Income Distribution Commons^™

If You Don’T Build It... Mexican Mobility Following The U.S. Housing Bust, Brian C. Cadena, Brian K. Kovak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This paper demonstrates the importance of earnings-sensitive migration in response to local variation in labor demand. We use geographic variation in the depth of the housing bust to examine its effects on the migration of natives and Mexican-born individuals in the U.S. We find a strong effect of the housing bust on the location choices of Mexicans, with movement of Mexican population away from U.S. states facing the largest declines in construction and movement toward U.S. states facing smaller declines. This effect operated primarily through interstate migration of Mexicans previously residing in the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, through …

Nebraska Immigration And Latino Issues Related Legislative Bills, Office Of Latino/Latin American Studies (Ollas)

Latino/Latin American Studies Other Publications

The year 2011 saw many Latino and Immigration-related bills in the Nebraska State Unicameral. View the OLLAS-created chart to read a summary.

The Poverty Of Wealth And Income In The United States, Luke E. G. Feudner

Professional Projects

An alternative poverty rate was calculated using poverty thresholds from the U.S. Census Bureau to assess income poverty and a similar set of thresholds at four months’ of the poverty threshold for annual income to assess wealth (i.e. net worth) poverty. Using point estimates derived from the multiple imputations of the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) between the years of 1989 and 2007, the findings revealed the percentage of households in poverty by both measures was 6% in 2007 compared to 11.1% of households experiencing poverty of income only and 22.4% experiencing a poverty of at least one of the …

The Gettysburg Economic Review, Volume 5, 2011

Gettysburg Economic Review

No abstract provided.

A Mixed-Methods Study Of Resident Readiness, Engagement, And Relocation During Mixed-Income Redevelopment, Laurie A. Walker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since 1990, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has supported mixed-income redevelopment (MIR) strategies to address the problems of concentrated urban poverty neighborhoods with traditional public housing structures. This study focused on two neighborhoods in Denver, Colorado, with more than 38% of the residents living in poverty, which are facing transit-oriented MIR in the coming years. Residents in both neighborhoods have engaged in formal planning processes and community organizing as a way to be prepared for the change.

The study posed three research questions: (1) what predicts a community's readiness for MIR, (2) what predicts resident involvement as …

A Study On The Productivity And Efficiency Effects Of Enterprise Reforms In China, Song Gao

Dissertations

This dissertation studies the progress and impacts of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) reforms in China. The primary interests center on impacts of non-ownershipchange reforms and privatization on Chinese SOEs’ productivity and efficiency. The research comprises of three major sections.

Section one briefly reviews the history of SOEs’ reform in China and examines the changes in some selected performance indicators with help of a comprehensive dataset on 863 Chinese firms from 1995 to 2001. In addition, causes of Chinese SOEs’ privatization and determinants of firms’ inefficiency are also studied.

Section two examines the effects of privatization and non-ownership-change reforms on firms’ productivity …

Recessions And The Social Safety Net: The Alternative Minimum Tax As A Countercyclical Fiscal Stabilizer, Brian Galle, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

As recent events illustrate, state finances are procyclical: during recessions, state revenues crash, worsening the effects of economic downturns. This problem is well known, yet persistent. We argue here that, in light of predictable federalism and political economy dynamics, states will be unable to change this situation on their own. Additionally, we note that many possible federal remedies may result in worse problems, such as by creating moral hazard that would induce states to take on excessively risky policy, both fiscal and otherwise. Thus, we argue that policymakers should consider so-called “automatic” stabilizers, such as are found in the federal …

Gender-Separate Education: The Effects On Student Achievement & Self-Esteem On Economically Disadvantaged Public Middle School Students In Philadelphia, Heather M. O'Neill, Allison Guerin

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

In 2003, three Philadelphia middle schools with similar demographics and failing student achievement levels were taken over by an educational management organization. Two were transformed into distinct single-sex academies within the original school buildings and a third remained coeducational. Students did not have the option where to attend, eliminating selection bias. Through funding from a Spencer Foundation grant, data was collected on 1,000 students for 2002-03 through 2004-05 to examine impacts of gender-segregation. We find students in single sex schools witness greater improvements in standardized test scores, with boys gaining the most, and no differences on Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale.

The Appalachian Regional Development Act And Economic Change, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

The Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965 is one of the longest serving place-based regional development programs in the U.S., and is the largest in terms of geographic scope. I use county-level data from the 1960 thru 2000 Decennial Censuses to evaluate the effect of ARDA on poverty rates and real per capita incomes in Appalachia. The intent to treat parameter is identified in a difference-in-difference-in-difference framework by comparing outcomes in Appalachia to her border counties. Additional knowledge of which counties were solely eligible for highway development funds under ARDA from those counties eligible for both highway as well as …

Does Race Based Redistricting Matter For Policy?, Ebonya Washington

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

During the 1990 congressional redistricting many states were mandated to create additional majority minority-resident districts in order to elect more minorities to Congress. Civil rights groups and Republicans cheered. The Party views Democratic districts stripped of Black voters as opportunities to repaint blue districts red. The academic literature agrees, attributing the Republican return to House control in 1994 to race based redistricting. However, this literature generally focuses on the district as the unit of analysis, a focus that is too narrow, as some districts gain Black residents while others lose them. I focus on states, the level at which redistricting …

Poverty, Inequality And Cost Of Living Differences, Enrico Moretti

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Metropolitan areas in the US are characterized by enormous differences in average income, earnings, and factor productivity. The income of individuals located in metropolitan areas at the top of the income distribution is more than double the income of observationally similar individuals located in metropolitan areas at the bottom of the distribution. These differences reflect, at least in part, variation in local productivity.

