Digital Commons Network^™

Usage And Impact Of Benefits Among Frontline Healthcare Workers, Mathieu Despard

Social Policy Institute Research

We completed a study about frontline healthcare workers – the benefits they get through work and how they are doing financially. This brief provides highlights from our survey to 2,321 workers and interviews with 30 workers.

Combatting Rising Healthcare Costs For Healthier Adults, Alejandra Muñoz-Rivera

Social Policy Institute Research

In 2020, healthcare expenditures averaged $12,530 per person, up 9.7% from 2019. In 2018, 19% of U.S. households had medical debt with $2,000 being the median amount owed. Over half of adults between 18 to 64 years of age are estimated to experience some form of medical financial hardship including medical bills or debt, stress about medical bills, and delaying or forgoing treatment specifically due to cost. In a 2022 survey of 140 Medicaid and Marketplace members by researchers from the Social Policy Institute (SPI) and the Centene Center of Health Transformation, one-third of respondents reported having unpaid medical bills. …

Trauma Exposures Across The Life Course For Individuals Who Experience Incarceration, Maria Morrison

Brown School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, with 2.2 million people currently behind bars, 60% of whom are people of color. At the same time, there is an unprecedented political consensus to develop strategies for reducing the incarcerated population and safely returning the majority of incarcerated individuals to society. While there has been a substantial research focus on the potential of this population to commit acts of violence post-release, this tells only half the story. This dissertation hopes to provide a more complete picture of the role of violence in the lives of individuals released …

The Cost Of Child Support: Policy Design And Father Identity, Lara Markovitz

Brown School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Child support policy is one of the key forces in the lives of families in the U.S., where 1 in 4 children and half of African American children live apart from their fathers (Carlson et al., 2017; Grall, 2020; U.S. Census Bureau, 2014). Most unmarried fathers of newborns express a strong desire and commitment to their children (Carlson & McLanahan, 2002; England & Edin, 2007). However, by the time their children turn five, fathers'; involvement (caregiving and time, provision of child support) diminishes greatly (Turner & Waller, 2017). This decrease in father involvement among low-income NRFs is thought to be …

Social Capital And Mental Health Among Chinese Older Adults, Yuekang Li

Brown School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to develop our understanding of social capital by exploring the dimensions and profiles of social capital among Chinese older adults and the factors and health conditions associated with social capital in later life. The approach was secondary analyses of the China Family Panel Study (CFPS), a nationally representative survey of the Chinese population. It is the intent of this work to offer applicable guidance on policy and project design regarding health promotion for the aging population through social intervention. Aim 1 explores the dimensions and associative factors of social capital of Chinese older adults. It was found …

The Vulnerability Of A Poor Urban Neighborhood To Extreme Weather Disasters And The Role Of Ecosocial Work: The Case Of Tongja-Dong Jjokbang-Chon In Seoul, South Korea, Joonmo Kang

Brown School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

his study is an inquiry into the vulnerability of poor older adults living in the Tongja-dong jjokbang-chon, one of the last remaining informal settlements in Seoul, South Korea, to climate change-related disasters, particularly heat waves and cold waves; climate change’s impact on their livelihoods; and the role of social work in responding to these challenges. Even though the harsh living conditions and the sufferings of those living in jjokbang-chon residents during extreme weather is constantly highlighted in the media, there is a dearth of empirical research focusing on the vulnerabilities of marginalized communities living in jjokbang-chon to extreme weather and …

Child Development Accounts Reach Over 15 Million Children Globally, Li Zou, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

First proposed in 1991, inclusive asset-building policy for each child, policy that begins at birth, has now been tested and implemented in settings across the globe. This brief documents the emergence of Child Development Accounts and estimates their scope, focusing on policies in Singapore, the United Kingdom, Korea, Canada, Israel, and the United States.

Experimental Evidence On Consumption, Saving, And Family Formation Responses To Student Debt Forgiveness, Jason Jabarri, Stephen Roll, Mathieu Despard, Leah Hamilton

Social Policy Institute Research

As policy-makers grapple with whether or not to forgive student debt, for who, and how much, it is important to explore how student debt forgiveness would relate to intended household decisions and behaviors. We conducted a survey experiment that asked participants with student debt to imagine a scenario in which the federal government forgave a certain amount of student debt. We then had these participants report on how this would affect their decisions and behaviors. 1,053 participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions that offered $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, and complete debt forgiveness. Our results indicate that student debt …

Financial Facts: Seed Ok Child Development Accounts At Age 14, Margaret M. Clancy, Sondra G. Beverly, Mark Schreiner, Jin Huang, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

This Fact Sheet presents financial outcomes as of December 31, 2021, when children in the SEED for Oklahoma Kids (SEED OK) experiment were about 14 years old. SEED OK is a large-scale policy test of universal, automatic, and progressive Child Development Accounts (CDAs). The essential feature of the CDA in SEED OK is a state-owned Oklahoma 529 College Savings Plan (OK 529) account, which was automatically opened for newborns in late 2007 with an initial deposit of $1,000 and which has now grown to about $2,300.

