Center for Poverty Research (CPR) Director Marianne Page and Faculty Affiliate Marianne Bitler will present their research this month at the Institute for Research on Poverty’s (IRP) annual summer research workshop.  Each June the workshop brings together poverty scholars at all stages in their careers to present their research on low-income populations.

The workshop will take place June 18-21, 2018 and covers thematic areas including health, the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP), the effects of recessions, the effects of low-wage labor markets, the impact of social programs and others.

Marianne Page, a professor of Economics at UC Davis, will present her work on the impact of early life exposure to Medicaid on health across generations. Her working paper, co-authored by Chloe N. East, Sarah Miller, and Laura R. Wherry, looks at in-utero exposure to Medicaid and shows that later offspring benefit in the form of higher average birth weight and decreased incidence of very low birth weight. This research suggests that the return on investment in this health program is substantially larger when the effect beyond treated cohorts is taken into account.

Marianne Bitler, also a professor in the Economics department, will discuss her research on the long-run effects of food assistance and early human capital programs. Her work covers labor economics and health economics with an emphasis on the impact of government safety net programs such as SNAP on disadvantaged groups.

IRP is a non-partisan research institution that aims to inform policies and programs to address the effects of poverty and inequality in the United States, with programs grounded in the collaboration of an extensive network of researchers. The summer research workshop is IRP’s signature event, designed to help build a community of researchers committed to studying the dynamics of low-income populations. The event will be held in Madison, Wisconsin.