Bio

 
Lucie Schmidt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at
Williams College. Professor Schmidt's research to date has concentrated
on two primary areas: 1) the economics of marriage and fertility
decisions, and 2) examining costs and benefits of various social insurance
programs. Her work in the area of marriage and fertility decisions
includes a dynamic search model of the marriage market that explains
nonmarital childbearing among college-educated women. In subsequent work
she has analyzed the effects of heterogeneous risk preferences and
imperfect fertility control on marriage and fertility timing, and has also
examined the effects of state-level legislation mandating insurance
coverage of infertility treatment. Her work on social insurance programs
has included an examination of whether efforts to reform the Aid to
Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program led to an increase in
caseloads for another means-tested program, Supplemental Security Income
(SSI); a paper providing evidence on how labor markets for low-skill women
are affected by various changes to social welfare programs, including AFDC
and the Earned Income Tax Credit; and an analysis of the costs and the
benefits of a marginal increase in Disability Insurance program
generosity. She has also written on the relationship between gender,
marriage, and asset accumulation in the United States, and is currently
examining the effects of demographic changes on private saving. She
received her Ph.D. (2003) and M.A. (1997) degrees in Economics from the
University of Michigan, and received an A.B. (1992) in Government from
Smith College.