Distributions of genetic markers in United States populations: I. Blood group and secretor systems

All published and unpublished population frequency data that could be located for U.S. populations are tabulated and presented for the blood group and secretor systems. Results obtained by combining data for comparable racial/ethnic groups are also presented. The results obtained with combined data may give better information on frequencies for the U.S. population at large than is obtainable from studies conducted in restricted geographic areas.     

An Analysis of Welfare Effects of Legislative Term Limits

This paper analyzes the welfare effects of term limits forstate legislators. Legislators tend to pursue their ownobjectives and deviate from the interests of voters as theystay longer in office. However, such long-term incumbentsbecome more productive in transferring wealth to theirconstituents due to seniority they gain, and voters re-electthe incumbent. Term limits reduce the maximum seniority of adistrict's legislator and of other districts' legislators aswell, affecting the relative seniority of the legislator.Thus, the legislator gains relative seniority sometimes andloses other times under term limits. As a consequence, votersof a district may or may not benefit from term limits. Thewelfare effects of term limits depend crucially on the shapeof the voters' utility function.     

Predicting adult approval of corporal punishment from childhood parenting experiences

This study explores the relationship between mothers' approval of corporal punishment and the degree to which they themselves were subjected to violence as children. Considered as additional contributing factors are: (1) whether the mothers as children were punished by their own parents, (2) whether they perceived such punishment as unfair, and (3) the degree of parental nurture they experienced as children. The sample consisted of 330 new mothers whose mother and father both lived in the home when they were 14 years of age. Respondents were interviewed at home one to two months following their infants' discharge from the hospital. After controlling for race and income, no relationship was found between approval of corporal punishment and the violence to which mothers were subjected as children. However, significant associations were found between such approval and: (1) whether mothers were punished by their parents, and (2) maternal (but not paternal) nurture. Perceptions that parental punishment was unfair failed to contribute to such approval. Altogether, parental factors in mothers' childhoods, excluding race and income, accounted for 8.9% of the variance in approval of corporal punishment.