Bruce Meyer, Ph.D.

Bruce Meyer, the McCormick Foundation Professor in the Harris School, studies poverty and inequality, tax policy, government safety net programs such as unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, food stamps, and Medicaid, and the accuracy of household surveys.  His most recent work includes research on trends in poverty and inequality, the consequences of disability, the effects of Medicaid, and the reporting in surveys of government programs such as food stamps.  

Meyer received his BA and MA in economics from Northwestern University and his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Meyer was a faculty member in the Economics Department at Northwestern University from 1987 through 2004. He has also been a visiting faculty member at Harvard University, University College London and Princeton University, a member of the Institute for Research on Poverty, a faculty research fellow and research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. He is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. Meyer has also served as an advisor to the U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, Human Resources Development Canada, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, and Mathematica Policy Research.

Selected Working Papers

• "Disability, Earnings, Income and Consumption" (with Wallace K. C. Mok), NBER Working Paper 18869, March 2013. [appendices]
• “Consumption and Income Inequality and the Great Recession” (with James X. Sullivan).  Forthcoming American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, May 2013
• "Winning the War: Poverty from the Great Society to the Great Recession" (with James X. Sullivan) Forthcoming Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall 2012.
• "Saving Teens: Using a Policy Discontinuity to Estimate the Effects of Medicaid Eligibility" (with Laura R. Wherry), August 2012.
• "The Economic Consequences of Disability: Evidence from the PSID" (with Wallace K.C. Mok), August 16, 2012.
• "The Validity of Consumption Data: Are the Consumer Expenditure Interview and Diary Surveys Informative?" (with Adam Bee & James X. Sullivan), August, 2012.
• "Errors in Survey Reporting and Imputation and their Effects on Estimates of Food Stamp Program Participation" (with Robert Goerge), October 5, 2011
• "The Health Care Safety Net and Crowd-Out of Private Health Insurance" (with Anthony T. Lo Sasso), Harris School Working Paper #04.17, revised February 2010.
• "The Under-Reporting of Transfers in Household Surveys: Its Nature and Consequences" (with Wallace K.C. Mok and James X. Sullivan), Harris School Working Paper #09.03, July 2009 (revised).
• "Economic Well-Being and Time Use" (with James X. Sullivan), June 22, 2009.
• "Using Two-Sample Methods to Correct for Reporting Bias in Surveys" (with James X. Sullivan), Harris School Working Paper #09.02, December 2008.
• "Reporting Bias in Studies of the Food Stamp Program," (with James X. Sullivan) Harris School Working Paper #08.01, January 2008.
• "Consumption and Income Poverty for those 65 and Over," Harris School Working Paper #07.21, September 2007
• "Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Unemployment Insurance from New York State" (with Wallace K. C. Mok), Harris School Working Paper #07.08, January 2007.
• "Consumption, Income, and Material Well-Being after Welfare Reform" (with James X. Sullivan), National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, January 2006.
• "Structural Labor Supply Models when Budget Constraints are Nonlinear" (with Bradley T. Heim), Working Paper, October 2000, Revised June 2003. (Paper)
• "Do the Poor Move to Receive Higher Welfare Benefits?", Working Paper, July 1998, last revised September 2000. (Paper)
• "Semiparametric Estimation of Hazard Models," Working Paper, July 1986, last revised September 1995. (Paper)

