Effects of financial insecurity on social interactions

Little is known about the effects of financial insecurity on social interactions despite consistently observed income effects on social capital and a growing recognition of the potential importance of income volatility in affecting hardships, distress, and other aspects of well-being. We use data on women participating in a longitudinal study in the U.S. to investigate the effects of financial insecurity measured along two dimensions (safety nets and hardships) on two types of social interactions (participating in community organizations and having close friends). In auxiliary analyses we explore the potential mediating effects of mental health. We find that safety nets in the form of bank accounts, credit cards, and ability to borrow money increase both participation in organizations and friendships, whereas material hardships decrease friendships but increase participation in organizations. We find no evidence that mental health, as we have measured it, mediates the observed effects of financial insecurity on social interactions, although it has strong and negative independent associations with having close friends.     

Effects of Welfare Reform on Education Acquisition of Adult Women

Education beyond traditional ages for schooling is an important source of human capital acquisition among adult women. Welfare reform, which began in the early 1990s and culminated in the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996, promoted work rather than education acquisition for this group. Exploiting variation in welfare reform across states and over time and using relevant comparison groups, we undertake a comprehensive study of the effects of welfare reform on adult women’s education acquisition. We first estimate effects of welfare reform on high school drop-out of teenage girls, both to improve upon past research on this issue and to explore compositional changes that may be relevant for our primary analyses of the effects of welfare reform on education acquisition among adult women. We find that welfare reform significantly reduced the probability that teens from disadvantaged families dropped out of high school, by about 15%. We then estimate the effects of welfare reform on adult women's school enrollment and conduct numerous specification checks, investigate compositional selection and policy endogeneity, explore lagged effects, stratify by TANF work incentives and education policies, consider alternative comparison groups, and explore the mediating role of work. We find robust and convincing evidence that welfare reform significantly decreased the probability of college enrollment among adult women at risk of welfare receipt, by at least 20%. It also appears to have decreased the probability of high school enrollment among this group, on the same order of magnitude. Future research is needed to determine the extent to which this behavioral change translates to future economic outcomes.     

Evaluation of Smoking Cessation Classes for the Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,and Transgender Community

ABSTRACT

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a smoking cessation course tailored to meet the needs of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Of the 44 individuals who participated, 36 were in attendance in the final class, and 88.9% of those had successfully quit smoking. The study found an increase in importance to having cessation classes in gay-identified contexts, high ratings of the cultural appropriateness of the course content, and decreasing anxiety across the classes. Participants’ assessment of their health shifted differentially based on whether they were successful at quitting.     

Risk Analysis for Invasive Species: General Framework and Research Needs

A joint workshop was convened by the Society for Risk Analysis Ecological Risk Assessment Specialty Group and the Ecological Society of America Theoretical Ecology Section to provide independent scientific input into the formulation of methods and processes for risk assessment of invasive species. In breakout sessions on (1) the effects of invasive species on human health, (2) effects on plants and animals, (3) risk analysis issues and research needs related to entry and establishment of invasive species, and (4) risk analysis issues and research needs related to the spread and impacts of invasive species, workshop participants discussed an overall approach to risk assessment for invasive species. Workshop participants agreed on the need for empirical research on areas in which data are lacking, including potential invasive species, native species and habitats that may be impacted by invasive species, important biological processes and phenomena such as dispersal, and pathways of entry and spread for invasive species. Participants agreed that theoretical ecology can inform the process of risk assessment for invasive species by providing guidelines and conceptual models, and can contribute to improved decision making by providing a firm biological basis for risk assessments.     

A note on the history of regression

The first notion of statistical regression is usually attributed to Francis Galton. Recent work in a special field of applied statistics has brought to light the work of the neglected pioneer R. J. Adcock. Despite errors of execution, he deserves remembering in the history of our science. He came close to inventing linear regression; he also saw the need for specifying criteria for optimal estimation of parameters, and, with a little clearer understanding, he might have become the first recorded maximizer of likelihood.     

Experimental design and systematic monitoring

David Finney has enjoyed a long and distinguished career, both as an academic statistician and in various areas of agricultural research and medical statistics. He tells Helen Joyce about his career, and shares his views on the state of statistics today.     

New Fathers' Labor Supply: Does Child Health Matter?*

Objective. We estimate the effect of poor child health on the labor supply of fathers post‐welfare reform, using a national sample of mostly unwed parents and their children—a group at high risk of living in poverty. Method. We control for a rich set of covariates, include state fixed effects, and test for the endogeneity of child health by estimating bivariate probit models. Results. We find that having a young child in poor health reduces the father's probability of being employed by four percentage points. The effect appears to be strongest among fathers who cohabit with, but are not married to, the child's mother. Conclusion. The results suggest a potential source by which young children with serious health problems may receive lower levels of health investment than their healthier peers—their fathers' reduced likelihood of being employed.     

Plural forms versus franchise and company-owned systems: A DEA approach of hotel chain performance

Plural form tends to be the most popular organization form in retail and service networks compared to purely franchised or purely company-owned systems. In the first part, this paper exposes the evolution of researchers’ state of mind from the way of thinking which considers franchising and ownership as substitutable organizational forms to theories which analyze the utilization of both franchise and company arrangements. The paper describes the main attempts to explain theoretically the superiority of plural forms. In the second part, the paper discusses the hypothesis which says that there is a relationship between the organizational form of the chain and its efficiency score. It is demonstrated through the application of a data envelopment analysis method on French hotel chains that plural form networks are in average more efficient than strictly franchised and wholly owned chains. The Kruskal–Wallis test which is a distribution-free rank-order statistic is used to statistically verify this relationship. The result does not permit the rejection of the null hypothesis regarding whether an organizational form is more efficient than another one. Hence, this paper opens prospects for researches aiming at testing the organizational form effect on different samples and with other methods.     

The roles of social housing providers in creating ‘integrated’ communities

ABSTRACT

Cohesion and integration agendas in Britain can be characterised by localisation of ‘race relations’ responsibilities and the importance of local institutions in shaping neighbourhoods has been acknowledged. However, little is understood about the roles of housing providers in integration initiatives. Indeed, research on housing and race has experienced a lull in the 2000s. Thus, this paper aims to examine how social housing providers negotiate their positions and are complicit in constructing a certain vision of community. It draws on interviews from the ESRC Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE)’s work in the ethnically diverse neighbourhoods of Cheetham Hill (Manchester), Newham (London), Butetown (Cardiff) and Pollokshields and Govanhill (Glasgow). The paper makes three arguments: first, that race and ethnicity as facets of ‘integration’ have been subsumed into broader agendas, yet remain implicit in community building; second, that housing organisation practices are often detached from local meanings of community and prioritise exclusionary activities focusing on behaviour change and, third, that the roles of housing organisations in constructing ‘integrated’ communities are highly variable and localised, influenced by the history and contemporary dynamics of place.