Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

The Employment Situation Of Veterans: November 2022, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Veteran employment trends and statistics among various demographics during November 2022

Older Adults On Snap Experience Gaps In Benefits, Colleen Heflin, Leslie Hodges, Irma A. Arteaga, Chinedum O. Ojinnaka, Gabriella Alphonso

Population Health Research Brief Series

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest food and nutrition assistance program in the United States. Burdens associated with SNAP recertification often lead to administrative churn, when a household experiences a gap in SNAP benefit receipt. Older adults are at risk of experiencing benefit gaps, which may negatively impact their health and nutrition. This brief summarizes results of a recent study that examined administrative churn among Missouri SNAP participants aged 60 years and older. The authors call for program changes that reduce the frequency and duration of churn among older adults.

Limited Cognitive Ability May Reduce Snap Participation Among Older Adults, Colleen Heflin, Dongmei Zuo, Gabriella Alphonso

Population Health Research Brief Series

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest food and nutrition assistance program in the U.S. For older adults currently on SNAP, meeting administrative requirements to remain on SNAP is difficult due to short recertification time frames, a lack of social support, and cognitive impairment. This brief summarizes results of a recent study examining the impact of cognitive decline on SNAP participation among adults aged 60 yrs. and older. Findings demonstrate that cognitive decline and living alone are associated with reduced SNAP participation, with older females being the most affected.

The Employment Situation Of Veterans: October 2022, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Veteran employment trends and statistics among various demographics during October 2022

Conservative State Policies Contribute To Higher Mortality Rates Among Working-Age Americans, Jennifer Karas Montez, Nader Mehri, Shannon M. Monnat

Population Health Research Brief Series

The risk of dying during working ages (25 to 64) is high, rising, and unequal in the United States. Working-age mortality rates are much higher in some states than others. Part of the explanation may relate to differing policies across states that affect health. While some states enact policies that invest in people’s economic, social, and behavioral wellbeing, others enact policies that are potentially harmful to health. Using mortality data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this study examined how state policies on criminal justice, taxes, environment, firearms, marijuana, health care, labor, and tobacco were associated with …

Cities In A Pandemic: Evidence From China, Badi H. Baltagi, Ying Deng, Jing Li, Zhenlin Yang

Center for Policy Research

This paper studies the impact of urban density, city government efficiency, and medical resources on COVID-19 infection and death outcomes in China. We adopt a simultaneous spatial dynamic panel data model to account for (i) the simultaneity of infection and death outcomes, (ii) the spatial pattern of the transmission, (iii) the inter-temporal dynamics of the disease, and (iv) the unobserved city- and time-specific effects. We find that, while population density increases the level of infections, government efficiency significantly mitigates the negative impact of urban density. We also find that the availability of medical resources improves public health outcomes conditional on …

The Employment Situation Of Veterans: September 2022, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Veteran employment trends and statistics among various demographics during September 2022

Beyond The Classroom: The Broader Effects Of Public Preschool Expansion On Children’S Early Educational Experiences And Early Literacy Skills, Michah Rothbart, Taryn Morrissey

Center for Policy Research

While previous research documents direct benefits of preschool for those who attend, less is known about how targeted expansions of public preschool to low-income households affects children’s early educational experiences, preschool attendance patterns, and school readiness in a broader community. This study uses administrative data from Virginia of first-time kindergarteners from 2011 to 2019 (about 630,000 students) and a discrete increase in targeted public pre-K (VPI+) to better understand the effects of expanding means-tested public preschool on patterns of prekindergarten participation and school readiness throughout the community. We find decreased probability that children in expansion districts spend no time in …

Hispanics And Latinos In The Military: The Path From Service To Veteran Entrepreneurship, Rosalinda V. Maury, Mirza Tihic, Adam Pritchard

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief provides highlights from the 2021 National Survey of Military-Affiliated Entrepreneurs (NSMAE) focusing on Hispanic, Latino/a/x, or Spanish origin (for example Mexican or Mexican American, Salvadoran, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Colombian, etc.) veteran entrepreneurs. NSMAE monitors trends in the activity, needs, and economic, social, and policy barriers of military-affiliated entrepreneurs in the United States.

