Prof. Robert Moffitt, the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins, has just been awarded the prestigious Irene B. Taeuber Award at this year’s Population Association of America (PAA) annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

This honor recognizes his “unusually original or important contribution to the scientific study of population or for an accumulated record of exceptionally sound and innovative research.”

Professor Moffitt’s research has made substantial and profound contributions to understanding the consequences of U.S. social insurance programs for the well-being of the poor and disadvantaged and for their fertility, household formation, food insecurity, and labor supply decisions. He found that the very poorest Americans were being left behind by welfare reforms, especially those unable to work. Moffitt’s studies also found that the Food Stamp program’s labor supply effects were very small; that for Medicaid, labor supply disincentives were strongly correlated with medical need; and that the Social Security Disability Insurance Program to reduce the tax rate on earnings had the same ambiguous effects on labor supply as for other welfare programs. For this accumulated body of work Robert Moffit is awarded the Irene B. Taeuber Award.