Social Welfare Commons^™

Student Loans And Health-Related Financial Hardship, Sophia T. Anong, Robin Henager

Journal of Student Financial Aid

Research has shown that student loan borrowers in repayment exhibit physical and mental health problems. These can be exacerbated by and contribute to health-related financial hardship. We use the 2015 U.S. National Financial Capability Study to examine the likelihood of having past due medical bills and of avoiding health care services by not purchasing prescribed medication, skipping tests or follow-up with a doctor or not seeking care for a medical problem. Borrowers on income-driven repayment plans and those who made late payments are found to be more likely to have unpaid medical bills and to have avoided required medical attention. …

Domestic Workers In The Mountain West, Olivia K. Cheche, Saha Salahi, Katie M. Gilbertson, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr., Eshaan Vakil

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet explores the number of domestic workers employed in the Mountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah), as originally reported in the Economic Policy Institute’s “Domestic Workers Chartbook.” Data for domestic worker median wages compared to the median wages of nondomestic workers are also included.

Neo-Extracting Gilded Welfare States: A Comparative Study Of Extractivism And Latin American Welfare State Formation, Pabvitraa Ramcharan

Student Theses and Dissertations

This paper attempts to establish a stronger linkage between neo-extractivism and social welfare states in contemporary Latin America using both a micro and macro perspective. By emphasizing the human capital aspect of the welfare state’s role in promoting equitable redistribution and correcting market failures, this paper attempts to evaluate the extent to which extractive industries contribute to human capital formation. Due to the sectors’ large influence on the state and weak capacity to create employment, I develop the concept of the “gilded welfare state,” defined by the inability of extractive industries to ensure equal opportunity and generate formal employment despite …

Affordable Housing In San Francisco: A Historical Analysis Of Its Finances And Policies, Ricky H. Tran

Master's Projects and Capstones

The affordable housing crisis is not new to San Francisco. As it has been made clear several times, The Bay Area continues to face a crisis of a massive wealth disparity as housing prices continue to rise as incomes for the top earners have risen dramatically since 1999. In San Francisco, rents and housing prices are one of the highest in the nation, and people are facing rent burdens, in which a large portion of their income goes to rent, as for those with low and extremely low income are facing severe rent burdens, which take up more than 50% …

Understanding Modern History Of International Food Law Is Key To Building A More Resilient And Improved Global Food System, Michael T. Roberts

Journal of Food Law & Policy

This article advocates the need for a history of the development of modern international food law and suggests an analytical approach to complement the chronicling of events. Comprehension of this history will help elucidate the evolution of a complicated modern global food system, including its resiliency and vulnerability as demonstrated by Covid-19, thereby providing valuable context for change in the system where needed. This essay makes the case for such a history in three parts. First, it briefly demonstrates the need for a historical perspective through a critical examination of a journal article that speaks to Covid-19 food security in …

358— Educational Inequality: Contrasting Local And Federal Funding, Robbie Economou

GREAT Day Posters

For this project, I wanted to observe how the massive reliance on local funding through property taxes for public education in the U.S. exacerbates already existing class inequalities, which are therefore correlated with inequalities by race. A transition towards alternative forms of funding, such as increased federal funding, would help to amend these inequalities.

America's Best Cities: Mountain West Cities, Katie M. Gilbertson, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr., Fatma Nasoz

Cities & Metros

This fact sheet reports the rankings of Mountain West cities, based on perceived desirability for living, visiting, and investment. Resonance Consultancy’s “America’s Best Cities 2020,” report examines the nation’s largest cities on six key metrics: “Place,” “Prosperity,” “People,” “Product,” “Programming” and “Promotion.” Nine Mountain West cities are ranked within the top 100 in the United States.

