Robert A. Moffitt
Johns Hopkins University
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Primary Section: 53, Social and Political Sciences Secondary Section: 54, Economic Sciences Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2019)
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Biosketch
Robert Moffitt obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from Brown University in 1975. He has been on the faculty of Rutgers University, Brown University, and Johns Hopkins University, where he is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Economics with a joint appointment in the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Past President of the Population Association of America and current President of the Society of Labor Economists. He has served as Chief Editor of the American Economic Review, Coeditor of the Review of Economics and Statistics, Chief Editor of the Journal of Human Resources, and as Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Panel to Evaluate Welfare Reform.
Research Interests
Robert Moffitt's research interests are in the areas of labor and population economics and applied microeconometrics, with a special focus on the economics of issues relating to the low-income population in the U.S. A large portion of his research has focused on welfare reform, poverty, and social policy in general. In labor economics, his research has concerned the labor supply decisions of single mothers and its response to the U.S. welfare system. His research on the welfare system has covered the AFDC, Food Stamp, and Medicaid programs. He has also published research on the labor supply and family structure effects of social insurance programs, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance, as well as of the U.S. income tax system. Other topics of his research have concerned trends in income volatility in the U.S. labor market and trends in the labor force attachment of men and women. Part of his research has also focused on population economics and economic demography, where he has estimated economic models of marriage, cohabitation, female headship, and fertility. His methodological research has concerned selection bias and limited-dependent variable models, nonlinear budget constraints, panel data, attrition, duration models, and causal modeling and program evaluation.