The Employment Situation Of Veterans: August 2022, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Veteran employment trends and statistics among various demographics during August 2022

Allowing Cities To Mandate Employer Paid Sick Leave Could Reduce Deaths Among Working-Age Adults, Douglas A. Wolf, Jennifer Karas Montez, Shannon M. Monnat

Population Health Research Brief Series

Paid sick leave is good for health, yet there is no federal paid sick leave mandate, and U.S. states are increasingly preempting their city and county governments from mandating employer paid sick leave. This brief describes how working-age (ages 25-64) mortality rates from several external causes of premature death (suicide, homicide, drug overdose, alcohol poisoning, and transport accidents) from 1999 to 2019 may have been lower if states had not preempted cities and counties from mandating paid sick leave. The authors find that working-age mortality rates could have been over 7.5% lower in 2019 in cities and counties that were …

Sports Participation And Labor Market Outcomes: A Correspondence Study, Laura Lorena Rodriguez Ortiz

Dissertations - ALL

Discrimination contributes to gaps in employment between Whites and Blacks and increases racial inequality. Young Blacks, ages 18 to 19, are twice more likely to be unemployed compared to Whites (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015). This dissertation is the first study, to my knowledge, to rely on an experimental design to examine whether participation in high school sports affects labor market discrimination. This dissertation uses a correspondence study in which 6,000 fictional resumes are sent to real job openings in Chicago, Dallas, and New York. Call-backs are recorded, and any differences in call-back rates are considered evidence of discrimination. All …

Public Administrator Aversion To Randomized Controlled Trials, Emily Bryn Cardon

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines whether public administrators are averse to randomized controlled trials, and why. More specifically, it explores whether public administrators are reluctant or opposed to conducting RCTs for the evaluation of social welfare programs in situations where they would help to answer an important and useful policy question and are feasible to conduct. While RCTs are widely used to evaluate clinical interventions and practices, they are used far less often in social policy. I first propose a conceptual framework for understanding the public administrator’s decision-making process as they contemplate whether to conduct an RCT, outlining nine factors that likely …

The Conditional Mode In Parametric Frontier Models, William C. Horrace, Hyunseok Jung, Yi Yang

Center for Policy Research

We survey formulations of the conditional mode estimator for technical inefficiency in parametric stochastic frontier models with normal errors and introduce new formulations for models with Laplace errors. We prove the conditional mode estimator converges pointwise to the true inefficiency value as the noise variance goes to zero. We also prove that the conditional mode estimator in the normal-exponential model achieves near-minimax optimality. Our minimax theorem implies that the worst-case risk occurs when many firms are nearly efficient, and the conditional mode estimator minimizes estimation risk in this case by estimating these small inefficiency firms as efficient. Unlike the conditional …

The Employment Situation Of Veterans: July 2022, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Veteran employment trends and statistics among various demographics during July 2022

Expansions In The U.S. Child Care And Development Block Grant Improved Program Stability, Hyojeong Kim, Colleen Heflin, Taryn Morrissey

Population Health Research Brief Series

Child care is necessary for most parents to work and serves as an important developmental context for children. Yet many low-income families struggle with the high cost of child care. The child care subsidy program is designed to help low-income working families pay for child care. In 2018, Congress substantially increased funding for child care through the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) to states, enabling them to make improvements to their child care subsidy programs. This brief summarizes the policy changes made in Virginia and describes how those changes improved child care subsidy stability and participation in that …

National Food Security, Immigration Reform, And The Importance Of Worker Engagement In Agricultural Guestworker Debates, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern

Food Studies - All Scholarship

This article looks at the United States’ federal H-2A Temporary Agricultural Visa Program and reforms proposed by the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. In this policy analysis, we draw on media content analysis and qualitative interviews to compare the viewpoints of farmers, workers, grower and worker advocacy groups, intermediary agents, and politicians. We find that perspectives on the program are dependent upon actors’ level of direct interaction with workers. Moderate-sized farmers and regionally based worker advocacy groups tend to be the most concerned with day-to-day program operations and fair working conditions. In contrast, national-level advocacy groups, intermediary agents, and politicians are …

The Politics Of Repeal And Replace: Testing The Limits Of The Affordable Care Act's Behavioral Policy Feedbacks, Emma Clare Dreher

Dissertations - ALL

What happens when a policy with millions of beneficiaries is threatened? The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been under attack since before it was signed into law, culminating in its only legislative challenge under the Trump administration in 2017. While we know that policies like the ACA produce policy feedbacks that affect policymaking and shape policy attitudes, less is known about behavioral feedback effects that serve to mobilize beneficiaries to protect and maintain their health insurance benefits in the face of ACA threat. This dissertation leverages a 3-paper design to evaluate under what conditions threat facilitates behavioral change, and how …

Three Essays On Pupil Transportation, Christopher Rick

Dissertations - ALL

In this dissertation, I examine the link between pupil transportation policy and three outcomes.

The first paper exploits idiosyncratic variation in the percentage of weekdays that are instructional school days in a month and variation in pupil transportation spending within districts over time. I build a rich, monthly, longitudinal data set for congestion, school days, and transportation policy for 51 cities from 2013 to 2019 and find congestion is significantly higher on school days and pupil transportation alleviates congestion caused by school children's travel.