Editorial - Subsistence Marketplaces: Journal, Knowledge-Practice Portal, And Organization, Madhu Viswanathan

Subsistence Marketplaces

Subsistence Marketplaces: Journal, Knowledge-Practice Portal and Organization

Municipal Equality Index (Mei) For Nevada Cities And Municipalities, Kristian Thymianos, Elia Del Carmen Solano-Patricio, Saha Salahi, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Cities & Metros

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Equality Federation Institute compiled a 2020 Municipal Equality Index (MEI) that creates a scorecard measuring inclusivity and livability for members of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans Queer Intersex and Asexual (LGBTQIA+) communities who live and work in major U.S. cities and municipalities. For the purposes of this fact sheet, data for 10 Nevada municipalities are examined and ranked.

The Case For Public Investment In Higher Pay For New York State Home Care Workers: Estimated Costs And Savings, Isaac Jabola-Carolus, Stephanie Luce, Ruth Milkman

Publications and Research

This report explores one potential solution to the mounting home care labor shortage in New York State: substantially raising wages for the state's home care workers. The analysis presents detailed projections, based on the best available data, of the economic effects of such an intervention, estimating the costs and benefits that would result. We find that public funding to raise home care wages would require significant resources, but those costs would be surpassed by the resulting savings, tax revenues, and economic spillover effects. The net economic gain would total at least $3.7 billion. Lifting wages would also help fill nearly …

Child Care Costs In The Mountain West, Saha Salahi, Kristian Thymianos, William E. Brown Jr., Caitlin J. Saladino

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines the cost of child care using data from the Care Index, a collaboration between New America, Care.com, and other organizations. Data for the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah are included in this document.

The Exploitation Or Protection Of Communities And Exploited Persons?, Spencer Boldt

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study was intended to dissect the inner workings of the newly implemented Bill C-36 in Canada, The Protection of Communities and Exploited Peoples Act through a mixed methods approach. This was done through comparing statistical research (demographics, crime data, and overall economic state) within Regina to interviews conducted with those individually involved in prostitution and the community of the city. This study was meant to draw out the differences between what the statistics depict, a growth in the overall safety of Regina, versus the perspectives gained from multiple interviewees. With this mixed method approach I have deduced that Bill …

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

The Effects Of Racial Capitalism On Poor White Laborers, Amy Whittaker

Liberal Studies (MA) Final Essays

While always remembering that racial capitalism’s very nature ensures that non-white Americans suffer incomparable racial oppression, this paper will endeavor to expose the devastation caused to American society as a whole by explaining the ways in which racial capitalism destroyed poor white labors ability to participate fully in the economic system and strangled its chances of living the American dream. It is my hope that by discussing the missing piece of the poor white laborers’ experience under racial capitalism will unite poor white laborers and poor black laborers to work together to end racial capitalism, policing, and the carceral system. …

The Affordable Care Act And Entrepreneurship Lock: An Updated Examination Of Employer-Based Healthcare’S Effect On Self-Employment By Demographic Group, Sean Ruddy

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper capitalizes on a natural experiment created by differences in Medicaid expansion under The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). A difference and difference model comparing states that did and did not expand Medicaid is conducted to investigate if providing an alternative and low-cost source of health insurance affects self-employment rates overall and across different demographic groups. The results suggest that living in a state that expanded Medicaid was associated with a 1.4 percent increase in the likelihood that an individual will be self-employed and that this effect is heterogeneous across different demographics, being largest among African Americans.

African Wildlife, Eco-Tourism & Covid, Andrew N. Rowan

WellBeing News

African wildlife conservation faces increasing economic pressure as a result of the loss of tourism due to the pandemic and other looming threats.

