The Home Maintenance and Improvement Behaviors of Older Adults in Boston

Prior studies have found that older homeowners spend less money maintaining and improving their homes, which may reduce their quality of life and eventually pose larger, more costly housing problems. Delayed repairs and improvements may also have adverse spillover effects on neighborhoods. We explore the home maintenance expenditures, housing conditions, and credit access of older homeowners in Boston, Massachusetts, where many aging adults have limited incomes and live in older structures but also have substantial home equity that could be used as a financial resource. We find evidence that older homeowners spend less on home maintenance, and many live in low-income areas with high numbers of constituent complaints about housing conditions and less access to cheaper forms of credit. A particular policy intervention, the Boston Senior Home Repair Program, helps by providing home repair assistance to low- and moderate-income older homeowners.     

What Can We Learn About the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program by Looking at the Tenants?

Abstract

Several recent studies have found that homeownership has positive effects on children's development. This article extends these studies by testing whether these effects depend on neighborhood conditions. This extension is important because many low‐income families that become homeowners under current policies promoting homeownership for the poor are likely to purchase homes in troubled or distressed neighborhoods.

Homeownership in almost any neighborhood is found to benefit children, while neighborhood effects are weak. This suggests that the children of most low‐income renters would be better served by programs that help their families become homeowners in their current neighborhoods instead of helping them move to better neighborhoods while remaining renters. However, the positive effects of homeownership on children are weakened in distressed neighborhoods, especially those that are residentially unstable and poor. Thus, helping low‐income families purchase homes in good neighborhoods is likely to have the best effects on children.     

Medicare premium buy-in programs: results of SSA demonstration projects.

Three programs known collectively as the Medicare buy-in programs are available to pay Medicare Part B premiums and, in some cases, other medical expenses for certain low-income individuals. The Health Care Financing Administration administers those programs, with most functions performed by the states. The Social Security Administration (SSA) plays an indirect role in the buy-in programs: with certain exceptions, people who qualify for Medicare and hence for buy-in are beneficiaries of Social Security retirement or disability programs. SSA is often cited as an agency that might be able to increase enrollment in the buy-in programs through outreach to its beneficiaries and by acting as an intermediary in the enrollment process. The three buy-in programs have different requirements for eligibility. The Qualified Medicare Beneficiary (QMB) program includes individuals who have Part A Medicare benefits and whose income does not exceed 100 percent of federal poverty guidelines. People in the Specified Low-Income Medicare Beneficiary (SLMB) program are individuals who would otherwise be QMBs but whose income is more than 100 percent but less than 120 percent of poverty guidelines. People in the Qualified Individual (QI) program are those who meet the other criteria but whose income is less than 175 percent of poverty guidelines. Various reports and studies by government agencies and advocacy organizations conclude that the buy-in programs are not reaching many of the people who are eligible. Low enrollment appears to be a particular issue for the SLMB and QI programs. States have tried various outreach efforts, but the effectiveness of those efforts has not been adequately assessed. In 1998, Congress mandated that SSA conduct a demonstration project to determine how to increase participation in the buy-in programs. The project tested six different administrative models in which outreach letters were sent to potential beneficiaries asking them to contact SSA and then be screened for eligibility and referred for enrollment. SSA was able to screen about 7.1 percent of letter recipients for buy-in eligibility: 4.2 percent were potentially eligible for the programs based on income and resources, and 3.7 percent enrolled in a buy-in program. An evaluation of the probability that letter recipients would contact SSA to be screened found that: Among the elderly, older individuals were less likely to be screened but more likely to enroll. Among the disabled, older individuals were more likely to be screened but less likely to enroll. The disabled were less likely to be screened but more likely to enroll. Individuals with higher Social Security benefits were more likely to be screened but less likely to enroll. Women were more likely to be screened and to enroll. Being married did not appear to affect screening but negatively affected enrollment. Individuals with a preference for materials in Spanish were much more likely to be screened and enrolled. In some of the demonstration sites, enrollment in a Medicare+Choice plan increased the probability of being both screened and enrolled. SSA conducted a survey of some people who did not respond to the outreach letter. Most of those from whom explanations of the nonresponse were obtained had not responded because they were not eligible on the basis of their income or resources. If SSA were to reproduce the demonstrations in a nationwide outreach effort, a national mailing would include nearly 20 million individuals. If response rates were similar to those seen in the 1999 demonstrations, outreach would produce over 740,000 new buy-in enrollees. That number might be increased modestly by conducting additional outreach efforts in conjunction with the mailing.     