Selected Published Papers

• “Consumption and Income Poverty Over the Business Cycle,” (with James X. Sullivan), Research in Labor Economics 32, 2011, 51-81.
• “Viewpoint: Further Results on Measuring the Well-Being of the Poor using Income and Consumption,” (with James X. Sullivan). Canadian Journal of Economics 44 (1) February 2011, 52-87
• "Identifying the Disadvantaged: Official Poverty, Consumption Poverty, and the New Supplemental Poverty Measure," (with James X. Sullivan). Journal of Economic Perspectives Summer 2012, 111-136.
• "The Effects of the EITC and Recent Reforms," in Tax Policy and the Economy 24, edited by Jeffrey Brown, M.I.T. Press, 2010, 153-180. (Paper)
• "Changes in the Consumption, Income, and Well-Being of Single Mother Headed Families," (with James X. Sullivan) American Economic Review 98(5) December 2008, 2221-41.
• "A Note on 'The Longitudinal Structure of Earnings Losses among Work-Limited Disabled Workers'" (with Wallace K. C. Mok, Kerwin Kofi Charles, and Alexandra C. Achen). Journal of Human Resources 43(3): Summer 2008, 721-728. (Paper)
• "The U.S. Earned Income Tax Credit: Its Effects and Possible Reforms," Swedish Economic Policy Review 14(2) Fall 2007, 55-80. (View Working Paper)
• "Unemployment Insurance Tax Burdens and Benefits: Funding Family Leave and Reforming the Payroll Tax" (with Patricia M. Anderson), National Tax Journal 59 (March 2006), 77-95. (Paper available from EBSCOHOST through the University of Chicago Libraries)
• "The Effects of Welfare and Tax Reform: The Material Well-Being of Single Mothers in the 1980s and 1990s" (with James X. Sullivan), Journal of Public Economics 88, 2004, 1387-1420. (Paper available through Elsevier - ScienceDirect.com)
• "Work Costs and Nonconvex Preferences in the Estimation of Labor Supply Models" (with Bradley T. Heim), Journal of Public Economics 88, 2004, 2323-2338. (Paper available through Elsevier - ScienceDirect.com)
• "Measuring the Well-Being of the Poor Using Income and Consumption" (with James X. Sullivan), Journal of Human Resources 38 Supplement, 2003, 1180-1220. (Paper)
• "Labor Supply at the Extensive and Intensive Margins: The EITC, Welfare and Hours Worked" American Economic Review, 92, May 2002, 373-379. (Paper available through JSTOR - www.jstor.org)
• "Welfare, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Labor Supply of Single Mothers" (with Dan T. Rosenbaum), Quarterly Journal of Economics CXVI, August 2001, 1063-1114. (Paper)
• "The Effects of the Unemployment Insurance Payroll Tax on Wages, Employment, Claims and Denials," (with Patricia M. Anderson), Journal of Public Economics 78, October 2000, 81-106. (Paper available through Elsevier - ScienceDirect.com)
• "Unemployment Insurance Takeup Rates and the After-Tax Value of Benefits," (with Patricia M. Anderson), Quarterly Journal of Economics, CXII, August 1997, 913-938. (Paper available through JSTOR - www.jstor.org)
• "Workers' Compensation and Injury Duration: Evidence from a Natural Experiment" (with W. Kip Viscusi and David Durbin) American Economic Review,, 85, June 1995, 322-340. (Paper available through JSTOR - www.jstor.org)
• "Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Spells" Econometrica, 58, July 1990, 757-782. (Paper available through JSTOR - www.jstor.org)

Media and Testimony

• "Bruce Meyer on the middle Class, Povery, and Inequality," (Library of Economics and Liberty, October 3, 2011). Bruce Meyer discusses underreporting of government benefits.
• "Counting Stimulus Jobs Is No Easy Task," (National Public Radio, March 27, 2009). Bruce Meyer comments on the difficulty of counting jobs saved or created by the federal stimulus package.
• "Measuring American Poverty" (PDF), Statement of Bruce D. Meyer, Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support of the House Committee on Ways and Means, July 17, 2008.

Books

• Strategies for Improving Economic Mobility of Workers: Bridging Research and Practice, Maude Toussaint-Comeau and Bruce D. Meyer (editors), W. E. Upjohn Institute, 2009.
• Making Work Pay: The Earned Income Tax Credit and Its Impact on America's Families, Bruce D. Meyer and Douglas Holtz-Eakin (editors), Russell Sage Foundation, 2002.

Teaching

• Public Economics PPHA 440/ECON 363 (syllabus)
• Public Finance and Public Policy 2 PPHA 34230 (syllabus)