The Effects Of Admission To Jail On Crime Rate In Mclean County, Illinois, Derek Conley

Student Research – Stevenson Center

The relationship between crime and incarceration is growing in interest in the United States. The United States incarceration rate is often double or triple the rate of other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The hardline approach the United States has taken on crime has many citizens and academics questioning its effectiveness on achieving safer communities. Traditional theory suggests incarcerating individuals for deviant behavior reduces the crime rate through the mechanisms of incapacitation, deterrence, rehabilitation, and retribution. However, some scholars believe concentration of incarceration in neighborhoods disrupts the social fabric of the neighborhood and produces the opposite of …

Food Insecurity: A Closer Look At How Households Cope With Food Insecurity And How This Phenomenon Affects Their Overall Health, Burak O. Tan

Dissertations

This study focused on the lived experiences of low-income households who coped with food insecurity and explored their worldview on the health impacts of battling with this phenomenon in the Grand Rapids Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). While the main research question focused on how low-income households coped with food insecurity, the following were the focus of the research analysis and served as the empirically testable framework: a) addressing the impact of poverty on affordability of nutritious food, b) addressing the impact of food deserts on accessibility and availability of nutritious food, c) addressing the coping strategies used to battle food …

Who Benefits From Park And Recreation Improvements In San Francisco? A Case Study Of Recreation Center Renovations In San Francisco, Safia Belayadi

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study is to examine the efficacy of city policies undertaking public goods investments to benefit disadvantaged communities in San Francisco. Namely, is the process of improving the quality of public goods serving targeted populations, or does it lead to unintended consequences such as gentrification? I take advantage of the timing of city recreation center renovations and the synthetic control method to capture any difference in the proportion of users that is poor before and after the renovation date. I use San Francisco Recreation and Park Department registrant data containing user zip codes and census demographic data …

The Association Between Family Income And Adults’ Attitudes On Whether The Government Should Help The Poor, Emily Malloy

Honors Projects

This research examines whether people in different social classes have varying views on whether the government should help the poor and whether that depends on political affiliation. Income inequality has become a greater problem in the U.S. in recent decades. This means that the poor could require more assistance and it is important to know if the public thinks the government should help the poor. Knowing what influences public opinion on this issue could help policy makers make informed decisions about whether the government should help the poor. Data from the 2008 (N=2,023) and 2018 (N=2,348) General Social Survey (GSS) …

Racial Justice Is Climate Justice: Racial Capitalism And The Fossil Economy, Julius Mcgee, Patrick Trent Greiner

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The narrative of oppression moves through dialectical pressures. Capitalism evolved from the feudal order that preceded it, creating new forms of racial oppression that benefited an emerging ruling class [1]. Racial tensions evolve alongside economic oppression that subjugates labor to capital. The preceding racial order molds to emerging mechanisms of expropriation and exploitation by way of force and resistance. Beneath the surface of these tensions lies the interconnected threads of ecological and human expropriation. At the heart of all oppression, lies the manipulation of reproduction. The social processes necessary to reproduce black and brown communities, the ecological processes necessary to …

How Socialism Failed Venezuela, Ben Abrahamson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

In the 1970s, Venezuela was considered one of the wealthiest nations in the world. They enjoyed high oil prices after the discovery of OPEC, they were a democratized country in a continent where most of it was still undeveloped. Unfortunately, in the 1980s a major cut in oil prices caused economic turmoil, and leading into the 90s there were bloody riots, political disparity, attempted coups and building poverty. In 1998 came Hugo Chavez, a newly elected president to rid their economic issues and end corruption. However, that all turned out to be the opposite of what he did. The country …

Addressing Urban Income Inequality Through Education: A Case Study In Atlanta, Garrett Bronn

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

For decades, the income inequality gap between the rich and poor has continued to expand dramatically, with criticism of existing education systems often at the heart of the issue. Large urban cities are commonly at the forefront of the issue, given the plethora of teacher strikes in recent years. Events such as the 11-day Chicago teacher’s strike in October of 2019 that idled academics and college prep for 350,000 students, have highlighted many current education issues (Hauck, 2019). With underfunded and poorly equipped middle and high schools, students in poor and minority neighborhoods in cities are less prepared academically, ill …

Income Inequality, Progressive Taxation And Tax Expenditures, James R. Hines Jr.

