Digital Commons Network^™

Landholding And Household Development: What Do We Know?, Min Zhan, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

This overview of research on effects of land ownership focuses on the economic, personal, and social effects of land ownership of small-scale farmers, often in developing nations, under the assumption that the household is the primary unit of production. A search for relevant studies from different fields of inquiry—economic development, rural sociology, family studies, anthropology, social work, medicine, and others—finds 39 empirical studies addressing the effects of land ownership. Sorting these studies into categories for discussion, we present the existing research on effects of land ownership on (1) level of consumption, (2) economic security, (3) investment, (4) women’s status, (5) …

Individual, Family And Neighborhood Influences On Teen Childbearing: A Life Options Approach, Leslie Scheuler-Whitaker, Shanta Pandey

Center for Social Development Research

This paper presents results from an examination of the effects of neighborhood and family characteristics—as they are related to an individual’s life options—on the teenage fertility of urban respondents. The study drew upon the life options perspective, a loosely defined theoretical framework which posits that opportunities for social and economic mobility impact an adolescent’s expectations for the future and behavior. The data come from the University of Chicago’s Urban Poverty and Family Life Survey of Chicago. Collected in 1987 under the supervision of William Julius Wilson, the data are derived from 2,490 personal and telephone interviews conducted with a multistage, …

Factors Influencing African American Youths' Decisions To Stay In School, Larry E. Davis, Sharon Johnson, Julie Miller-Cribbs, Stephen Cronen, Leslie Scheuler-Whitaker

Center for Social Development Research

Little attention has been given to the non-problematic development and positive life decisions of African American youth. This paper reports findings of 231 African American students. The goal of the study was to assess factors which contribute to their academic grade point averages and intentions to stay in school. The conceptual model employed in this study was the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) which contends that intentions to carryout a behavior is a function of Attitude towards the behavior, Social Normative support for undertaking the behavior, and the Perceived Control of being able to carry out the behavior. In addition …

Home Mortgage Lending In St. Louis City: An Analysis Of 1992 And 1994 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data, Edward Scanlon, Shirley Emerson

Center for Social Development Research

This report examines home mortgage lending data in St. Louis City in 1992 and 1994. Our primary purpose is to determine how race, income level and neighborhood location relate to home mortgage loan application denial rates. Overall, it is demonstrated that race, income level and negative neighborhood conditions are predictive of loan denial in St. Louis City. The study begins with an overview of related literature. The second section describes our study, and provides information regarding the data set, our variables and research procedures. Part three is a report of our findings. The final section draws conclusions and suggests implications …

Homeownership And Well-Being Among Blue-Collar Workers, Deborah Page-Adams, Nancy Vosler

Center for Social Development Research

The economic, social, and psychological vulnerability of blue-collar workers increases as the U.S. economy continues to shift from manufacturing to service and technology. This paper reports findings from an analysis of economic resources and well-being among automobile manufacturing workers. Following previous theoretical and empirical work suggesting positive homeownership effects for vulnerable populations, this analysis was designed to test relationships between homeownership and four measures of well-being while controlling for household income and education levels. Workers from two adjacent automobile manufacturing plants in a large midwestern metropolitan area were surveyed. Multivariate analysis of data from a subsample of 193 workers indicate …

Human Capital And Social Work, Sondra Beverly, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

This article is an update and continuation of Theodore Schultz’s seminal, but largely unheeded, 1959 article on human capital. Like Schultz, we suggest that building human capital should be a key development strategy for social workers. Empirical research demonstrates that human capital has important positive outcomes. However, opportunities for human capital development are not equally accessible to all. By facilitating human capital development among disadvantaged groups, social workers can help individuals obtain skills that will enable them to compete in post-industrial labor markets. This emphasis on investment and development is particularly relevant today since, in the current political climate, there …

Mortgage Lending: Is Gender A Factor?, Cynthia K. Sanders, Edwaard Scalon, Shirley R. Emerson

Center for Social Development Research

In promoting well-being for women and female-headed households, social policy analysts are increasingly attending to wealth accumulation rather than focusing solely on income. Homeownership equity is a form of wealth that may be especially helpful for low-income women. This paper analyzes 1992 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data for the city and county of St. Louis. Our primary hypothesis was that women, controlling for marital status, income, and race, would be more likely to be denied home loans. The findings from this data set contradict our hypothesis and suggest that men are slightly more likely than women to be denied mortgage …

Education, Assets, And Intergenerational Well-Being: The Case Of Female Headed Families, Li-Chen Cheng, Deborah Page-Adams

Center for Social Development Research

This paper reports findings from an analysis of economic well-being among female headed households. Previous theoretical and empirical work in this area suggests that poverty among female headed families is to some extent an intergenerational process, a vicious cycle. One common explanation for this pattern is that low socioeconomic status in a woman’s family of origin results in low educational attainment and, ultimately, in low earning capacity. However, an exclusive focus on education may overlook the long term dynamics of the household as an institution that can accumulate assets to enhance economic well-being across generations. Using data from the National …

What We Know About Effects Of Asset Holding: Implications For Research On Asset-Based Anti-Poverty Initiatives, Deborah Page-Adams, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

