Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Why Are So Many Americans On Food Stamps? The Role Of The Economy, Policy, And Demographics, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

1 in 7 Americans received assistance from SNAP in FY2012, which is a rate 141 percent higher than in FY2000, but only 59 percent higher than in FY1980. In this chapter I describe the socioeconomic and policy climate in recent decades that had bearing on SNAP participation, along with a formal empirical analysis of those determinants and detailed simulations of the relative contributions of the economy, policy, and demographics to changes in SNAP participation over time. The results suggest that SNAP is operating effectively as an automatic fiscal stabilizer—nearly 50 percent of the increase in participation from 2007-2011 is due …

The Impact Of Government Policies On Access To Broadband, James Prieger

James E. Prieger

With a new focus for federal universal service programs on broadband and the NTIA BTOP funding for broadband adoption projects, recent years have been “exciting times” for those interested in broadband policy aimed at stimulating adoption. While most of the recent programs are still too new to be evaluated rigorously, lessons from older academic study can inform our expectations and lend guidance toward evaluating program success. In this brief work, I review what we know from the last decade and a half of literature on the impact of regulation on broadband adoption, discuss the (mostly woeful) attempts at evaluating adoption …

Health System Contributions To Public Health Activities Amid Policy And Economic Change: Estimating Complementarities, Substitutions, And Network Effects, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

Research Objective: The Affordable Care Act created new incentives for hospitals, insurers, employers, public health agencies, and others to contribute to activities designed to promote health and prevent disease an injury, potentially changing the structure of public health delivery systems and expanding the delivery of strategies that improve population health. At the same time, the economic recession has constrained government and private sector spending on health and health care, necessitating changes in the scope and scale of public health delivery. This study uses data from the 1998-2012 National Longitudinal Survey of Public Health Systems to examine: (1) the extent and …

New Minimum Wage Research: Symposium Introduction, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The passage of the 1989 FLSA amendments stimulated a new wave of research on the effects of minimum wage legislation, and five of the resulting papers are gathered together in this symposium. Four of these are revisions of papers that were presented at the ILR-Cornell Institute for Labor Market Policies/Princeton University Industrial Relations Section Conference, "New Minimum Wage Research," which was held at Cornell University on November 15, 1991. These papers, as well as the fifth paper, which was contributed by one of the conference participants after the conference was concluded, have all been subject to a refereeing process. …

Enhancing The Attractiveness Of Research To Female Faculty, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] CSWEP has long been concerned about the underrepresentation of women in faculty positions at major research universities. I have been charged by the committee with enumerating a set of policies that might enhance the attractiveness of research universities to female faculty. After presenting some data that suggest the magnitude of the underrepresentation problem, I do so below. In each case, I sketch the pros and cons of the policy. Although the focus is on increasing the attractiveness of research universities to female faculty, many of the policies would increase the attractiveness of academic careers per se to new female …

Managing Social Security Disability & Other Public Benefits: Development Of A Guide For Consumers And Providers, Stephanie L. Derochers

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

One in five Americans has a disability, making it the largest minority group in the U.S. (Soffer, McDonald, & Blanck, 2010). In 2011, 13.4 million working-aged adults received a disability cash benefit from the Social Security Administration (Kregel, 2012).

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is the federal agency responsible for managing, executing and overseeing retirement, survivor, old-age and disability benefits. There are over 1,500 Social Security offices and over 65,000 employees nationwide (SSA, 2013). SSA manages at least five disability benefit programs: Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), Disabled Widow(er) Benefit (DWB), Childhood Disability Benefit (CDB), though …

The Impact Of Government Policies On Access To Broadband, James Prieger

School of Public Policy Working Papers

With a new focus for federal universal service programs on broadband and the NTIA BTOP funding for broadband adoption projects, recent years have been “exciting times” for those interested in broadband policy aimed at stimulating adoption. While most of the recent programs are still too new to be evaluated rigorously, lessons from older academic study can inform our expectations and lend guidance toward evaluating program success. In this brief work, I review what we know from the last decade and a half of literature on the impact of regulation on broadband adoption, discuss the (mostly woeful) attempts at evaluating adoption …

Steam...Now!, John Eger

The STEAM Journal

With America slowly awakening to the need to turn out creative and innovative workers who can join the 21^st century (its already 2012) workplace -- because they have the new thinking skills --we have to change the current emphasis on STEM, for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math to STEAM, by insuring that the whole brain is nurtured through the arts: thus STEAM.

Symposium Report: Findings From The Research Roundtable On The Economic And Community Impact Of Broadband, Edward Feser, John Horrigan, William Lehr

Edward J Feser

In December 2012, a group of experts spanning disciplines and practice in the field of broadband policy met to discuss how the research community can better serve state and local policymakers and other stakeholders. This group of subject matter experts was convened to examine how best to measure the economic impact of state and national broadband deployment and capacity/adoption building efforts. The impetus for the symposium stemmed from the widespread view that there is a deficit of research, standards, and measurements to adequately inform the widely acknowledged view that broadband Internet is a driver of sustainable economic and community development. …

The Evolution Of Revolution: Is Splintering Inevitable?, Atin Basu Choudhary, Laura Razzolini

Atin Basu Choudhary

We use an evolutionary model to study splintering in rebels’ groups. We assume that rebels possess cultural traits that encourage cooperation, defection (splintering) or some sort of trigger behavior like Tit-For-Tat. We characterize the dynamic process through which the rebels’ discount rate determines whether splintering will occur in the population, even when cooperation is efficient. Contrary to the usual Folk Theorem prediction, we show that, even when rebels are extremely patient, cooperation may not evolve if the initial distribution of cultures in the population is not favorable. Thus, political actions by the states or governments that make rebels impatient may …

Stasis And Change In Environmental Law: The Past, Present And Future Of The Fordham Environmental Law Review, Gerald S. Dickinson

Articles

The past twenty years of environmental law are marked as much by legislative stasis as by profound change in the way that lawyers, policymakers, and scholars interact with the field. Although no new federal legislation was passed over the past two decades, much has changed about the field of environmental law. This change is the result of a set of conceptual and legal challenges to the field posed by intellectual and policy movements that took root in the early 1990s. The intellectual and policy movements that have most profoundly shaped the field of environmental law in the past twenty years …

Religious Identity And The Provision Of Public Goods: Evidence From The Indian Princely States, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

Religious identity affects preferences and can consequently affect policy. We propose two mechanisms through which a ruler's religious identity can affect public good provision: i) greater provision of goods in regions where more subjects are the ruler's co-religionists, and ii) lower provision of goods where private markets provide a substitute to the ruler's co-religionists. Empirically, identifying the causal effect of religious identity on policy is often impossible, since the religious identity of rulers rarely changes over time and place. We address this problem by exploiting the variation in the religion of rulers in the Indian Princely States in the early …