Why You Should Care About The Threatened Middle Class, Jill Littrell, Fred Brooks, Jan Ivery, Mary L. Ohmer

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In the last two decades, the income and security of the individual middle class worker has declined and the gap between the middle class and the wealthy has widened. We explain how this is bad for democracy, the economy, and the aggregate health of the nation. We examine the governmental policies and interventions that increased the middle class following the depression and maintained its vigor through the post-World War II period. The impetus for these changes in governmental policies in the 1930s was to end the Great Depression. We pose the question of whether a nation can recover from a …

Skew Selection Theory Applied To The Wealth And Welfare Of Nations, Susan F. Allen, Deby L. Cassill

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

According to skew selection theory, working citizens who build wealth and, at the same time, share portions of their wealth with those in need are more likely to survive economic downturns than citizens who hoard wealth. In this article, skew selection is employed as a theoreticalframework to support governmental efforts to develop social policies that protect the income of working citizens and, at the same time, provide for vulnerable, non-working children and elders. To illustrate its applicability, the social policies of Japan, Sweden and the United States-all of which are challenged by decaying ratios of working to non-working citizens-are compared …

The Interrelation Of Box Office Results How Does One Weekend’S Movie Attendance Affect The Next?, Drew Sullivan

Honors Capstone Projects - All

In this paper, I attempted to determine the relationship between a movie’s box office success and the immediate timing of its release. Considering the large investment that needs to be made in producing and distributing a major motion picture, a full understanding of the factors that affect its success is vital. One factor that has been historically underexplored is the impact of movies that are directly competing with each other at the box office. This has been due to limitations in data. However, using publicly available data I was able to put together a dataset that looked at box office …

The Omaha Site: Migrant Civil Society Under Construction Series On Latino Immigrant Civic Engagement, Lourdes Gouveia, Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, Yuriko Doku, Alejandra Toledo, Sergio Sosa

Latino/Latin American Studies Reports

Omaha was one of nine cities in the United States chosen by the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars to explore immigrant civic and political participation. Lourdes Gouveia and the OLLAS team, along with Sergio Sosa of the Heartland Workers Center, produced this bilingual report based on interviews and a round table with broad-based participation by the immigrant and Latino community.

Omaha es una de las nueve ciudades en los Estados Unidos que fué escogida por el Centro Internacional Woodrow Wilson para Académicos con el fin de examinar la participación cívica y política de los migrantes. Lourdes Gouveia con el …

The Impact Of U.S. Family Planning Programs On Fertility And Mortality: Evidence From The War On Poverty And Title X, Martha Bailey

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Over forty years ago, the U.S. government adopted a policy of funding domestic family planning services, and the effects of these programs have been debated ever since. Within an event-study framework, I exploit community-level variation in the timing of federal grants for family planning services under the Economic Opportunity Act (1965 to 1974) and Title X (1970 to 1980) to evaluate their impact. The results provide robust evidence that federal family planning grants reduced birth rates in funded communities by four percent within six years. I find no evidence that family planning grants reduced maternal or infant mortality rates.

Where The Ends Don’T Meet: Measuring Poverty And Self-Sufficiency Among Oregon’S Families, Melissa Rowe, Sheila A. Martin, Danan Gu, Webb Sprague

Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies Publications

This report uses the Self-Sufficiency Standard developed by Dr. Diana Pearce at the University of Washington to analyze the extent to which Oregon households earn enough money to meet their basic needs without a public subsidy. This standard, a vast improvement on the federal poverty level, accounts for differences in the cost of living based on family structure, age of children, and county of residence. Dr. Pearce has defined the income required to meet basic needs for every county in Oregon and a number of household types. A large number of Oregon households not considered poor by the federal poverty …

Mothers' Work And Children's Lives: Low-Income Families After Welfare Reform, Rucker C. Johnson, Ariel Kalil, Rachel E. Dunifon

Upjohn Press

This book examines the effects of work requirements imposed by welfare reform on low-income women and their families. The authors pay particular attention to the nature of work—whether it is stable or unstable, the number of hours worked in a week and the regularity and flexibility of work schedules. They also show how these factors make it more difficult for low-income women to balance their work and family requirements.

Notes On Poverty Traps And Appalachia, Steven Durlauf

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

In these notes, I provide some general ideas on how to conceptualize poverty traps and speculate on their applicability to understanding Appalachian poverty. My goal is to stimulate thinking on Appalachia that exploits contemporary perspectives in economics on the sources of persistent poverty and inequality. To do this, I focus on both the theory of poverty traps as well as issues in the econometric assessment of their empirical salience.

Assessing The Impact Of A Modernized Application Process On Florida’S Food Stamp Caseload, Colleen Heflin, Peter Mueser

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

In 2005, Florida implemented an internet-based service delivery system for eligibility determination in public assistance programs, including the Food Stamp, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the Medicaid programs. At the same time, Florida switched from a caseworker model to a technology-driven model and decreased staffing levels of employees involved in social service delivery. We conduct an evaluative case study of the effects of these policy changes on the Food Stamp caseload. In particular, we consider the impact on applications and the flows onto and off of the program. To answer these questions, we use administrative data from the …