Economic Security From An Asset Perspective, William Elliott Iii

Center for Social Development Research

hat is economic security, and what policies can help more families achieve it?

In talking about the New Deal, President Franklin Roosevelt provided a vision for what economic security should look like in America, a vision that CSD Faculty Director William Elliott III elaborates in this essay. To be secure, Elliott notes, families require enough to live by and something to live for; that is, they require income and assets. Elliott makes the case that policy has a vital role to play in creating and sustaining this security.

This Perspective presents remarks given by CSD Faculty Director William Elliott III …

“That’S What Hospice Is Supposed To Do”: How U.S. Hospice Care Staff Bridge Philosophy And Institutions, Morgan Alexa Leff

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

Hospice founder Cicely Saunders wrote that “the dignity and worth of each individual patient [are] central to Hospice philosophy—an idea closely tied to anthropological personhood (Saunders and Clark 2002). As dying in hospice becomes an increasing reality of life in the United States, we must grapple with how the ideals, costs, and challenges of hospice care play out in the healthcare system. The institutional structures meant to ensure a ‘good death’ (while protecting the interests of the state) can fracture care of the dying. As hospice staff work within and around these structures, they build meaning in care strategies that …

Protecting Native Motherhood: A Longitudinal Investigation Of Interpersonal Violence Among Alaska Native Women, Autumn Asher

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Alaska Native mothers and their children are continually impacted by present day disparities resulting from decades of historical oppression. Indigenous women face a substantially greater risk for experiencing violence during pregnancy. Further, Alaska Native children are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system, including both overrepresentation in out of home care, and underrepresented in preventative and restorative services in comparison to the general population. The present work utilizes data from the Alaska Longitudinal Child Abuse and Neglect Linkage Project (ALCANLink) which follows children of Alaska mothers originally sampled in the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS). The ALCANLink is a …

Identifying Contextual And Structural Factors Contributing To Organizational Sustainability In Pediatric Healthcare, Sara Malone

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Every year, millions of children seek health care for acute and emergent needs. However, evidence-based care is not currently delivered to every child. Even when teams implement care discoveries designed to improve outcomes, they are often not sustained over time. All children should receive care that is in accord with current evidence-based guidelines, and those evidence-based practices must be effectively maintained over time. It is imperative to understand how to sustain care improvements in the clinical setting. Sustainability capacity allows us to understand the organizational factors that ensure care delivery over time. While there has been an increased focus on …

Victimhood And Its Perversion: Masochistic Narratives And Cultural Identity In Cold War Central Europe, Katja Perat

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers an analysis of the recurring trope of female masochism in Central European literary postmodernism. It investigates five foundational novels, from both sides of the Iron Curtain, written between 1961 and 1986: Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Elfriede Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher, Peter Handke’s A Sorrow Beyond Dreams and Repetition, and Stanisław Lem’s Solaris. The dissertation argues that these texts deploy representations of female masochism in order to frame the relationship between culture and subject-building, against the background of the region’s borderland status within the cognitive map created by the Cold War. Despite the fact that …

Choice And Opportunity: Examining Housing Relocation And Organizational Partnerships Within Federal Mixed-Income Community Development Initiatives, Andrew Scott Foell

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, residential segregation by race and class has resulted in the creation and growth of geographic areas of concentrated poverty, or the concentration of mostly poor families of color into extremely poor neighborhoods. Due to the durability of concentrated poverty, along with the numerous adverse effects of living in neighborhoods characterized by concentrated poverty, deconcentrating poverty has been a prominent focus of urban poverty policy and housing and community development practice. Mixed-income development initiatives have emerged as promising strategies that focus on assisting low-income families living in distressed public housing while simultaneously investing in housing and neighborhood …

Essays In Financial Intermediation, John Michael Dooley

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation focuses on two broad questions. First, how does access to income affect the credit decisions of households? Second, how do individuals affect the behavior of financial institutions and financial contract terms?

