The effects of a Minnesota Welfare Reform Program on marital stability six years later

Do welfare reform policies affect marital stability among two-parent families? Long term findings from an experiment in Minnesota, evaluated via a random assignment design, contribute to the little evidence to date about whether or not welfare and income-support policies can affect marital stability. In 1994, Minnesota began to test a major welfare reform initiative that emphasized financial incentives for work, a participation requirement for long-term recipients, and the simplification of rules and procedures for receiving public assistance. An analysis of this program's long-run effects on marital stability for two-parent families finds no effect overall but contrasting effects for several subgroups. MFIP particularly lowered the rate of divorce among families who were already receiving welfare when they entered the study. There are less consistent effects among new applicants to MFIP – who show a trend toward higher rates of divorce relative to the control group.     

Living in the Moment: Lags,Leads, and the Link Between Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy*

Objectives. Based on sharply divergent interpretations about the nature of the politics of organized interests, three competing perspectives imply that organized interests variously lead, lag, or are contemporaneous with legislative agendas. Methods. We contribute to this debate by presenting data using a short‐term timeframe to assess the sequence of the relationship between legislative agendas and lobbying activity; we examine the lags and leads in the relationship between legislative agendas in 1995, 1997, and 1999 and the density of state lobbying communities in 1997 using Gray and Lowery's (1996) energy, stability, area (ESA) model of interest system density. Results. The analysis provides little support for the lagging and leading hypotheses and strong support for the contemporaneous hypothesis. Conclusions. Although this analysis will not end all debates over the sequential relationship between legislative agendas and lobbying activity, it suggests that legislative agenda and interest system density are largely governed by within‐session dynamics.     

US and them: Job quality differences between natives and immigrants in Europe

Using microdata from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) and aggregate indicators of labour market institutions, this article compares the job quality of native and non-native workers across European countries and analyses the impact of the institutional settings on the job quality differential between both groups. The LFS is used to measure a job quality index for the period 2005–2017. We find that some immigrant groups fare worse than natives, the contribution of the “composition effect” to explain this differential is large, and the institutional framework affects the immigration gap in job quality. In particular, some labour market institutions (more centralized wage bargaining, stricter employment protection legislation) tend to be detrimental for immigrants relative to natives, while integration policies seem to work well in reducing these differences.