Financial Penalties Under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program: Policy Discourse and Strategies for Reform

Many families did not leave welfare of their own accord but instead were forced off, sanctioned, for failure to conform to new, strict requirements (Bloom & Winstead, 2002). Studies of leavers indicate that many of these leavers are among the families that do not receive needed health insurance, food stamps, and child care assistance for which they remain eligible (Loprest, 2001; Zedlewski & Gruber, 2001). Sanctioned families are less likely to do well after leaving welfare compared to other leavers (Goldberg & Schott, 2000). As part of TANF reauthorization, Congress should prohibit states from sanctioning if they have not met certain requirements: conducted an assessment, made accommodations for people with physical/mental impairments or other barriers, and instituted strong pre-sanction and post-sanction procedures.     

Econometric reviews

New approaches to Modeling, Specification Selection and Econometric Inference, edited by W. A. Barnett and A. R. Gallant.     

Deterrence, expected cost, uncertainty and voting: Experimental evidence

We conduct laboratory experiments to investigate the effects of deterrence mechanisms under controlled conditions. The effect of the expected cost of punishment of an individual’s decision to engage in a proscribed activity and the effect of uncertainty on an individual’s decision to commit a violation are very difficult to isolate in field data. We use a roadway speeding framing and find that (a) individuals respond considerably to increases in the expected cost of speeding, (b) uncertainty about the enforcement regime yields a significant reduction in violations committed, and (c) people are much more likely to speed when the punishment regime for which they voted is implemented. Our results have important implications for a behavioral theory of deterrence under uncertainty.     

Strike Lengths: Correcting for Prestrike Announcements and the Ratio of Bargaining Size to Firm Size

Anticipating the duration of a labor strike can be vital for both sides of the dispute, as well as outside observers. The methods of a pair of studies using Canadian data are surveyed to analyze labor strikes in the United States from 1992 to 2008. Corrections are made for strikes with predetermined lengths (“one-day” strikes and the like), whose durations are more a function of the prior announcements than of other factors, such as number of employees striking and macroeconomic conditions. Strikes are found to be generally shorter when the striking unit represents a larger portion of the firm’s total workers, a proxy for its bargaining power. This ratio provides a better understanding of the strike dynamics (including expected length) than do sheer bargaining unit size or sheer firm size.     

Altruism and Market-Like Behavior: An Analysis of Willingness to Pay for Recycled Paper Products

The contrast between self-interested behavior guided by rational choice and altruistic behavior guided by normative considerations is a central theme in the social sciences. This study suggests that market and market-like behavior, the context where self-interest is expected to dominate, is in fact often motivated by altruism. This argument is tested by examining a willingness to pay measure, a surrogate for the market that is finding substantial use in analyses of public policy. In particular, the ability of the Schwartz model of altruism to explain willingness to pay for recycled products is examined. Findings indicate that even as the Schwartz model has explained many purely altruistic behaviors, it also can explain self-reported willingness to pay. While economists often have noted the importance of rational choice in even the most intimate of human decisions, this study notes the importance of normative altruism in even the most calculated.     

A variable selection approach to monotonic regression with Bernstein polynomials

One of the standard problems in statistics consists of determining the relationship between a response variable and a single predictor variable through a regression function. Background scientific knowledge is often available that suggests that the regression function should have a certain shape (e.g. monotonically increasing or concave) but not necessarily a specific parametric form. Bernstein polynomials have been used to impose certain shape restrictions on regression functions. The Bernstein polynomials are known to provide a smooth estimate over equidistant knots. Bernstein polynomials are used in this paper due to their ease of implementation, continuous differentiability, and theoretical properties. In this work, we demonstrate a connection between the monotonic regression problem and the variable selection problem in the linear model. We develop a Bayesian procedure for fitting the monotonic regression model by adapting currently available variable selection procedures. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method through simulations and the analysis of real data.     

The Beginnings of Child Welfare Research in the United States

The author reviews the beginnings of child welfare research in the United States with an emphasis on the contributions of several outstanding individuals as well as the conflict between hereditarian and reformist values and attitudes. Both hereditarian and reformist values and attitudes had tremendous influence on the development of child welfare research as well as the helping professions.     

Reviews

R. H. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (1975), 256 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, £6.50).

Colin Platt, The English Medieval Town (1976), 219 (Seeker and Warburg, £6.00).

James Axtell, The School Upon A Hill. Education and Society In Colonial New England (1974), xxi+298 (Yale University Press, New Haven, £7.50).

Kenneth A. Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England. An Enquiry Into The Social Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West (1974), 164 (W. W. Norton and Co., New‐York, $6.95).

