Laurel Colleen Sariscsany

Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of Nebraska at Omaha

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About Laurel

Sariscsany’s work focuses on financial wellbeing, with special interests in state fiscal policy and disadvantaged populations. Her research has explored a number of topics including: the Emergency Rental Assistance Program in Nebraska, the Child Tax Credit, the gender and racial wealth gap in the US, formal and informal child support, the welfare state in the US, and the history of a 1919 lynching and riot in Omaha, NE.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

Nebraska LB 71: Change Requirements for Child Care Reimbursement Rates

Testimony, January 2025

In the News

Research discussed by Sara Gentzler, in "Public School Advocates Among Those With Objections to Ricketts’ COVID Relief Spending Plan," The Omaha World-Herald, January 26, 2022.

Quoted by Paul Hammel in "Some Question $500 Million Plan to Resurrect Irrigation Canal on South Platte," The Nebraska Examiner, January 26, 2022.

Publications

"The Benefits and Costs of a Child Allowance" (with Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, Christopher Wimer, Irwin Garfinkel, Sophie Collyer, Robert P. Hartley, and Buyi Wang). Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis 13, no. 3 (2022): 335-362.

Conducts a benefit-cost analysis of a child allowance program, aiming to assess the impact of increasing household income by $1,000 through cash or near-cash transfers. Evaluates three child allowance proposals and determines that expanding the Child Tax Credit into a more generous, refundable child allowance would be a highly cost-effective policy.