Research Roundup: Vietnam Vets Make Bank

(The NBER edition)

- Joshua Angrist of M.I.T. and Stacey Chen of the NBER don't find any significant differences between the pay of Vietnam veterans and the rest of the population. (NBER | free)

- Christoper Carpetner of UC Irvine and Mark Stehr of Drexel University conclude that if all U.S. states had mandatory seat belt laws, youth fatalities would fall by 120 per year. (NBER | free)

- The limits of mandated self-sufficiency: In the name of weaning people with drug problems off the government teet, Congress passed a law in 1996 which barring such individuals from receiving certain forms of government assistance (namely Supplemental Security Income and Disability Insurance benefits). Economists Pinka Chatterji and Ellen Meara of Harvard find that the mandate did increase self-sufficiency "without measurable impact on insurance coverage and health services utilization." However, this was short-lived for people who continued to have abuse problems. During their sample period, employment levels, labor force participation, and use of government assitance returned to pre-mandate levels. The end result: "Low-skilled individuals with [substance abuse problems] increasingly have fewer sources of support as they seek the very self-sufficiency that reforms of the mid-1990s aimed to achieve." (NBER)