Jean‐Claude Perrot, Genèse d'une ville moderns. Caen au XVIII'siècle (1975), 2 vols, 1157 (Mouton: Paris, the Hague, 250 fr.).

Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh and E. P. Thompson (eds.), Albion's Fatal Tree (1975), 344+15 illustrations (Allen Lane, £7.50).

E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters (1975), 300+17 illustrations (Allen Lane, £6.50).

Arthur E. Imhof (ed.), Historische Demographie als Sozialgeschichte. Giessen und Umgebung (1975), 2 vols, 626+495 (Historische Kommission für Hessen, Darmstadt und Marburg, DM 48).

Historical Demography as Social History. Giessen and Surrounding District.¹

Alan Forrest, Society and Politics in Revolutionary Bordeaux (1975), xi+300 (Oxford University Press, £8.00).

Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine, Psychiatry for the Poor (1974), 264 (Dawsons of Pall Mall, £4.50, paperback £1.50).

Vieda Skultans, Madness and Morals. Ideas on Insanity in the Nineteenth Century (197 5), xv+260 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, £5.50).

Thomas S. Szasz, The Age of Madness, The History of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization Presented in Selected Texts (1973), xxi+372 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, £5.95).

Harald Runblom and Hans Norman (eds.), From Sweden to America: a History of the Migration (1976), 391 (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, and University of Uppsala).

Charlotte Erickson (ed.), Emigration from Europe 1815–1914: Select Documents (1976), 320 (A. and C. Black, £6.50).

T. J. Nossiter, Influence, Opinion and Political Idioms in Reformed England: Case Studies from the North‐East, 1832–1874 (1975), xii+255 (Harvester, £7.50).

Robert J. Bezucha, The Lyon Uprising of 1834: Social and Political Conflict in the Early July Monarchy (1974), xviii+271 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, £6.25).

Lawrence Schofer, The Formation of a Modern Labour Force. Upper Silesia, 1865–1914 (1975), xvi+213 (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, £7.80).

Léon Poliakov, The History of Anti‐Semitism. Volume III. From Voltaire to Wagner (1975), x+582 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, no price given).

Reinhard Rürup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus. Studien zur ‘Judenfrage’ der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (1975), 208 (Vandenhoeck and Rupprecht, Göttingen, paperback DM 28).

Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany. Religion, Politics and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870–1914 (1975), 359 (Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, £10.70).

Richard S. Levy, The Downfall of the Anti‐Semitic Political Parties in Imperial Germany (1975), 335 (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, no price given).

Andrew G. Whiteside, The Socialism of Fools. Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Austrian Pan‐Germanism (1975), x+404 (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, £15.75).

Paul Thompson, The Edwardians: the remaking of British society (1975), xi+382 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £10.00).

Marc Fried, The World of the Urban Working Class (1975), x+410 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, £6.50).

Philip Gabriel Eidelberg, The Great Rumanian Peasant Revolt of 1907 (1974), xii+260 (E. J. Brill, Leiden, 64 guilders).

Peter H. Mcrkl, Political Violence under the Swastika: 581 Early Nazis (1975), xiv+735 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, $17.50, paper $6.30).     

A Perspective on Dioxin Emissions from Municipal Solid Waste Incinerators

This paper discusses the following key issues concerning human exposure to dioxins and furans emitted from typical, modern MSW incinerators: (1) Are MSW incinerators the major source of PCDD/PCDF input into the environment? (2) Are environmental concentrations around MSW incinerators substantially elevated relative to background levels? And (3) are MSW incinerators the major source of human exposure to PCDDs and PCDFs? Current scientific evidence indicates that (1) combustion sources in general (including steel mills, copper smelting plants, motor vehicles, pulp and paper mills, and MSW incinerators) are major sources of PCDD/PCDF input in the environment; (2) environmental concentrations of PCDDs and PCDFs around operating MSW incinerators are not substantially elevated; and (3) 99% of human exposure to PCDDs and PCDFs is from background contamination, even for individuals living near a modern MSW incinerator.     

SexualPrejudice and Gender: Do Heterosexuals' Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men Differ?

This article explores the question of whether and how heterosexuals' attitudes toward lesbians differ from their attitudes toward gay men. Data from a 1997 national survey are presented to show that heterosexual women generally hold similar attitudes toward gay men and lesbians, whereas heterosexual men are more likely to make distinctions according to gender. Moreover, men's attitudes toward lesbians are susceptible to situational manipulations. Nevertheless, the underlying unity of attitudes toward lesbians and gay men is demonstrated by the fact that they are highly correlated for both heterosexual men and women. It is suggested that heterosexuals' attitudes toward gay people are organized both in terms of minority group politics and personal sexual and gender identity and that attitudes toward lesbians are most likelyto be differentiated from attitudes toward gay men in the latter realm.