The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 included $88 billion of aid to state governments administered through the Medicaid reimbursement process. We examine the effect of these transfers on states' employment. Because state fiscal relief outlays are endogenous to a state's economic environment, OLS results are biased downward. We address this problem by using a state's pre-recession Medicaid spending level to instrument for ARRA state fiscal relief. In our preferred specification, a state's receipt of a marginal $100,000 in Medicaid outlays results in an additional 3.8 job-years, 3.2 of which are outside the government, health, and education sectors. (JEL H75, I18, I38, R23)

In this note, we seek to establish the role of intergenerational wealth transmission by using the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which contains extensive information about household balance sheets, intergenerational transfers made and received, and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of respondents.

This survey and report were prepared by the Consumer and Community Development Research Section of the Federal Reserve Board's Division of Consumer and Community Affairs (DCCA). DCCA directs consumer-and community-related functions performed by the Board, including conducting research on financial services policies and practices and their implications for consumer financial stability, community development, and neighborhood stabilization.