Rental Housing Assistance and Health: Evidence From the Survey of Income and Program Participation

Interest in the health impacts of renter housing assistance has grown in the wake of heated national discussions on health care and social welfare spending. Assistance may improve renters’ health by offering (a) low, fixed housing costs; (b) protection against eviction; and (c) access to better homes and neighborhoods. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and econometric analysis, I estimate the effect of receiving assistance from the public housing or Section 8 voucher programs on low-income renters’ reported health status and spending. Assisted renters spent less on health care over the year than unassisted low-income renters did, after controlling for other characteristics. This finding suggests that assisted housing leads to health benefits that may reduce low-income renters’ need to purchase health services. Voucher holders’ lower expenditures are influenced by their low, fixed housing costs, but public housing residents’ lower expenditures are not explained by existing theory.     

Attitudes on the Size of Unemployment Benefits: Ideology and Numbers

The divide separating the political left from right is often expressed in specific numbers. The proper size of unemployment benefits is a key example of such a disagreement, with the left generally favoring higher levels of benefits than the right. However, little is currently known about how voters make up their mind on such policy relevant numbers. Using two survey experiments, this article shows that while Danish voters’ attitudes on unemployment benefits are correlated with their ideological position, they may also be strongly affected by the ways in which politically relevant numbers are presented and elicited. Specifically, when making up their minds on such numbers, voters are highly susceptible to anchoring effects and a unit effect. Furthermore, voters are affected more by precise numbers than by round numbers. Together, these results suggest that political actors may in some cases move public opinion closer to specific policy positions simply by presenting the relevant numbers in certain ways.     

The Case for a Participation Income: Acknowledging and Valuing the Diversity of Social Participation

Anthony Atkinson's idea of a participation income draws attention to the various ways in which people contribute to society. Current discussions on social participation go beyond paid work to include volunteering, education, and caregiving to kin. With the idea of the participation income, various forms of contribution can be highlighted and acknowledged. This article investigates how the idea of a participation income is reflected in Danish, Finnish, German and Dutch social policies. It shows that different elements of a participation income are incorporated in active labour market policies: Denmark adopted a narrow focus on paid work; Finland seeks tailor‐made solutions for the long‐term unemployed; Germany reformed many policy areas to achieve a better activation; and the Netherlands acknowledges a wide range of social participation forms. These country differences highlight that governments can adapt the idea of a participation income to achieve the focus they desire.     

A note on sampling variance estimates for Social Security program participants from the Survey of Income and Program Participation

The Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) provides data that can be used to study the characteristics of Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program participants. It is important that estimates of sampling errors accompany such studies because the estimates may have large sampling errors due to the small number of sample cases available for specific analyses. The generalized sampling variances provided by the Census Bureau did not identify separately either program's participants and, therefore, do not pertain directly to analyses of these groups. This article describes an approach to the direct computation of sampling variances for OASDI and SSI program participants. The approach uses the pseudo stratum and half-sample codes available in SIPP public use data files. A table of generalized standard errors is constructed for participants of both programs aged 18 or older. Generalized standard errors could not be computed for child beneficiaries under age 18 because of a wide variation of design effects across subpopulation estimates.     

Participation Income and the Provision of Socially Valuable Activities

In this article, I argue that a participatory income (PI)—the proposal originally presented by Anthony Atkinson in 1996—can potentially perform better than an unconditional basic income (UBI) in terms of addressing unmet social needs. I explain why we should expect that unmet social needs can be better alleviated by the recipients of a PI rather than by the voluntary actions of UBI recipients. In particular, the argument presented here seeks to develop a particularly forgotten point in the PI debate—namely, the importance of using income transfer programmes as a policy tool to motivate people to engage in socially valuable activities.     

Community Income Inequality and the Economic Gap in Participation

Political Behavior - This paper reveals how community-level income inequality affects political participation. We theorize that local experiences of inequality increase awareness of the unequal...     