In Chapter 1 with Emily Gallagher, we provide the first study of how access to plasma donation as a source of discretionary income affects households financially. In the United States, households donate plasma for compensation at a higher rate than they use payday, auto-title, rent-to-own, or pawn loans. Plasma donors are young, poorly educated, and financially vulnerable with limited access to households. We use the dramatic growth …

Factors Determining Attraction Of Neurodivergent Applicants To Organizations, Barri Levitt

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

Neurodivergence is used to describe a broad range of neurodevelopmental differences that result in a distinct set of challenges for individuals in interacting with the world around them. Within Diversity, Equity and Inclusion campaigns, neurodiversity is the term used to describe the composition of a space to include neurodivergent and neurotypical individuals. The unique perspectives that come from workplace neurodiversity are a valuable tool, yet companies are routinely missing out on the addition of neurodivergent individuals because of current hiring practices. This study was developed using the theoretical bases of person-organization fit, which emphasizes value congruence between organizations and employees, …

Encore Intergenerational Vaccine Corps (Pre- And Post-Service Survey: Topline Results), Halvorsen J. Cal, K. Megan Collier

Brown School Faculty Publications

Between May 2021 and April 2022, volunteers with the Encore Intergenerational Vaccine Corps were asked to complete a pre-service survey upon joining and post-service survey upon exiting the program. (Those still volunteering in April 2022 were asked to complete the post-service survey.) The primary objective of these surveys was to assess changes in how volunteers viewed people from different generations after their experiences in this intergenerational volunteer program. Secondary objectives included changes in engagement with people from other generations and views on public policy, public health, and social issues. Volunteers’ experiences in the program were also assessed in the post-service …

Definición De La Dinámica De Problemas, Clarissa Gaona Romero, Katherine Curi-Quinto, Laura Guzmán Abello, Carmen Quinteros-Reyes, Paraskevi Seferidi, Antonio Bernabe-Ortiz, Lindsey Pawlowski, Ellis Ballard

Social System Design Lab

Las herramientas de dinámica de sistemas nos ayudan a descubrir las estructuras del sistema que producen los problemas que nos importan para que podamos identificar mejores soluciones.Como ilustra esta cita, el primer paso, y posiblemente el más importante, en cualquier proceso de resolución de problemas es definir claramente el problema que se desea resolver. En otras disciplinas científicas, esta definición de un problema puede ser estática, o instantánea, ya que analiza un problema particular en un momento dado. Esto puede parecer un único punto de datos, resultado o evento. En la dinámica de sistemas, sin embargo, definimos los problemas como …

Online Gmb: Challenges, Opportunities, And Barriers, Lucy Chin, Allie Farrell, Min Hu, Lindsey Pawlowski, Ellis Ballard

Social System Design Lab

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in the new reality of remote working and learning, forcing group model building practitioners to make an abrupt shift to online workshops. Like our peers, the Social System Design Lab (SSDL) at Washington University in St. Louis confronted this challenge by exploring what tools existed for adaptation and continued collaboration. The shift has not been easy, but it has revealed new insights that suggest areas to leverage the strengths of online GMB long after the pandemic comes to an end.

The purpose of this brief is to provide some general points of comparison between in-person and …

Acumulaciones Y Diagramas De Niveles Y Flujos, Clarissa Gaona Romero, Laura Guzmán Abello, Carmen Quinteros-Reyes, Paraskevi Seferidi, Antonio Bernabe-Ortiz, Lindsey Pawlowski, Ellis Ballard

Social System Design Lab

Existen varias características de los sistemas complejos que dificultan la creación de cambios en la salud de la comunidad, los cuales incluyen los siguientes: retrasos entre la intervención y el resultado, respuestas inesperadas o confusas a intervenciones, y diferencias en las formas en que los individuos y los grupos experimentan el mismo sistema. El concepto de “acumulación” brinda información importante sobre la forma en que se generan las percepciones erróneas, retrasos y respuestas contradictorias al sistema dentro de los esfuerzo de la salud que se llevan a cabo. Los diagramas de niveles y flujos son herramientas que sirven para identificar …

Facilitation Team Roles In Online Gmb, Allie Farrell, Min Hu, Lucy Chin, Lindsey Pawlowski, Ellis Ballard

Social System Design Lab

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in the new reality of remote working and learning, forcing group model building practitioners to make an abrupt shift to online workshops. Like our peers, the Social System Design Lab (SSDL) at Washington University in St. Louis confronted this challenge by exploring what tools existed for adaptation and continued collaboration. The shift has not been easy, but it has revealed new insights that suggest areas to leverage the strengths of online GMB long after the pandemic comes to an end.

The purpose of this brief is to compare facilitation team roles in traditional, in-person GMB sessions …

Iceberg Del Pensamiento Sistémico: Buceando Bajo La Superficie, Clarissa Gaona Romero, Laura Guzmán Abello, Carmen Quinteros-Reyes, Paraskevi Seferidi, Antonio Bernabe-Ortiz, Lindsey Pawlowski, Ellis Ballard

Social System Design Lab

El iceberg es una metáfora clásica que se aplica en diversas disciplinas más allá del pensamientosistémico. La metáfora describe una situación en la cual solo se observa la punta del iceberg, es decir solouna pequeña parte de la totalidad que no se puede ver en la superficie (la gran masa de hielo escondidadebajo de la superficie). En el pensamiento sistémico, se usa la metáfora del iceberg para pensar sobre loque está “bajo la superficie” impulsando los eventos que observamos (punta del Iceberg): (1) Patrones decomportamiento a lo largo del tiempo, (2) Estructuras del sistema que dan lugar a estos patrones …

