Tax-based research and data on non-profit organisations

Tax-exempt, non-profit organisations represent a significant and growing sector within the US economy. Between 1975 and 1990, assets of tax-exempt organisations increased in real terms by over 150 per cent while the revenue increased by over 227 per cent. This compares to a growth in real GDP of 52 per cent over the same period. A variety of tax policy issues on tax-exempt organisations and the non-profit sector can be addressed using several sources of data collected by the IRS from federal information and tax returns of exempt organisations. The Statistics of Income (SOI) Division, using sample data, conducts studies of many of the different components of the tax-exempt sector, including non-profit charitable organisations, organisations exempt under sections 501(c)(4)-(c)(9), private foundations and 4947(a) charitable trusts, and the unrelated business income of tax-exempt organisations. Income statement, balance sheet and other financial data, as well as a great amount of non-financial information, are collected in these SOI studies. The primary purposes of this article are: first, to document the role of the non-profit sector in the US economy and the evolving growth and change within the sector from the mid-1970s through to the present; and, second, to describe the ongoing SOI studies of tax-exempt organisations, the products and services available through SOI, and the future statistical plans at SOI for data collection and analysis of tax-exempt organisations and the non-profit sector.     

A response to “the emotional consequences of physical child abuse” by Annaclare van Dalen

The author responds to the article by Annaclare van Dalen (1989), disputing her statement that there is little in the literature about the emotional consequences of child abuse. The author reviews the pertinent literature, which is abundant. The author disagrees with van Dalen's statement that the child experiences physical abuse outside the body, and with the statement that the child experiences sexual abuse as pleasurable. In addition the author disagrees with van Dalen's sharp differentiation between physical abuse and sexual abuse, and proposes that sexual abuse be regarded as a variant of physical abuse.     

What to Do at Low Doses: A Bounding Approach for Economic Analysis

To quantify the health benefits of environmental policies, economists generally require estimates of the reduced probability of illness or death. For policies that reduce exposure to carcinogenic substances, these estimates traditionally have been obtained through the linear extrapolation of experimental dose-response data to low-exposure scenarios as described in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment (1986). In response to evolving scientific knowledge, EPA proposed revisions to the guidelines in 1996. Under the proposed revisions, dose-response relationships would not be estimated for carcinogens thought to exhibit nonlinear modes of action. Such a change in cancer-risk assessment methods and outputs will likely have serious consequences for how benefit-cost analyses of policies aimed at reducing cancer risks are conducted. Any tendency for reduced quantification of effects in environmental risk assessments, such as those contemplated in the revisions to EPA's cancer-risk assessment guidelines, impedes the ability of economic analysts to respond to increasing calls for benefit-cost analysis. This article examines the implications for benefit-cost analysis of carcinogenic exposures of the proposed changes to the 1986 Guidelines and proposes an approach for bounding dose-response relationships when no biologically based models are available. In spite of the more limited quantitative information provided in a carcinogen risk assessment under the proposed revisions to the guidelines, we argue that reasonable bounds on dose-response relationships can be estimated for low-level exposures to nonlinear carcinogens. This approach yields estimates of reduced illness for use in a benefit-cost analysis while incorporating evidence of nonlinearities in the dose-response relationship. As an illustration, the bounding approach is applied to the case of chloroform exposure.     

Children and well-being: A comparison of employed and non-employed women

While employment improves health, having children at home does not. Indeed, the most likely work-family conflict for women is having children at home. In this study the effect of children on well-being was predicted to differ for employed and non-employed women. In addition, only amongst the employed women was locus of control hypothcsized to moderate this relationship. In a sample of women with partners (n = 116), using multiple-regression analysis, the results indicated that the number of children living at home, rather than the presence of young children, was associated with increased happiness in women. Employment was not predictive of women's well-being. However, it moderated the effect of number of children on their levels of happiness. In addition, non-employed women showed a U-shaped relationship between number of children and psychological distress. Finally, contrary to prediction, locus of control did not moderate the relationship between number of children and women's well-being. The findings are discussed in terms of the role expansion hypothesis.     

Pen Dudley''s name finally disappears from the public relations marquee

When the public relations firm D-A-Y was dissolved into Ogilvy & Mather Public Relations November 1, 1988, the longest lived public relations agency disappeared into the sands of time that enveloped the first four agencies started in the first decade of the waning century. The D in D-A-Y stood for Pendleton Dudley, a venerable pioneer in this vocation, who had opened his agency in Wall Street in 1909 at the urging of his good friend, Ivy Lee. Dudley, a rugged, independent product of frontier America, headed his firm for fifty-seven years—a longevity record surpassed only by that of Edward L. Bernays, who started his firm in 1919 in the Post World War I public relations boom.Pendleton Dudley—known to his close friends as Pen and to his associates in his firm as PD, was born September 8, 1876, in a small frontier town of Troy, Missouri, when America was an agricultural nation. He came to pioneer as a counselor to the corporate giants, AT&T among them, in a complex, interdependent corporate industrial America. Pen Dudley did much to infuse this field with respectability in a time when it was viewed with suspicion or disdain in its early years. He was a strong advocate of research as the only sound basis for planning and executing programs to influence public behavior. He was also active in the Public Relations Society of America after it was formed in 1948 and was in the forefront of those creating the now extinct Foundation for Public Relations Research and Education. In 1965, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the New York PRSA Chapter. He died at the age of 90 in 1966.The author is Dean Emeritus of Journalism at the University of Georgia, and co-author Effective Public Relations, 6th Ed.     

Racial differences in urban neighboring

Despite mixed expectations generated by existing theories and evidence, this analysis documents clear racial differences in urban neighboring behavior. Using data from a survey of Nashville, Tennessee, residents, we show that blacks interact with their neighbors more often than whites do, and in a greater variety of ways. The only noteworthy similarity between the two groups is the positive impact of neighboring on feelings of community affect. Overall, our results support the view that neighbor relations — like other kinds of informal participation — have helped blacks cope with constrained social opportunities and provided them with access to resources unavailable through formal institutional channels.Revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, August 1989.     

The changing character of industrial relations: Comment

Readers wishing to correspond with Mr. O’Connell may do so through the editorial office of the Journal.     

Dimensions of Participation in a Professional Social-Movement Organization

Differential participation after recruitment remains a black box in the social-movement and voluntary-association literatures. This paper identifies several dimensions of membership participation in a professional social-movement organization (SMO) with a national membership and analyzes the determinants of differential involvement in these forms. In general, members' ideological beliefs, social and organizational ties, perceptions about their SMO, and communication with SMO officials all predict participation across the various forms. Our findings extend previous work on differential participation in three ways. First, we statistically isolate cultural dimensions of postrecruitment participation and, in so doing, complement recent ethnographic research. Second, our findings suggest that the distinct dimensions of external and internal participation found by Knoke (1988) in a national sample of voluntary associations may not generalize to national SMOs studied individually. Third, our results indicate that models combining ideological and microstructural factors should explain the multiple forms of participation in SMOs lacking these distinct dimensions.