Operational research in social security

In this paper we describe the work of the Department of Health and Social Security Operational Research (OR) Unit in Social Security. This work started in 1972 and with one break of eighteen months still continues. One of the authors (AFH) led the OR team from the beginning until September 1979 and the other (MJP) was the customer for much of its work. We describe briefly the organisation of social security work, and go on to talk about some of the projects attempted by the OR team. We will not shrink from describing some of the successes but we will concentrate most attention on the things which did not achieve the expected results. Readers will make their own judgements about the extent to which the failures were due to circumstances or to inadequacies of the team, or its leader.     

TRAVEL AS AN ANALYTIC OF EXCLUSION: BECOMING NONCITIZENS,AND THE POLITICS OF MOBILITY AFTER THE BERLIN WALL

This article examines the ways in which travel serves as an analytic to understand citizenship and the production of noncitizens after the Berlin Wall. This production is linked to a shift in the post-Wall German and European discourses and practices of asylum, which are significantly renegotiated and restricted shortly after the Wall falls. It is not only the law that changes, but also the mobility of the subjects perceived not to belong. The production of non-citizens is also related to official and unofficial articulations that attach Germanness to “Whiteness.” “Black” subjects must not only negotiate their citizenship via real histories of mobility and displacement but also because their skin itself signifies travel and adventure. In the end, I write about the space that this imagination of travel and adventure through “Black” bodies both opens up and closes off for a politics based on “Blackness.” I turn from normative accounts to the voices and bodies of “Black” subjects themselves.     

Poverty,Place, and Coal Employment across Appalachia and the United States in a New Economic Era

The impacts of employment in the coal industry remain controversial. Few studies have investigated these impacts over the decade of the great recession and in light of the nation's changing energy economy. We bring together two long‐standing rural sociological traditions to address debates framed at the national level and for Appalachian communities facing the throes of transition from the coal industry. Building from rural sociology's “poverty and place” tradition and from natural resources sociology, we examine the relationship between coal employment and communities’ economic well‐being as indicated by poverty, household income, and unemployment. The study spans U.S. and Appalachian counties from 1990 to 2010. U.S. counties with greater coal employment in 1990 had lower income and higher poverty in 2000. Overall, however, coal employment's effect is mixed in the 1990–2000 decade. By contrast, for the recent 2000–2010 decade, coal employment is positively associated with indicators of well‐being. In Appalachia, fewer employment alternatives outside mining are related to higher well‐being. Our findings extend the poverty and place literature and the natural resources literature and underscore why a just transition away from coal should focus on moving communities toward sectors offering better future livelihoods.     

Do minimum wage hikes reduce employment? State-level evidence from the low-wage retail sector

Several recent studies have challenged the conventional notion that raising the minimum wage reduces employment. This study considers this issue by examining the minimum wage's influence on retail employment. Standard labor market analysis suggests that low-wage industries should be particularly sensitive to minimum wage hikes. Therefore, by considering retail employment using pooled-cross sectional, state-level data, this study extends recent research that generally emphasized teen employment. The empirical analysis considers state data from the latter 1980's, a unique period where many states raised their minimum wage above the federal level. Our results suggest that an increased minimum wage reduces retail employment, which is consistent with the standard labor market model. Moreover, further analysis indicates that minimum wage hikes also had relatively large adverse effects on total state employment growth, which implies that state minimum-wage policies can affect firm and household location. We thank Dan Rickman and the anonymous referee for their help with this study.     