Evaluating and redesigning subsidy policies for home rehabilitation

A method is developed for empirically estimating the direct leveraging, indirect leveraging, and externality benefits accruing from home rehabilitation subsidy policies. The method is applied to two single-family home rehabilitation subsidy programs administered by Minneapolis from 1976 to 1980. Multivariate statistical analysis of sampled homeowners reveals that for each dollar of grant and loan received, all else equal, participants spent $1.62 and $0.345 more, respectively, of their own funds on home upkeep, all expressed as annual averages for the period. A tentative finding of indirect effects on proximate homeowners' confidence in the neighborhood and concomitant rehabilitation expenditures is also observed. These home improvements, in turn, created an additional aesthetic externality benefit.Benefit-cost analyses employing estimated parameter values are conducted. Results show that both grants and loans are net beneficial from the societal perspective. From the budgetary perspective of the public sector, the grants program was net beneficial. Loan programs involving very low interest rates, deferred payments, and/or lengthy repayment schedules typically were not. Under wide ranges of parameter values, however, subsidized loans can be devised which yield superior budgetary efficiency to grants.These findings suggest that home rehabilitation subsidy policies should be redesigned so that the mix of grants and loans for individual recipients is varied in order to enhance budgetary efficiency. The central principle is to require that recipients who can afford to do so take out loans on terms which render them more net beneficial than grants, before any grants are awarded.     

Comparing beneficiaries of the Medicare savings programs with eligible nonparticipants

This note focuses on participation in two entitlement programs that help reduce out-of-pocket expenses for low-income Medicare beneficiaries: the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary (QMB) program and the Specified Low-Income Medicare Beneficiary (SLMB) program. As of 1999, about 2.75 million eligible, noninstitutionalized individuals were not enrolled in these Medicare savings programs. The eligible nonparticipants differed substantially from the QMB and SLMB participants in that they were less likely to be Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries and more likely to be elderly, nonblack, and in relatively good health. These findings, which could help target future outreach efforts, are based on Survey of Income and Program Participation data matched with administrative records from the Social Security Administration.     

Incentivizing self‐regulation: Federal vs. state‐level voluntary programs in US climate change policies

How does program sponsorship influence the design of voluntary programs? Why and how do voluntary programs on climate change sponsored by the state and federal governments in the United States vary in their institutional design? Scholars emphasize the signaling role of voluntary programs to outside stakeholders, and the excludable benefits that induce firms to take on non‐trivial costs of joining voluntary programs. Scholars have noted several types of benefits, particularly reputational benefits programs provide, but have not systematically studied why different programs emphasize different types of benefits. We suggest that excludable benefits are likely to take different forms depending on the institutional context in which program sponsors function. We hypothesize that federal programs are likely to emphasize less tangible reputational benefits while state programs are likely to emphasize more tangible benefits, such as access to technical knowledge and capital. Statistical analyses show the odds of a voluntary program emphasizing tangible benefits increases by several folds when the program is sponsored by the state as opposed to federal government.     

How important is information format? An experimental study of home energy audit programs

Among alternative regulatory responses, information provision programs are receiving increasing attention despite the decidedly mixed evidence about their effectiveness. This paper provides detailed experimental evidence to demonstrate that for one important example of an information program, the use of energy audits to stimulate residential energy conservation, the effectiveness of the program is highly sensitive to the information processing behavior of the users of the information. Simple changes in the format of the information provided to homeowners produced marked improvements in the efficiency of consumer choices. The study illustrates Stern's conclusion in a recent issue of this journal that laboratory experimentation provides a useful alternative to model-based analysis of natural experiments, especially for policy design issues involving information acquisition and processing. The paper also offers conclusions about improving the effectiveness of home energy audits, as well as the entire class of information provision programs.     

Hitting a moving target: income-related health insurance subsidies for the uninsured.

New government health insurance programs are likely to emphasize voluntary purchases in a market setting, with subsidies targeted at low-income populations and stress on managed care. Such programs are best structured with a guaranteed enrollment period that is as long as six months to a year. However, given that incomes change over time, errors will be made in awarding income-related subsidies for that long. These errors are assessed in simulations undertaken with longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Two allocations of the subsidies, based on current income at the beginning of the enrollment period and on actual income assessed at the end, are compared for a variety of program designs. Prospective determination of subsidies is somewhat biased toward overpayment. Net overpayments amount to 5-10 percent of subsidy costs. However, prospective payment encourages participation in the subsidy program. The simulated participation rate for true eligibles is as high as 73 percent with prospective subsidies, compared to 69 percent with retrospective reconciliation. Net overpayments are slightly reduced by testing income less frequently and over longer periods.     