Work,Leisure, and Care: A Gender Perspective on the Participation Income

In ‘The case for a participation income’, Anthony Atkinson identified unconditionality as an obstacle to support for a citizen's income. He advocated prioritising the universality and individuality of a citizen's income but replacing its unconditionality with a ‘participation’ requirement. At the time, Atkinson's critique read as political realism: to eliminate means‐testing, make a concession to the fear of free‐riding. Ironically, Atkinson remained opposed to unconditionality despite his own critical contributions to documenting the growing income and wealth inequality that have increased support for an unconditional basic income. In this article I consider the ‘participation’ requirement from a gender perspective in order to uncover the problematic notions of ‘dependence’, ‘independence’, reciprocity, and free‐riding that underlie normative arguments for conditional over unconditional benefits. Employing such a perspective demonstrates the superiority of unconditional benefits in achieving more efficient and effective income support and reducing inequality—Atkinson's core commitments throughout his distinguished career.     

Taking Stock: What Drives Landlord Participation in the Housing Choice Voucher Program

ABSTRACT

To succeed, the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program must be attractive to rental property owners. When landlords refuse to accept subsidized renters, lease-up rates decline, administrative costs increase, and options become limited to high-poverty neighborhoods where owners are most desperate. This article examines what motivates landlords’ decisions to accept subsidized tenants. We use 127 interviews with a random and field sample of landlords, combined with administrative data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on property ownership in Baltimore, Maryland, Dallas, Texas, and Cleveland, Ohio. We find that landlords’ perspectives on the HCV program, including rents, tenants, and inspections, are highly dependent on context; landlords weigh the costs and benefits of program participation against the counterfactual tenant that a landlord might otherwise rent to in the open market. We argue that policymakers can boost landlord participation by better understanding how landlords think about their alternatives within each local context. Finally, we consider what drives nonparticipation in the program. Our results show that the majority of landlords who refuse voucher holders had accepted them previously. We suggest that policy reform should be dually focused on improving bureaucratic inefficiencies that deter landlord participation, and providing training and education to landlords.     

After Columbia: The Space Shuttle Program and the Crisis in Space Access

The loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia on 1 February 2003 brought to the fore the sad history of the Space Shuttle's origins, evolution, operation, and the continuing challenge of space access. The crisis that emerged in human access to space because of the accident was greater than any experienced since the end of the Apollo program more than thirty years earlier. This essay explores the origins and operations of the Space Shuttle, the varied efforts to build a successor vehicle versus upgrading the shuttle fleet, and suggests that the first decade of the twenty-first century promises to offer both serious challenges and enormous potential for the development of new launch vehicles that may finally achieve the long-held dream of reliable, affordable access to space. The essay ends by asking whether or not the half-hearted quest for a shuttle replacement might not portend the demise human spaceflight for the United States.     

Ordering Stakeholder Relationships and Citizen Participation: Evidence from the Community Development Block Grant Program

Local administrative professionals typically are accountable to multiple stakeholders, including other governmental units, special interests in the business and nonprofit sectors, and citizens. How are these accountability relationships ordered? What is the position of citizens in that hierarchy, particularly the influence of citizen participation? Focusing on patterns of hearing participation and citizen impact on budgeting decisions for the Community Development Block Grant program, this statistical analysis employs ordered probit regression. The authors find that communities in which grant administrators feel most accountable to citizens for grant performance have higher degrees of citizen participation in hearings and higher levels of perceived citizen impact on budgetary processes. This relationship holds even in the presence of simultaneity between bureaucratic accountability to citizens and citizen participation. The findings point to the importance of instilling a public service ethic among government employees that places a high value on engaging as well as listening to citizens.     