The second paper uses a difference-in-differences design to answer whether desegregation court order release delivered the …

Three Essays On Education And Childhood Health, Stephanie Grau Coffey

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is comprised of three essays on education and childhood health. Each chapter examines the effect of health or health insurance coverage during childhood on schooling outcomes. Chapters 1 and 3 estimate the impact of insurance coverage for disability-related healthcare on academic and behavioral outcomes for students with disabilities. Chapter 1 exploits variation in Medicaid coverage for mental and behavioral healthcare generated by the Rosie D. vs. Patrick class action lawsuit. The resulting reforms improved outcomes for students diagnosed with an emotional disturbance and enabled them to be educated in more inclusive settings. The attendance rate for students with …

Three Essays On Urban Property Taxes, Yoon-Jung Choi

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation consists of three essays that examine the economic and fiscal effects of property tax policies in urban areas. The dissertation aims to expand current understanding of urban property tax dynamics and fragmentation features.In the first chapter, titled "Property Tax Interaction among Overlapping Local Jurisdictions: Quasi-experimental Evidence from School Bond Referenda," I empirically examine interactive behaviors of local jurisdictions that are not perfectly overlapping. This topic remains largely underexplored in current scholarship. I specifically estimate the causal effect of a property tax increase by a school district on the fiscal decisions of overlapping municipal governments using both regression discontinuity …

Three Essays At The Intersection Of Child Welfare And Public Policy, Mattie Mackenzie-Liu

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is comprised of three essays which examine policy relevant issues in the child welfare system. In the United States the goal of the child welfare system is to protect the well-being of children by ensuring their safety and promoting permanency. Children typically become involved with the child welfare system due to an allegation of neglect or child maltreatment. If the allegation is substantiated, the government can take custody of the children, remove them from their homes, and place them in foster care. All three of these papers examine foster care outcomes. Removing a child from their family is …

The Employment Situation Of Veterans: June 2022, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Veteran employment trends and statistics among various demographics during June 2022

The Wqw Annual Program Report -- July 2022, Bonnie Chapman Beers, Keoki Spaulding, Kicia Sears

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

In early 2021, Warriors & Quiet Waters engaged the Evaluation and Capacity Building team at the IVMF to help measure and communicate the impact of their programs and better tell the story of the participant journey to thriving. The purpose of this evaluation was to test the hypothesis that participants experience a type of transformation or improvement during or immediately after a Fishing Expedition (FX), and that this effect is sustained for some individuals or can be enhanced through participation in additional FXs. Overall, this evaluation found that survey respondents reported improvements in nearly all domains investigated, including the value …

Data Brief: Women Veteran Entrepreneurs - 2022, Rosalinda V. Maury, Mirza Tihic, Adam Pritchard

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief provides highlights from the 2021 National Survey of Military-Affiliated Entrepreneurs (NSMAE) focusing on female veteran entrepreneurs. NSMAE monitors trends in the activity, needs, and economic, social, and policy barriers of military-affiliated entrepreneurs in the United States. This annual survey and forthcoming public dataset will be an enduring source of current insights for public and private sector leaders, policymakers, and community-based organization on systemic barriers to and drivers of entrepreneurial success among veterans and their family members

The Employment Situation Of Veterans: May 2022, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Veteran employment trends and statistics among various demographics during May 2022

Three Essays On The Economics Of Education, Rachel Jarrold-Grapes

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is comprised of three essays on the economics of education. The first and third chapters examine marijuana legalization and its effects on students, while the second chapter examines the impact of pension incentives on teacher quality.The first chapter examines the extent to which there are negative spillovers of recreational marijuana legalization on underage marijuana use and educational outcomes. I use two complementary identification strategies that rely on plausibly exogenous spatial and temporal variation in access to marijuana in Oregon. In November of 2014, Oregon passed Measure 91, a referendum to legalize recreational marijuana. Unlike other legal states, Oregon …

Civil Rights, Firearm Safety, And Environmental Protection Policies Predict Better Health Among U.S. Midlife Adults, Blakelee R. Kemp, Jacob M. Grumbach, Jennifer Karas Montez

Population Health Research Brief Series

Americans suffer worse health and shorter lives than do people in most other high-income countries. The poor health and early death of many Americans are pronounced in certain states. One explanation may be the dramatic changes in the policy environment in recent decades, particularly the polarization in state policies. This research brief examines the association between several state policies and self-rated health among adults ages 45-64 from 1993 to 2016. Findings show that more liberal versions of certain state policies, namely civil rights, firearm safety, and environmental protection are associated with better health.

The Employment Situation Of Veterans: April 2022, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Veteran employment trends and statistics among various demographics during April 2022

The Employment Situation Of Veterans: March 2022, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Veteran employment trends and statistics among various demographics during March 2022.