Racial disparity in Minnesota's child protection system

Minnesota has been recognized by several studies as a state with a significant amount of racial disparity in its child protection system. This study, using 2001 data from Minnesota's Social Services Information Service, was conducted to determine at which of the six decision points in Minnesota's child welfare system racial disparities are statistically significant. The authors employ a nested model to examine a child's journey through the Minnesota child protection system. Using binary logistic regression, they are able to determine the odds that a child belonging to a particular racial or ethnic group would progress to the next decision point.     

Challenges and dilemmas facing community development corporations in the United States

In the United States, Community Development Corporations (CDCs)are one of the prime vehicles for delivering housing to low-incomehouseholds. Beyond the difficulties involved with securing theneeded resources to develop, rehabilitate and manage housing,CDCs are facing a series of challenges and dilemmas that couldthreaten their viability. This article discusses some of thekey challenges and dilemmas facing CDCs and offers a numberof suggestions for how they might be best confronted.     

Why Reduced-Form Regression Models of Health Effects Versus Exposures Should Not Replace QRA: Livestock Production and Infant Mortality as an Example

Do pollution emissions from livestock operations increase infant mortality rate (IMR)? A recent regression analysis of changes in IMR against changes in aggregate “animal units” (a weighted sum of cattle, pig, and poultry numbers) over time, for counties throughout the United States, suggested the provocative conclusion that they do: “[A] doubling of production leads to a 7.4% increase in infant mortality.” Yet, we find that regressing IMR changes against changes in specific components of “animal units” (cattle, pigs, and broilers) at the state level reveals statistically significant negative associations between changes in livestock production (especially, cattle production) and changes in IMR. We conclude that statistical associations between livestock variables and IMR variables are very sensitive to modeling choices (e.g., selection of explanatory variables, and use of specific animal types vs. aggregate “animal units). Such associations, whether positive or negative, do not warrant causal interpretation. We suggest that standard methods of quantitative risk assessment (QRA), including emissions release (source) models, fate and transport modeling, exposure assessment, and dose-response modeling, really are important—and indeed, perhaps, essential—for drawing valid causal inferences about health effects of exposures to guide sound, well-informed public health risk management policy. Reduced-form regression models, which skip most or all of these steps, can only quantify statistical associations (which may be due to model specification, variable selection, residual confounding, or other noncausal factors). Sound risk management requires the extra work needed to identify and model valid causal relations.     

Game Theory and Risk Analysis

Risk analysts often analyze adversarial risks from terrorists or other intelligent attackers without mentioning game theory. Why? One reason is that many adversarial situations—those that can be represented as attacker‐defender games, in which the defender first chooses an allocation of defensive resources to protect potential targets, and the attacker, knowing what the defender has done, then decides which targets to attack—can be modeled and analyzed successfully without using most of the concepts and terminology of game theory. However, risk analysis and game theory are also deeply complementary. Game‐theoretic analyses of conflicts require modeling the probable consequences of each choice of strategies by the players and assessing the expected utilities of these probable consequences. Decision and risk analysis methods are well suited to accomplish these tasks. Conversely, game‐theoretic formulations of attack‐defense conflicts (and other adversarial risks) can greatly improve upon some current risk analyses that attempt to model attacker decisions as random variables or uncertain attributes of targets (“threats”) and that seek to elicit their values from the defender's own experts. Game theory models that clarify the nature of the interacting decisions made by attackers and defenders and that distinguish clearly between strategic choices (decision nodes in a game tree) and random variables (chance nodes, not controlled by either attacker or defender) can produce more sensible and effective risk management recommendations for allocating defensive resources than current risk scoring models. Thus, risk analysis and game theory are (or should be) mutually reinforcing.     

Life Satisfaction,Positive Youth Development,and Problem Behaviour Among Chinese Adolescents in Hong Kong

This paper examines the relationships among life satisfaction, positive youth development, and problem behaviour. A total of 7,975 Secondary One students (4,169 boys and 3,387 girls; with most aged 12) of Chinese ethnicity recruited from 48 schools responded to validated measures of life satisfaction, positive youth development and problem behaviour. While life satisfaction was positively correlated with different measures of positive youth development, these measures were negatively correlated with measures of substance abuse, delinquency and intention to engage in problem behaviour. Based on a series of structural equation models, a non-recursive model was found to best fit the data, which suggests that adolescents having higher levels of positive youth development are more satisfied with life and have fewer problem behaviour, with life satisfaction and problem behaviour negatively reinforcing each other.     

From Rome to Accra via Kigali: ‘Aid Effectiveness’ in Rwanda

Since the mid‐2000s, significant strides have been made in Rwanda to implement the ‘aid effectiveness’ agenda as captured in the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. This article explores the historical evolution of this process since 1994, exposing the complex manoeuvring to establish workable practices, and the less visible political implications of this agenda. The Rwandan government is considered to have strong ‘ownership’ of aid strategies. However, the article demonstrates that the concept of progressive ownership implicit within ‘aid effectiveness’ discourse is misleading. The evidence points rather to joint ownership between donor and recipient, reflecting limitations to the amount of control over aid that donors will cede.     

Tackling Poverty-migration Linkages: Evidence from Ghana and Egypt

Are migrants able to use the migration experience to their benefit, that is to improve their livelihoods, and is this result nuanced by whether migrants are poor or non-poor? This paper explores these questions quantitatively using data on migrants and non-migrants from Ghana and Egypt. It describes the main challenges in the empirical literature and introduces a conceptual model to explore the links between migration and poverty. The empirical model accounts for the direct effects of migration on poverty and for the role of migration in moderating the dynamics of poverty. Results show the selectivity of migration with respect to subjective poverty and that migration can have a significant impact on helping people improve their livelihoods. The paper further finds that selectivity with respect to human capital depends on ‘reasons for migration’ and visa status. These findings enrich existing empirical studies by providing a clear estimation of sequential events and enable policymakers to better understand the processes behind migration and poverty.