Relationships between government size and economic growth: Japan's government reforms and evidence from OECD

This paper examines the relationship between government size and economic growth of 21 industrialized countries. Government size is measured by government final consumption expenditures and transfer payments. The relationship between government consumption is expected to increase GDP growth for developing countries, and reduce it for industrialized countries. Government consumption can contribute to increased economic growth. However, government consumption is likely to expand beyond an efficient level in industrialized countries. In contrast, transfer payments, and social welfare programs are likely to reduce economic growth for most countries. These programs reduce work incentives and encourage tax avoidance activities. Work disincentives and tax avoidance reduce economic growth. These expected relationships are consistent with economic performance and government size for the countries considered here. Inefficiency and excessive government growth are checked by voter feedback as tax burdens exceed the associated benefits. Unfortunately, government program costs and benefits are asymmetrically distributed. The resulting tendency is to expand government programs, particularly programs that benefit a majority of voters at the expense of a minority. This tendency becomes even more acute as the tax system becomes more progressive (i.e., tax burdens become concentrated. Reductions in government size are more likely with stagnant or declining economic growth, and in government programs whose costs are widely shared, compared to programs with widely shared benefits and narrowly shared costs.     

Location Efficiency and Mortgage Risks for Low-Income Households

Abstract

Household energy expenditures, especially for transportation, are fairly inelastic. Their effects on low-income households may be significant, due to the potential for energy consumption to displace other types of consumption when energy prices rise. Using accessibility as a proxy for lower transportation costs, we test the hypothesis that low- and moderate-income residents are less likely default when they are located in more accessible places. We find that regional accessibility has almost no effect on risks of default, but local job diversity has moderate mitigating effect.     

SOCIAL PROGRAM INNOVATION AND DISSEMINATION: A STUDY OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE PROCESSES

The dissemination of social program innovations that have been demonstrated to be effective through rigorous evaluation is an important issue. The classical dissemination framework emphasizes the position that programs implemented with fidelity to the original model are most likely to produce the positive outcomes demonstrated in the model's evaluation phase. However, critics suggest that local programs that are extensively modified are more likely to meet local goals and, therefore, are more likely to be sustained within the organization. The present research examined the implementation, effectiveness, and routinization of seven innovations replicated in a nationwide sample of organizations. The innovations were diverse in both content and implementing context and were located in a variety of sites, including schools, courts, prisons, police departments, and social service agencies. The results suggest that the innovations were replicated with acceptable levels of fidelity to the disseminated program models, and that higher-fidelity implementations tended to be more effective than those implemented with lower fidelity. The implications of the findings for social program dissemination policy are discussed and the authors propose an expansion of Berman's contingency model of innovation dissemination.     

Labor market experiences of low-income black women in middle-class suburbs: Evidence from a survey of gautreaux program participants

This article reports on a highly unusual experiment in racial and economic integration, the Gautreaux program. This program helps black families who are either current or former residents of public housing move into subsidized housing in Chicago and its suburbs. Surveying a random sample of 332 participants, we find that suburban movers are significantly more likely to have a job post-move than city movers, even among those who had never had a job before moving. Multivariate analysis shows that these differences are significant even after controlling for respondents' previous work history, human capital, and personal characteristics. These results suggest that low-income urban blacks experience significant gains in employment by moving to middle-class suburbs. Thus, housing assistance may be an effective alternative to traditional welfare-to-work programs.     

Homeownership counseling performance: How can it be measured?

Abstract

Homeownership counseling encompasses several educational activities. Early approaches focused on reducing the risk of default and foreclosure among participants in government‐assisted mortgage programs, but more recent approaches have focused on increasing homeownership opportunities among low‐income and minority households. Unfortunately, little is known about the effectiveness of these approaches in terms of the number of new homeowners and the mitigation of default risk. To address that gap, this article presents a theoretical and methodological framework to evaluate counseling efforts.

A successful counseling program is defined as one that assists a household with a low long‐term probability of ownership in buying a home and reducing its default risk. We concede that the methodological requirements for evaluating counseling are somewhat restrictive. However, if we establish an evaluation procedure using these goals as a framework, we can more accurately determine the effects of counseling on the sustainability of low‐income homeownership.     

Is a Fixer-Upper Actually a Downer? Homeownership,Gender, Work on the Home,and Subjective Well-being

This article investigates whether homeownership provides psychological benefits, particularly as mediated through the act of working on the dwelling. It examines whether work on the home potentially increases subjective well-being (SWB) for home occupants because such work improves the dwelling or because the work is fulfilling and promotes feelings of mastery and control. It also investigates whether homeowners are more likely to perform such work compared with renters. The article finds that homeownership is associated with somewhat elevated life satisfaction, but that homeowners tend to experience less intense positive affect than renters. Homeowners spend much more time working on the home than renters. Strong links between work on the home and life satisfaction are not found, but certain types of home work activities—such as interior or exterior decoration and repairs and yard work—tend to be experienced as psychologically meaningful. Gender also plays a role in the division of home labor and the psychological costs and benefits of homeownership and work on the home. Women are much more likely than men to clean the interiors of dwellings, an activity associated with poor affect. Men perform more of most of the other types of work on the home; in homeowning households these burdens tend to balance each other out, but in renting households there tends to be a dramatic disparity in terms of work on the home, raising concerns about gender inequity.     