Asset accumulation programs have emerged at local and state levels to help poor people save for purposes such as education, homeowership, and microenterprise development. These anti-poverty programs are built in part on the suggestion that assets have a wide range of positive effects on well-being, and they frequently use a system of Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) to structure asset accumulation. In addition, federal legislation for an IDA demonstration has increasing support. The emergence of asset accumulation programs at local and state levels, along with growing bipartisan support for a national IDA demonstration, makes applied research both possible and necessary. Studies …

Who Are The Children?, Russell Grimm

Graduate Research Papers

Youth shelters provide temporary care to children who may have been a runaway, homeless, or had problems at home. They may have been physically, emotionally, or sexually abused. Some children admitted to a youth shelter have committed law violations, and others may be waiting for treatment or discharged from a program and have no immediate place to reside.

The purpose of this study was to profile the demographics of all children admitted to the Black Hawk County Youth Shelter for each of the years 1989 through 1994. Files of the 1187 children admitted to the shelter were exmained. Data were …

The Commons And The New Age Of Laissez Faire, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The one thing new laissez faire rhetoric seldom does is find any

place for broader visions of civil society, and in particular,

nonprofit organizations, voluntary action, or philanthropy which

have been such important parts of the American past.

Laissez faire visions of the future being promoted today

are dangerously limited in at least one important respect: They

omit any reference to nonprofit organizations, voluntary action or

philanthropy (along with sustaining reference groups like family

and support and friendship groups) as operative parts of the

future. Instead, they offer an altogether familiar bi-polar social

universe from the past composed of “the …

Effects Of Assets On Attitudes And Behaviors: Advance Test Of A Social Policy Proposal, Gautam N. Yadama, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

Raising asset limits and creating individual development accounts have been proposed in welfare reform. In part the rationale for these proposals is that assets have positive effects on attitudes and behaviors, including long-term planning, greater work effort, and improved social connectedness. The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), between 1968 and 1972, included a wide range of attitude and behavioral measures. In this study, data from the PSID are analyzed to test for the following: a) the effect of assets on attitudes and behaviors; b) the effect of attitudes and behaviors on assets; c) the effect of income on attitudes …

Occupational Outcomes Of Bachelor's Degrees Earned By Nontraditional Students, Mary Ellen Ellyson Wacker

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the occupational outcomes of bachelor's degrees earned by individuals when they are 25 years or older, here called nontraditional graduates. The subjects of the study were 212 nontraditional graduates of the University of Northern Iowa. They were randomly selected from a list of individuals who received their college degrees from 1984 to 1988 and who were 25 years old or older at the time they graduated. A questionnaire was designed by the researcher that elicited information about the subjects' reasons for deciding to earn a college degree and about their past and …

Peace, Or The Problem-Free Interval, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper argues for wider recognition of general program indicators as evaluative criteria and sets forth four general dimensions of outcome measures that might serve as comparative evaluative indicators for a wide range of programs and services. Pragmatic problem-solving is outlined as a theoretical basis for an approach to such general indicators. The argument for general program indicators of problem presence, frequency, duration and severity is grounded in general problem-solving theory and is part of an evaluative study of a mental health crisis unit. Peace, defined as a problem-free interval, is offered as an example of a general program outcome …

The New Mandarins, Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Due Process And The Juvenile System: The Effects Of In Re Gault, Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Public Affairs, Community Service And Personal Care: The Three Faces Of Social Work, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper was written for a faculty seminar at the School of Social Work, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where at the time the author was an Assistant Professor. It makes the case that contemporary social work at the time was an uneasy mix of three very different approaches: A public affairs perspective addressing broad social policy issues; a community services perspective extending to agency management, planning and financing; and a personal care perspective built on psychotherapy, social casework and group work. At the time, many schools of social work were struggling with a legacy of strong support for the personal …

Input-Output Analysis And Social Planning, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article is a proposal for an adaptation of Leontief input-output analysis in economics to uses in community-level social planning. It was made in the later years of the Great Society period, when a relatively large number of federal social grant programs in aging, children's services, disability services, housing, and other health and human service fields mandated social planning and a national system of multi-jurisdictional social planning agencies was emerging.

Medicare, Medicaid And The Geriatric Residential Environment, Nancy Lohmann, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article reports on a study of interstate differences in the availability of nursing home beds, personal care home slots and public housing, and attempts to assess the impact of the adoption of Medicare and Medicaid six years before on the availability of these components of what was termed the "geriatric residential environments continuum" or GRE. The underlying idea is that components of long-term health care, personal care and housing/shelter are three common elements of a wide variety of public policy for the aged.

Obligations Of Higher Education To The Social Order, Ernest A. Jacobsen

Faculty Honor Lectures

Search for truth is not limited to the discovery of facts. If wisdom is to result from such discovery, there must be parallel study in the realm of values. Lack of balance in these two aspects of research has tended to result in an enormous mass of information and in a marvelous productive power in our society with a lack of worthy ends toward which to direct and apply them. Wisdom is the product of information and values skillfully integrated.

When values are involved the principal data become the ideas and ideals of man. These must be extensively gathered, classified, …