The impact of child support on child health

The broad goals of child support policy are to keep children in single-parent families out of poverty and to make sure that their material needs are met. One potentially important, but relatively understudied, set of measures of child well-being are health outcomes. A fixed-effects analysis of data from the Child and Young Adult file of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth shows that, conditional upon receipt of some amount of child support, higher payment levels are associated with significantly greater odds of having private health insurance coverage and significantly lower odds of poor or declining health status. These effects persist even after controlling for other factors that are likely to be correlated with child support payments, including total family income and paternal visitation patterns.     

The abortion issue and Title VII employment discrimination: The microcosm of the law

This paper presents a discussion of a 1989 United States federal appeals court ruling in the case of Doe v. First National Bank. The case is the first ruling on the federal appellate level involving a claim of Title VII employment discrimination based upon alleged employer knowledge of and animus towards an employee who had undergone an abortion. Doe raises the ethical questions of how a highly charged, national social issue can be reduced to interpersonal dealings between a supervisor and her subordinate in the workplace. The facts of the case are presented in a chronological manner, followed by a discussion of both the court rulings in the case and the utility of employing this case as an excellent tool in the teaching of business ethics and society.     

JOB MATCH, TENURE AND WAGES PAID BY FIRMS

Using a new data set consisting of a matched sample of workers and firms, and including explicit measures of match quality, the authors estimate a structural model and find new evidence of a strong positive relation between wages and tenure. Inclusion of firm-fixed effects does not significantly reduce the estimated returns to tenure. The results also shed light on the relative importance of human capital and job matching theories.     

The earned income tax credit and fertility

Government programs designed to provide income safety nets often restrict eligibility to families with children, creating an unintended fertility incentive. This paper considers whether dramatically changing incentives in the earned income tax credit affect fertility rates in the USA. We use birth certificate data spanning the period 1990 to 1999 to test whether expansions in the credit influenced birthrate among targeted families. While economic theory would predict a positive fertility effect of the program for many eligible women, our results indicate that expanding the credit produced only extremely small reductions in higher order fertility among white women.

You can go home again: Evidence from longitudinal data

In this paper we analyze the economic and demographic factors that influence return migration, focusing on generation 1.5 immigrants. Using longitudinal data from the 1979 youth cohort of the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLSY79), we track residential histories of young immigrants to the United States and analyze the covariates associated with return migration to their home country. Overall, return migration appears to respond to economic incentives, as well as to cultural and linguistic ties to the United States and the home country. We find no role for welfare magnets in the decision to return, but we learn that welfare participation leads to lower probability of return migration. Finally, we see no evidence of a skill bias in return migration, where skill is measured by performance on the Armed Forces Qualifying Test.     

Developing human resource competencies: an empirical evidence

The paper conceptually defines and empirically investigates the density of work experience along with individual characteristics (cognitive ability, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience) and examine their influence on Human Resource (HR) competencies. 274 HR executives from diverse industry background and their supervisors participated in the data collection efforts spread over three phases. Data analyses revealed three key findings (i) executives’ density of work experience positively relates to HR competencies, (ii) executives’ cognitive ability is the strongest predictor of the positive relationship to HR competencies, and (iii) executives with high Conscientiousness tend to achieve levels of density of work experience. Relative weight analyses reinforce that cognitive ability and density of work experience are the most prominent predictors of HR competencies. Implications for practice are discussed.     

How well can we track cohabitation using the SIPP? A consideration of direct and inferred measures

Cohabitation is an alternative to marriage and to living independently for an increasing number of Americans. Still, research that explores links between living arrangements and economic behavior is limited by a lack of data that explicitly identify cohabiting couples. To aid researchers in using the Survey of Income and Program Participation's (SIPP) rich data to explore cohabitation issues, we consider direct and inferred measures of cohabitation. We find, first, that the use of inferred definitions (relative to direct measures) in the SIPP is likely to yield higher cohabitation rates in the United States by incorrectly coding roommates as cohabitors. Second, the SIPP (whether by direct or inferred measures) counts a significantly larger number of cohabiting couples than the widely used Current Population Survey (CPS). Third, spells of cohabitation occur less frequently and last longer when a direct measure of cohabitation is used than when either of the two inferred measures of cohabitation is used; ours is the first article to reveal this result.     

Urban bird conservation: presenting stakeholder-specific arguments for the development of bird-friendly cities

Following the call from the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity “Cities & Biodiversity Outlook” project to better preserve urban biodiversity, this paper presents stakeholder-specific statements for bird conservation in city environments. Based upon the current urban bird literature we focus upon habitat fragmentation, limited habitat availability, lack of the native vegetation and vegetation structure as the most important challenges facing bird conservation in cities. We follow with an overview of the stakeholders in cities, and identify six main groups having the greatest potential to improve bird survival in cities: i) urban planners, urban designers and (landscape) architects, ii) urban developers and engineers, iii) homeowners and tenants, iv) companies and industries, v) landscaping and gardening firms, vi) education professionals. Given that motivation to act positively for urban birds is linked to stakeholder-specific advice, we present ten statements for bird-friendly cities that are guided by an action perspective and argument for each stakeholder group. We conclude with a discussion on how the use of stakeholder-specific arguments can enhance and rapidly advance urban bird conservation action.     

Distance to Hospital and Children's Use of Preventive Care: Is Being Closer Better,and for Whom?

This article examines the effect of distance to hospital on preventive care among children using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth's Child-Mother file matched to data from the 1990 American Hospital Association Survey. Among central-city black children, each additional mile from the hospital is associated with a 3-percentage-point decline in the probability of having had a checkup (from a mean baseline of 74%). Moreover, the effects are similar for privately and publicly insured black children. For this group, access to providers is as important as private insurance coverage in predicting use of preventive care.