Increasing Community College Completion Rates Among Low-Income Students: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial Evaluation of a Case-Management Intervention

Community college completion rates are low, especially among low-income students. The existing policy and research attention has primarily focused on academic and financial challenges, but there is ample reason to think that non-academic obstacles might be key drivers of dropout rates for low-income students. This study focuses on the role of “life barriers” and investigates the effectiveness of intensive case-management services for low-income community college students. We evaluate the impact of the Stay the Course (STC) intensive case-management program through a multi-armed randomized controlled trial evaluation conducted between 2013 and 2016 in Fort Worth, Texas. Analysis of administrative records indicates that STC significantly increased persistence and degree completion for women; estimates for the full sample are imprecise. The statistically significant estimates for women imply that STC tripled associate's degree receipt by 31.5 percentage points. We find no difference in outcomes between students in an emergency financial assistance (EFA) only treatment arm and the control group. Given program costs of $4,343 per person, the implied cost per additional associate's degree is $27,140. This study complements existing literature on financial and informational interventions designed to increase completion rates and is most closely related to the smaller literature examining coaching and mentoring interventions.     

Program evaluation and the commissioning entity

The present decade has witnessed a shift from planning to emphasis on program performance and accountability. However, program evaluation must contend with many different policy preferences articulated by groups and institutions involved with social programs. In particular, the entity commissioning an evaluation expects some policy dmileage from the undertaking. Evaluation intended as an aid to decisionmaking cannot afford to separate the program under study from its organizational and political context.Federal categorical social programs like Head Start fill many needs for many groups. Evaluation preoccupied with experimental rigor often underestimates the need to adapt to political and administrative realities. At the other extreme, excessive accommodation to program ideology and organizational self-interest undermines the credibility of the evaluative process.Its limitations notwithstanding, program evaluation does yield informed policy alternatives. It invites rational public discussion of social programs and adds substance to the process of political bargaining.     

ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING; A CASE OF LEARNING THROUGH EVALUATION?

The aim of environmental monitoring programs is to provide information useful in enforcing existing environmental statutes and helping to detect and prevent future problems. Despite the considerable number of monitoring programs being conducted, information on the quality of the nation's environment remains poor and of little use in supporting environmental policymaking. This paper examines the role evaluation has played in developing an effective nationwide environmental monitoring system. Background information on environmental monitoring programs is provided, followed by a discussion of the evaluations of past programs and recommendations made for improvement. One program in particular, the "Status and Trends" program administered by the National Oceanic and ATmospheric Administration, is examined to explore whether environmental monitoring demonstrates a case of learning through evaluation. "Status and Trends" is based on the experience gained during several of the previous monitoring programs and incorporates many of the recommendations spawned from earlier environmental programs. Whether the program demonstrates a case of learning through evaluation will depend on the ability of the program to evolve as we learn more about environmental quality and out ability to measure it.     

Jump-Starting Collaboration: The ABCD Initiative and the Provision of Child Development Services through Medicaid and Collaborators

Many policy problems require governmental leaders to forge vast networks beyond their own hierarchical institutions. This essay explores the challenges of implementation in a networked institutional setting and incentives to induce coordination between agencies and promote quality implementation. It describes the national evaluation of the Assuring Better Child Health and Development program, a state-based program intended to increase and enhance the delivery of child development services for low-income children through the health care sector, using Medicaid as its primary vehicle. Using qualitative evaluation methods, the authors found that all states implemented programs that addressed their stated goals and made changes in Medicaid policies, regulations, or reimbursement mechanisms. The program catalyzed interagency cooperation and coordination. The authors conclude that even a modest level of external support and technical assistance can stimulate significant programmatic change and interorganizational linkages within public agencies to enhance provision of child development services.     

The Cost‐Effectiveness of Welfare‐to‐Work Programs: A Meta‐Analysis

This article uses the tools of meta‐analysis to assess cost–benefit studies of 50 mandatory welfare‐to‐work programs that were targeted at Aid for Families with Dependent Children recipients and evaluated by random assignment. The findings suggest that the costs of a typical evaluated welfare‐to‐work program probably exceeded its benefits from the perspective of the government, but those assigned to the program, and possibly society as a whole, may reap small positive net benefits. However, there are individual programs that are very cost‐beneficial. Further analyses of the determinants of the cost‐benefits of welfare‐to‐work programs to government and society as a whole show that some services are cost‐neutral, but others entail net costs, which are sometimes substantial. The findings suggest that less successful programs might be made more cost‐beneficial by dropping vocational training and basic education as program components, leaving mainly lower cost components, such as mandated job search and sanctions, but also possibly the more costly financial incentives.