Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Educational Spending: Kentucky Vs. Other States, William Hoyt, Christopher Jepsen, Kenneth R. Troske

CBER Research Report

Excerpts from the executive summary:

The passage of the Kentucky Educational Reform Act (KERA) in 1990 had a dramatic impact on the funding of primary and secondary education in the state. The amount of money spent on education increased significantly with the passage of KERA with districts in rural areas of the state experiencing the largest growth in spending (Hoyt, 1999). This has led to a decline in the disparity between rural and urban districts in education spending. However, despite the increase in educational spending, Kentucky still lags behind the typical state in the U.S. in spending per student (Troske, …

Changes In The Distribution Of Income Among Single Mother Families: Murphy Brown Meets Inequality, Christopher Bollinger, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

We document the demographic and economic forces underlying changes in income inequality among single mother families over the past three decades in the United States. Using decomposable measures of after-tax income-to-needs inequality, we examine within- and between-group inequality based on education attainment, age, past marital status, race, and employment status. We also conduct income factor decompositions to quantify the relative contributions of earnings, transfers, other income, and taxes to inequality. Our results from the March Current Population Survey show that income-to-needs inequality rose nearly 30 percent between 1979 and 2005. The demographic decompositions indicate that most of the change in …

Distributing Discipline: Race, Politics, And Punishment At The Frontlines Of Welfare Reform, Richard Fording, Joe Soss, Sanford F. Schram

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Numerous studies have confirmed that race plays an important role in shaping public preferences toward both redistribution and punishment. Likewise, studies suggest that punitive policy tools tend to be adopted by state governments in a pattern that tracks with the racial composition of state populations. Such evidence testifies to the enduring power of race in American politics, yet it has limited value for understanding how disciplinary policies get applied to individuals in implementation settings. To illuminate the relationship between race and the application of punitive policy tools, we analyze sanction patterns in the TANF program. Drawing on a model of …

The Effects Of Food Stamps On Exiting Welfare And Becoming Employed For Welfare Recipients, Charles Baum

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Welfare reform’s success encouraging employment may be affected by the federal Food Stamp program because many households receive welfare and Food Stamps. Food Stamp benefits could discourage employment because benefits are reduced proportionally with income; alternatively, it could encourage employment by increasing stability and allowing more resources to be allocated toward employment-related expenses. I examine the effects of Food Stamps on exiting welfare and becoming employed for welfare recipients. Results suggest, if anything, that Food Stamps discourage employment, and such benefits may discourage transitions off welfare, too. If so, then it may be necessary to study the determinants of welfare …

Welfare Reform And Juvenile Arrests, Tami Gurley-Calvez, Bethany Claus Widick

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Social policy, such as the legalization of abortion and the federal bans on lead in the 1970s, has been shown to significantly impact crime rates. With recent increases in juvenile arrests and violent crime rates, we explore whether further social policy—namely the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) welfare reform—has had an impact on crime.

There are various mechanisms by which the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, created by the 1996 PRWORA welfare reform, may influence criminal activity, especially among older children. Many welfare recipients were required to participate in work and education activities, which …

Distributional Effects Of Programmatic Features Of Medicaid/Schip On Transitions From Private Insurance Coverage Among Us Low-Income Children: A Dynamic Approach, Adetokunbo B. Oluwole

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

The goal of this study is to evaluate the effects of Medicaid/SCHIP eligibility and programmatic features on transitions from private insurance coverage among samples of American low-income children using monthly data from the 2001 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a nationally representative data set. The estimation approach combines multilevel modeling and event history analysis, including a robust array of variables measuring programmatic features, individual child, family, and state attributes. Logistic regression results do not indicate an adverse effect of expanded Medicaid/SCHIP eligibility on private insurance coverage. Results also suggest that states which established stand-alone SCHIP …

Home Buying In New Orleans Before And After Katrina Patterns By Space, Race, And Income, Dan Immergluck, Yun Sang Lee

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Natural disasters can conceivably have significant impacts on the “neighborhood sorting” of different racial or economic groups across intrametropolitan space. Using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data we examine mortgage-financed homebuying activity within the New Orleans MSA before and after Hurricane Katrina. We find that, while the total amount of homebuying in the 7-parish New Orleans MSA was relatively unchanged between 2004 and 2006, homebuying in the city declined significantly, and declined most in places experiencing severe storm damage. We also find that after Hurricane Katrina, the proportion of homebuyers in the region and the city who were African-American or low-income …

High School Peer Networks And College Success: Lessons From Texas, Jason Fletcher, Marta Tienda

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This paper uses administrative data from the University of Texas-Austin to examine whether high school peer networks at college entry influence college achievement, measured by grade point average (GPA) and persistence. For each freshman cohort from 1993 through 2003 we calculate the number and ethnic makeup of college freshmen from each Texas high school, which we use as a proxy for freshmen “peer network.” Empirical specifications include high school fixed effects to control for unobservable differences across schools that influence both college enrollment behavior and academic performance. Using an IV/fixed effects strategy that exploits the introduction and expansion of the …

Agglomeration Economies And Geographic Concentration Of Manufacturing In Ukraine, Volodymyr Vakhitov

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

As a post-Soviet economy, Ukraine has inherited substantial production assets and qualified personnel. However, the economy was dominated by large-scale enterprises designed for much bigger markets. After the collapse of the Soviet Union Ukrainian firms faced lack of planning, breaks in contacts with their former suppliers and customers, and distortion of prices. There was a clear need in restructuring of the entire economy. Restructuring included splitting firms into smaller parts and privatization. The first phase of transition was completed by 2000 when the output grew for the first time after a long recession in nineties, and most firms became private …

The Impact Of Revenue Diversification And Economic Base On Revenue Stability: An Empirical Analysis Of County And State Governments, Wenli Yan

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

In recent decades, revenue diversification has become a prevalent practice in state and local government finance. The trend of revenue diversification, according to the portfolio theory, has far-reaching implication for public financial management as it may change revenue stability, which has been an important policy objective for state and local government administrators. This study explores how revenue diversification affects revenue stability from both empirical and theoretical perspectives. Drawing on portfolio theory and regional science literature, this study develops a theoretical framework to explain how the effect of revenue diversification on revenue volatility of sub-national governments varies in terms of its …

Economic Growth In Kentucky: Why Does Kentucky Lag Behind The Rest Of The South?, Christopher Jepsen, Kenneth Sanford, Kenneth R. Troske

CBER Research Report

Excerpts from the executive summary:

Kentucky has consistently been one of the poorest states in the country between 1939 and the present. On top of this already low level of income, Kentucky has experienced fairly slow growth in output in recent years. Between 1997 and 2004, Kentucky had an average annual growth in real gross state product (GSP) of 1.6 percent, ranking 43 rd in terms of growth in GSP relative to the rest of the states.

In contrast to Kentucky’s relatively stagnant growth, many of Kentucky’s neighbors, especially to the south, have experienced relatively rapid growth in average earnings …

Three Essays On Regional Economic Integration And Exchange Rate Regimes, Xiaodan Zhao

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three independent essays addressing several key issues related to the empirical application of optimum currency area. The first essay explores the features of the CFA franc zone by operationalizing Robert Mundell’s (1952) criteria for an optimum currency area. A vector autoregression method is used in modeling national outputs as determined by global, regional and country-specific shocks. It finds that domestic outputs of the CFA franc zone countries are strongly influenced by country-specific shocks. These results suggest that the CFA franc zone countries are structurally different from each other and the monetary union may have been a …

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2008, Kenneth R. Troske, John Garen, Devanathan Sudharshan, Roy A. Sigafus

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

No abstract provided.