Local Labor Demand and Program Participation Dynamics: Evidence from New York SNAP Administrative Records

This study estimates the effect of local labor demand on the likelihood that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries are able to transition out of the program. Our data include SNAP administrative records from New York (2007 to 2012), linked at the person‐level to the 2010 Census, and linked at the county‐month‐level to industry‐specific labor market conditions. We find that local labor markets matter for the length of time spent on SNAP, but there is substantial heterogeneity in estimated effects across local industries. Using Bartik‐style instruments to isolate the effect of labor demand and controlling for the changing composition of entrants and program rules brought on by the Great Recession, we find that fluctuations in labor demand in industries with high shares of SNAP participants—especially food service and retail—change the likelihood of exiting the program. Notably, estimated industry effects vary across race and parental status, with black participants being most sensitive to changes in local labor market conditions and mothers benefiting less from growth in local labor demand than fathers and non‐parents. We confirm that our results are not driven by endogenous inter‐county mobility or New York City labor markets and are robust to multiple specifications.     

Deregulation and Participation: An International Survey of Participation in Electricity Regulation

Amidst the wave of privatization and "deregulation" across the globe, a new set of regulatory structures is being created. The fact that deregulation actually involves "re-regulation" has been acknowledged in the recent literature, but the tension between regulation and public participation has been understudied in these new structures. While some private markets need effective regulation to reduce transactions costs and ensure stable market rules, consumers need regulation that is responsive to, and protective of, their interests. Consumer participation, therefore, is an important component of effective regulation. Effective regulation must also consider collective national or public interests, including the well-being of corporations. Therefore, regulatory agencies need to be both independent from, and responsive to corporate, consumer, and public interests. This article will briefly examine the tension among the competing goals of regulatory independence and responsiveness, and then conduct a broad survey of the status quo of public participation in national regulatory structures for electricity in the Americas. Our case studies demonstrate a wide variety of institutional mechanisms for participation, yet we find that no existing system seems to embrace direct participation by a wide set of consumers. The problems are even more acute in developing countries. We conclude by looking at recent experiments and proposals to improve the levels of participation in regulatory decision making.     

Education and Political Participation: Exploring the Causal Link

One of the most consistently documented relationships in the field of political behavior is the close association between educational attainment and political participation. Although most research assumes that this association arises because education causes participation, it could also arise because education proxies for the factors that lead to political engagement: the kinds of people who participate in politics may be the kinds of people who tend to stay in school. To test for a causal effect of education, we exploit the rise in education levels among males induced by the Vietnam draft. We find little reliable evidence that education induced by the draft significantly increases participation rates.     

Partnering and Parenting in Poverty: A Qualitative Analysis of a Relationship Skills Program for Low‐Income,Unmarried Families

Since the mid‐1990s, the federal government has funded numerous relationship skills programs, including some specifically targeting low‐income, unmarried parents, in an effort to strengthen couples’ relationships and increase family stability. The previous research on the effectiveness of these interventions has revealed mixed results about whether such programs can improve the relationships of lower income couples who tend to experience lower relationship quality, lower marriage rates, and higher rates of relationship dissolution. This article draws on in‐depth qualitative data collected during an 18‐month ethnographic study of one federally funded relationship skills program for unmarried, low‐income couples expecting a new baby. Overall, though parents found the financial management lessons included in the classes only minimally useful, if at all, they found other aspects of the program particularly useful for three main reasons: (1) classes allowed parents to focus exclusively on their couple relationships in ways they rarely did otherwise; (2) program incentives helped parents make financial ends meet that month; and (3) parents learned that the challenges they personally experienced were often endemic to the romantic and co‐parenting relationships of unmarried parents who have few resources and experience more challenges that tend to undermine relationship quality, such as financial stress and relational ambiguity. Engaging with other couples around shared challenges normalized couples’ relationship problems and lessened the resentment and animosity that typically characterized their partner interactions. These findings have important implications for healthy marriage and relationship policy. Program developers should avoid lessons that imply low‐income, unmarried parents’ spending habits and family‐formation decisions are deficient. Interventions should instead encourage couples to discuss their shared challenges and minimize their tendency to individualize relational and financial strain.