Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/172217 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
Upjohn Institute Working Paper No. 16-255
Publisher: 
W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, Kalamazoo, MI
Abstract: 
Policy changes in the United States in the 1990s resulted in sizable increases in employment rates of single mothers. We show that this increase led to a large and abrupt increase in work experience for single mothers with young children. We then examine the economic return to this increase in experience for affected single mothers. Despite the increases in experience, single mothers' real wages and employment have remained relatively unchanged. The empirical analysis suggests that an additional year of experience increases single mothers' wage rates by less than 2 percent, a percentage lower than previous estimates in the literature.
Subjects: 
Wage returns to experience
Welfare reform
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996
Single mothers
Low-skill labor
Current Population Survey
Synthetic cohorts
JEL: 
J31
I38
J12
J24
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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