Book Chapters

There are important and growing concerns about income inequality in the United States and other high-income countries. These concerns reflect rising apprehension about the political and social consequences of inequality and worries that the advance of technology, expanding international trade and investment, and other economic developments may have significantly widened income gaps in recent decades and will continue to do so in the future. In the United States, these concerns have prompted renewed calls for political activism and vigorous searches for policy measures that might improve the relative economic positions of low- and middle-income Americans.

There are many ways in …

The Right To Housing In Spain: Community Action And Alternative Housing Models, Georgia Sparks

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The right to housing is guaranteed by Spain's constitution, the principles of the European Union, and U.N. human rights treaties to which Spain is signatory, yet Spain scarcely provides affordable housing and leaves its citizens struggling with poverty and unable to find a place to live. Unlike much of the rest of Europe, Spain’s social rented sector represents less than 1% of its total housing stock. Through policies that favor homeownership, promote the real estate market, and privatize social housing, Spain has left its citizens reliant on the private market for their fundamental need for housing. Social movements and nonprofit …

Debt Bondage: How Private Collection Agencies Keep The Formerly Incarcerated Tethered To The Criminal Justice System, Bryan L. Adamson

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article examines the constitutionality of statutes which allow courts to transfer outstanding legal financial obligations to private debt collection agencies. In Washington State, the clerk of courts can transfer the legal financial obligation of a formerly incarcerated person if he or she is only thirty days late making a payment. Upon transfer, the debt collection agencies can assess a “collection fee” of up to 50% of the first $100.000 of the unpaid legal financial obligation, and up to 35% of the unpaid debt over $100,000. This fee becomes part of the LFO debt imposed at sentencing, and like that …

Do Public Program Benefits Crowd Out Private Transfers In Developing Countries? A Critical Review Of Recent Evidence, Plamen Nikolov, Matthew Bonci

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Precipitated by rapid globalization, rising inequality, population growth, and longevity gains, social protection programs have been on the rise in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in the last three decades. However, the introduction of public benefits could displace informal mechanisms for risk-protection, which are especially prevalent in LMICs. If the displacement of private transfers is considerably large, the expansion of social protection programs could even lead to social welfare loss. In this paper, we critically survey the recent empirical literature on crowd-out effects in response to public policies, specifically in the context of LMICs. We review and synthesize patterns from …

The Constitution And The Tennô – A Trial, Ernst Lokowandt

Japanese Society and Culture

For some time now, I have been thinking about the role of the Tennô versus the Constitution. The religious activities of the Tennô, be it the places of ceremonies, the succession ceremonies, or the yearly ceremonies, are according to most of the constitutional scholars, against the constitution. The present day chaos was made by the GHQ, who at the same time as arranging for the separation of religion and state they also held fast to the Emperor, in order to minimize the number of occupation soldiers and to institute the indirect occupation of Japan. The Emperor fell in between these …

The Folly Of Credit As Pandemic Relief, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Christopher K. Odinet

Scholarly Works

Within weeks of the coronavirus pandemic appearing in the United States, the American economy came to a grinding halt. The unprecedented modern health crisis and the collapsing economy forced Congress to make a critical choice about how to help American families survive financially. Congress had two basic options. It could enact policies that provided direct and meaningful financial support to people, without the necessity of later repayment. Or it could pursue policies that temporarily relieved people from their financial obligations, but required that they eventually pay amounts subject to payment moratoria later.

In passing the CARES Act, Congress primarily chose …

Healthy And Unhealthy Responses To American Democratic Institutional Failure, Thomas D'Anieri

CMC Senior Theses

I have set out on the hunch that politics in America “feels different,” that we are frustrated both with our institutions as well as with one another. First, I will seek to empirically verify this claim beyond mere “feelings.” If it can be shown that these kinds of discontent genuinely exist to the extent that I believe they do, I will then explain why people feel this way and why things are different this time from the economic, political, and social points of view. Next, I will examine two potential responses, what I will call the populist and the institutional …