Modelos Mentales, Clarissa Gaona Romero, Katherine Curi-Quinto, Laura Guzmán Abello, Carmen Quinteros-Reyes, Paraskevi Seferidi, Antonio Bernabe-Ortiz, Lindsey Pawlowski, Ellis Ballard

Social System Design Lab

Un principio central de la perspectiva del pensamiento sistémico es que las estructuras del sistema están respaldadas y permanecen por nuestras creencias, formas de pensar, y objetivos subyacentes (Ver Serie de Informes de Métodos 1.08). Por lo tanto, para transformar y rediseñar los sistemas también debemos transformar nuestra mentalidad. El propósito de este breve documento es introducir el concepto de modelos mentales y discutir cómo las herramientas de dinámica de sistemas se pueden usar para identificarlos, negociarlos y transformarlos.

An Overview Of Platforms To Support Online Gmb, Lucy Chin, Min Hu, Allie Farrell, Lindsey Pawlowski, Ellis Ballard

Social System Design Lab

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in the new reality of remote working and learning, forcing group model building practitioners to make an abrupt shift to online workshops. Like our peers, the Social System Design Lab (SSDL) at Washington University in St. Louis confronted this challenge by exploring what tools existed for adaptation and continued collaboration. The shift has not been easy, but it has revealed new insights that suggest areas to leverage the strengths of online GMB long after the pandemic comes to an end.

The purpose of this brief is to review a number of online platforms that group model …

Policy Design For Child Development Accounts: Parents' Perceptions, Sondra Beverly, Jin Huang, Margaret M. Clancy, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

In the SEED for Oklahoma Kids experiment, which features of Child Development Account (CDA) policy do study participants perceive as important for increasing the number of children who earn a college degree or trade school certificate? Which features do participants view as important for encouraging parents to save for their children’s postsecondary education?

This brief presents findings from a 2020 survey of parents in the experiment, when their children were about 13 years old. Results are for 1,666 parents (those whose children received the CDA in SEED OK and those whose children did not) and for subgroups defined by household …

Financial Capability And Asset Building In Social Work Practice, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

Acknowledging the potential benefits of training social workers to offer clients guidance on financial matters, the China Association of Social Work Education created the Financial Social Work Commission in 2020. This new unit within the association was designed to serve as a hub for research and insights to facilitate the development of financial capability and asset holding in vulnerable populations. The Commission promotes the training of social workers with the knowledge and skills required to integrate financial capability services into social work practice.

This Perspective presents the keynote address given by CSD Founding Director Michael Sherraden as part of “Theory …

Preparing Social Workers To Improve People’S Finances, Margaret S. Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

In 2020, the China Association of Social Work Education created the Financial Social Work Commission, acknowledging the potential benefits of equipping social workers to guide their clients in financial matters. But what do social workers need to know about finances, and how will they learn it?

In this Perspective, Margaret Sherraden shares an address given during “Localization of Financial Social Work Education: Goals, Textbook, and Strategies,” a panel discussion convened as part of Theory and Practice for Financial Social Work: Promoting Common Prosperity, the first national Forum of the Financial Social Work Commission, Beijing, China, January 8, 2022. Panelists discussed …

How The Senior Community Service Employment Program Influences Participant Well-Being: A Participatory Research Approach With Program Recommendations, Cal J. Halvorsen, Kelsey Werner, Elizabeth Mccolloch, Olga Yulikova

Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging

The federal Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) provides on-the-job training to people 55 years and older with incomes at or below 125% of the federal poverty level with multiple barriers to employment. This study examined the processes by which SCSEP may influence participant financial, physical, and mental well-being. We engaged 15 SCSEP participants and case managers over four virtual and one telephone session using a participatory research method called community-based system dynamics. Activities included identifying key problem trends, variable elicitation, developing a causal map, and identifying changes to the system to increase participant well-being. Respondents identified how individual, organizational, …

Aging In Nigeria: A Growing Population Of Older Adults Requires The Implementation Of National Aging Policies, Kingsley Chima Mbam, Cal J. Halvorsen, Uzoma Odera Okoye

Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging

While the continent of Africa currently has the lowest share of adults aged 60 and older in its population among all world regions, the total number of older Africans is projected to triple between 2020 and 2050. Nigeria—Africa’s leading economy and most populated country—has the highest number of older people in the continent and the 19th highest across the globe, with the population of Nigerians aged 65 and older projected to nearly triple by 2050. However, the increase in older Nigerians is occurring against the backdrop of extreme poverty, unsolved development problems, socioeconomic inequality, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and a decline …