View Research by Author - Mark D. Turner

Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/MarkDTurner

Interest in the effects of the minimum wage on teenagers' school enrollment has grown in recent years. This issue is of increasing importance given recent calls for increasing the minimum wage. Some authors argue that higher minimum wages will hurt teenagers by lowering their school enrollment. In this paper, we estimate the effects of higher minimum wages on school enrollment using the Common Core of Data, collected by the U.S. Department of Education. These data cover the entire population of public school students in the United States. Controlling for local labor market conditions and state and year fixed effects, we find some evidence that higher minimum wages reduce teen school enrollment in states where students can drop out before the age of 18. This appears to be driven by the grade 9 to grade 10 transition. We find no effects for higher-grade levels or in states where students cannot drop out until they are 18. This suggests that minimum wages may have a substantial effect on teens' schooling effort in these early grades, but also that these unintended effects can be offset by policies that encourage continued school enrollment. (Economics of Education Review 22(1): 11-21, February 2003.)

Concerned that some states were promoting family break-ups by limiting cash assistance to only single-parent families, Congress passed the Family Support Act of 1988, which required all states to provide assistance to intact families through the AFDC Unemployed Parent program (AFDC-UP). This evaluation examines the effect of the mandatory program, four years after its inception. The authors examine what happened to the UP and AFDC Basic caseloads and what effect UP has had on family stability and child poverty.

This paper examines nonresident fathers' financial capacity, their commitment to their children living elsewhere, the financial needs of custodial families, and the Office of Child Support Enforcement (CSE) policies. The authors used the 1990 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to identify all nonresident fathers regardless of their marital status or presence of a formal child support order. They estimated the effect of state-level CSE policies on nonresident fathers' propensity to pay child support and the amount they pay. They also discuss the research on factors influencing child support and analyze how nonresident fathers' circumstances affect child support payments.

Using data from the 1990 Survey of Income and Program Participation, this report shows that nonresident fathers' incomes are quite volatile, qualifying many of them for periodic adjustments in child support orders. Several factors other than changes in income predicted whether the nonresident fathers received adjustments in their orders. It was found that two methods of determining child support order modifications—a cost of living adjustment and an adjustment based on wage and tax records—would likely increase modifications, but the two methods could yield different results.

This paper reviews an article entitled, "Minimum Wage Effects on Employment and School Enrollment," published in the April 1995 issue of the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics by David Neumark and William Wascher. It comments on the accuracy of the enrollment measures used in that study and tests whether the reported results are robust to a more inclusive measure of school enrollment.

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