Punitive welfare reform and claimant mental health: The impact of benefit sanctions on anxiety and depression

Internationally, policymakers assume that sanctioning claimants of unemployment benefits will engender both improved employment outcomes and wider positive effects. A growing evidence‐base challenges these expectations, though additional insight is needed from large‐scale longitudinal research. This article contributes by conducting a quantitative investigation into the mental health impacts of benefit sanctions. To do so, it focuses on a recent period in UK sanctions policy in which rates of sanctions varied markedly and their length was substantially increased. Using quarterly panel data for local authorities in England (Q3 2010–Q4 2014) and fixed effects models that control for important confounders, the analysis provides robust evidence that Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) sanctions lead to increases in self‐reported anxiety and depression. Evidence of this adverse impact is particularly clear following the increase in the length of sanctions in October 2012. The results have important implications for contemporary social security policy, which is underpinned by a similarly punitive sanctions regime. Whilst additional individual‐level research is needed to fully consider the causal relationships in operation, the findings support a precautionary approach that should seek to minimise the harm associated with sanctions. This implies taking steps to reduce both the severity and frequency of applied sanctions.     

Shutt up: bubonic plague and quarantine in early modern England

The outbreak of bubonic plague that struck London and Westminster in 1636 provoked the usual frenzied response to epidemics, including popular flight and government-mandated quarantine. The government asserted that plague control measures were acts of public health for the benefit of all. However, contrary to this government narrative of disease prevention there was a popular account that portrayed quarantine and isolation as personal punishment rather than prudent policy. In examining the 1636 outbreak on the parish as well as the individual level, reasons for this inconsistency between official and unofficial perspectives emerge. Quarantine and its effects were not classless, and its implementation was not always strictly in the name of public health. Government application of quarantine was remarkably effective, but it could never be uncontroversial both because of circumstances and because of misuse. The flight of the wealthiest from London and Westminster left only the more socially vulnerable to be quarantined. Though plague policy was financially sensitive to the poorest, it was costly to the middling sort. Another cause of controversy was the government's use of quarantine as a punishment to control individuals found breaking other laws. Though not widely publicized, popular narratives continually included grievances about the cruelty and inequity of quarantine and the militaristic nature of its implementation. Despite these objections, quarantine remained a staple of the government response to plague outbreaks throughout the seventeenth century.     

Using performance standards to evaluate social programs with incomplete outcome data. General issues and application to a higher education block grant program

The idea of program evaluation is both simple and appealing. Program outcomes are measured and compared to some minimum performance standard or threshold. In practice, however, evaluation is difficult. Two fundamental problems of outcome measurement must be addressed. The first, which we call the problem of auxiliary outcomes, is that we do not observe outcome of interest. The second, which we call the problem of counterfactual outcomes, is that we do not observe the threshold standard. This article examines how performance standard should be set and applied in the face of these problems in measuring outcomes. The central message is that the proper way to implement standards varies with the prior information an evaluator can credibly bring to bear to compensate for incomplete outcome data. By combining available data with credible assumptions on treatments and outcomes, the performance of a program may be deemed acceptable, unacceptable, or indeterminate.     

Education and Occupations: Reexamining the Conventional Wisdom About Later First Births Among American Mothers

Using biannual Current Population Survey data, this paper reexamines the question of how education and occupations led to the postponement of first births among American mothers in the 1970s through 1990s. Analytical methods in earlier investigations predispose researchers to favor an investment model of education's effects, but an alternative method used in this analysis suggests that college attainment's major effect on age at first birth is primarily the result of years spent childless in college. Mothers-to-be in higher prestige occupations did delay motherhood longer than did those in other occupations. This study extends earlier research by examining whether or not conclusions drawn about all women (with and without children) apply to the majority of women—those who become mothers. The expansion of higher education, higher prestige occupations, and their impact on work and family decisions are discussed.     

A stochastic model of industrial fluctuations: An international comparison

This paper presents a stochastic model of production fluctuations. It compares the distributions of observed duration times for expansionary and contractionary phases with those which would be expected if production fluctuations were generated by a random process. From an analysis of the post World War II production time series of seven developed countries, it was concluded that the only ‘cycles’ in industrial activity are ‘Monte Carlo cycles’.     

Beauty Is a Beast,Frog Is a Prince: Assortative Matching with Nontransferabilities

We present sufficient conditions for monotone matching in environments where utility is not fully transferable between partners. These conditions involve not only complementarity in types of the total payoff to a match, as in the transferable utility case, but also monotonicity in type of the degree of transferability between partners. We apply our conditions to study some models of risk sharing and incentive problems, deriving new results for predicted matching patterns in those contexts.     

A QUARTET OF SEMIGROUPS FOR MODEL SPECIFICATION,ROBUSTNESS, PRICES OF RISK,AND MODEL DETECTION

A representative agent fears that his model, a continuous time Markov process with jump and diffusion components, is misspecified and therefore uses robust control theory to make decisions. Under the decision maker's approximating model, cautious behavior puts adjustments for model misspecification into market prices for risk factors. We use a statistical theory of detection to quantify how much model misspecification the decision maker should fear, given his historical data record. A semigroup is a collection of objects connected by something like the law of iterated expectations. The law of iterated expectations defines the semigroup for a Markov process, while similar laws define other semigroups. Related semigroups describe (1) an approximating model; (2) a model misspecification adjustment to the continuation value in the decision maker's Bellman equation; (3) asset prices; and (4) the behavior of the model detection statistics that we use to calibrate how much robustness the decision maker prefers. Semigroups 2, 3, and 4 establish a tight link between the market price of uncertainty and a bound on the error in statistically discriminating between an approximating and a worst case model. (JEL: C00, D51, D81, E1, G12)     

Covering the Dawsons: Racial Variation in Newspaper Framing of Urban Crime

This article uses newspaper coverage of a case from Baltimore, Maryland, to explore racial variation in the rhetorical framing of urban crime. In October 2002, seven members of the Dawson family were murdered in a house fire. The murders became an expression of Baltimore’s character and the lives of its residents. After analyzing 206 newspaper articles about the case, we find stark differences in the way the case, its causes, and its consequences are presented to readers. Newspapers with primarily white audiences—both “mainstream” and “alternative” papers—present the case as a horrific, singular instance, placing responsibility on the perpetrator. In contrast, articles in African American newspapers offer a complex web of explanation, calling attention to the structural inequalities and disparate access to state resources. Whereas white newspaper portray the Dawson family as martyrs in the drug war, black newspapers position the family as part of a wider of community of African Americans who are victims of slack policing, racial discrimination, and negligent social policy. We argue that these rhetorical differences are more than cosmetic. Rather, they provide a framework for better understanding the relationship between the press and policy makers. Differences in coverage of the case also contribute to our understanding of why blacks and whites have fundamentally different understandings of race in the United States.