immigrant Workers

Communities of Color and New Models of Organizing Labor

Collective Prosperity: The Power of a Multi-Ethnic Agenda, A New York Model