Maternal and Paternal Parenting Style Patterns and Adolescent Emotional and Behavioral Outcomes

The purpose of this study was to extend current research to examine the relationship between parenting style combinations and adolescent emotional/behavioral outcomes to further understand affective functioning in adolescents. Previous research solely analyzed mothers, without including fathers and/or both parents. The roles of temperament and adolescent and parent gender were also examined. Participants were 12- to 18-year-old students (n = 195) in 7th to 11th grade in a rural school district in southeast Michigan. Temperament characteristics (i.e., mood, flexibility-rigidity, and eating rhythmicity) explained nearly half of the variance in adolescent outcomes. Parenting styles contributed a smaller but significant role. When both parents were authoritative, it was associated with more optimal outcomes in adolescents' personal adjustment than any other parenting style combination. Having one authoritative parent, which was expected to be a protective factor, was related to high personal adjustment for girls but higher levels of school maladjustment for boys. Mixed associations were found for parenting style combinations and adolescent outcomes. Overall, when both parents were permissive and neglectful, these parenting styles were associated with poorer adolescent outcomes. Study findings confirm that parenting style patterns are important; however, adolescent temperament plays a much larger role, overall, in adolescent affective functioning.     

The relationship between inequality and labor market performance: Evidence from U.S. states

A central issue facing society is the equity/growth trade-off. Conventional economic theory suggests enhanced incentives associated with income inequality should increase growth, but at the expense of “fairness.” Recent theories challenge this notion by contending that inequality reduces human-capital investment and increases instability. Nevertheless, empirical evidence from U.S. states and across countries suggests an ambiguous relationship between inequality and income growth. Yet, at the state level, because inequality is related to many disamenities including crime, it can lead to lower utility and out-migration. The disamenities may produce compensating differentials that increase income. Given the inconsistencies regarding income, this study extends the literature by instead examining employment growth. Namely, long-run job growth is closely associated with net migration and any utility gains from migration. Thus, examining relative employment growth indicates whether inequality is associated with netutility gains from a vibrant economy or net-losses from disamenities. The results suggest that state-level inequality is associated with greater long-run job growth, or enhanced incentives appear to be the dominant factor.     

Technology,international competitiveness,and union behavior

Union opposition to a free trade agreement with Mexico affirms the conventional wisdom that international trade damages the union movement. This study uses data from the March and May CPS for 1984 to 1987 to investigate this issue for production workers. The results indicate that union wages are not influenced by greater trade at medium union densities. However, at low union densities, greater imports (exports) reduce (increase) wages with the opposite pattern occurring at high union densities. The union wage pattern is consistent with product market considerations playing a strong role at low union densities and end game considerations playing a strong role at high union densities. In general, nonunion wages are not significantly impacted by greater trade. After controlling for imports and exports, nonunion wages are much greater in internationally competitive industries while union wages are not significantly greater in competitive industries. Nonunion wages appear to be more influenced by efficiency wage considerations. Thus, a Mexican free trade agreement will have little influence on union wages and should increase nonunion wages. I thank Wally Hendricks, Larry Kahn, Dan Rickman, and Doug Dalenberg for their very useful comments. All remaining errors are my own.     

Generalizing the Bayesian Vector Autoregression Approach for Regional Interindustry Employment Forecasting

The Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) employment-forecasting approach is generalized using data for the state of Georgia. This study advances previous regional BVAR approaches by (a) incorporating regional input-output coefficients instead of national coefficients, (b) using the coefficients both to specify the prior means in one model and to weight the variances of a Minnesota-type prior in a second model, and (c) including final-demand effects and links to national and world economies. Out-of-sample forecasts produced by the generalized BVAR models are compared to forecasts produced from an autoregressive model, an unconstrained VAR model, and a Minnesota BVAR model.     

Public attitudes towards human life extension by intervening in ageing

A number of biogerontologists have expressed an interest in intervening in the ageing process in order to extend the human life span. This study explored the attitudes of members of the Australian public towards the potential development and use of life-extension technologies and their attitudes towards the ethical, social and personal implications of life extension. Participants were presented with a vignette outlining the prospect of a “life-extension pharmaceutical” that could increase maximum life span by slowing the ageing process. While 65% supported such research, only 35% said that they would use a life-extension technology if one became available. Men were more supportive of research and more disposed to use life-extension technologies than women. Concerns about the potential ethical, social and personal implications predicted levels of overall support for, and intention to use, life-extension technologies. Our survey suggests that public attitudes towards life extension are neither overwhelmingly “pro” or “con” and in fact more nuanced than either proponents or opponents of life extension have often assumed.