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AbstractIn this paper, we estimate the impact on employment of the 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion, which increased the size of the benefit, made it fully refundable, and allowed for monthly receipt. We harness exogenous variation in monthly CTC eligibility by comparing employment among caregivers to that of childless workers before and after monthly payments commenced on July 15, 2021, using event study and difference‐in‐differences frameworks. Our preferred estimates suggest that monthly CTC payments were, at most, associated with a relatively small decline in employment among caregivers. Our primary difference‐in‐differences estimates indicate a statistically nonsignificant decline in employment of approximately 344,000 to 495,000 caregivers relative to childless adults. Our treatment intensity estimates suggest an increase in employment among caregivers with two or more children relative to those with one child. Our findings contribute to the cost‐benefit calculus of the current debate over whether to establish a permanent fully refundable monthly CTC.

We estimate the causal effects of infants' exposure to opioids in utero on their health at birth and on the likelihood that their parents will be the subjects of subsequent reports to child protective services. We use administrative data on 259,723 infants born to 176,224 mothers enrolled in Medicaid between 2010 and 2019. Results suggest that an infant experiencing withdrawal symptoms after birth or needing admission to intensive care is strongly associated with prenatal opioid exposure, and that this effect is concentrated among those whose mothers used illicit opioids or were undergoing medication-assisted opioid treatments in their first and third trimesters. Prenatal opioid exposure is also associated with referrals of parents to child protective services and with being born preterm, low birthweight, or small for gestational age. We find smaller effects among infants exposed to prescription opioids, but these effects are not trivial, supporting current recommendations to balance the potential for infant adverse effects with the benefits of pain management during pregnancy.