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Welfare reform banned newly arrived immigrants who came to the US after 1996 from receiving federally funded benefits for five years. One assessment of the success of the five-year ban is the effect it has on behaviors that determine economic success and the likelihood of becoming a public charge. In this chapter, we investigate the effect of the five-year ban on the employment, hours of work, and wages of low-income women. Our results indicate that welfare reform in general caused a significant increase in the employment of low-educated, unmarried mothers regardless of citizenship. Among non-citizens, welfare reform was associated with a 10 percentage point (26%) increase in employment, a two-hour (15%) increase in hours worked per week, and a 10 percent decrease in wages. Surprisingly, we find little evidence that the five-year ban had any additional effect on the employment, hours of work, and wages of low-educated and unmarried, non-citizen mothers.

Kevin Fiscella notes that, to date, progress in eliminating racial disparities has been slow. He calls for a comprehensive approach that goes beyond the narrow focus of current policy. Given the association between education and health, he advocates greater investments in early childhood education. In light of its broad geographic and demographic reach and role in preventing or delaying the onset of chronic disease, he also proposes to strengthen the delivery of primary care through the network of Federally Qualified Community Health Centers (FQHCs).

Medical technology broadly defined to include all aspects of the process of treating disease (e.g., pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and surgical procedures) is profoundly important for individual health and, consequently, also for general welfare. Advances in medical technology hold out the prospect of both improved population health and increased general welfare. However, because of the nature and extensive regulation of the markets for health care goods and services, the development and application of medical technologies differs fundamentally from nonmedical technological advances. In this volume of the series of Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research, entitled The Economics of Medical Technology, we present several papers that provide theoretical and empirical evidence about the market for medical technology.