Whether one votes and how one votes

The aim of this paper is to determine if whether one votes effects the vote that is cast. Using an economic model of voting and observed voting results on nuclear power referenda, the answer is a resounding yes. Overcoming registration, turnout, and “roll off” hurdles dramatically increases the odds of voting against nuclear power. Indeed, participation swamps both economic and preference variables in the explanation of nuclear power voting outcomes. The lesson is that there is a structure to participation at the polls that should not be ignored by those interested in analyzing voting outcomes.     

Deadbeats and turnips in child support reform

Child support reforms have focused almost exclusively on punitive measures, driven by the stereotypical image of a “deadbeat dad” who can afford to pay child support but refuses to do so. This image fits some noncustodial fathers, but ignores the diverse nature of this population. We show that lack of income is a significant barrier to child support payments for 16 to 33 percent of young noncustodial fathers, whom we call “turnips” after the common saying that “You can't get blood from a turnip.” Furthermore, the characteristics of turnips are similar to those of custodial mothers who are long-term welfare recipients—both are disproportionately composed of young, poorly educated, never-married minorities with little work experience. These findings suggest that a new approach to child support enforcement is needed, one that offers these fathers flexible child support orders that both reflect their current economic circumstances and provide employment and training assistance to enable them to meet their child support obligations in the future.     

Can child care assistance in welfare and employment programs support the employment of low‐income families?

Policymakers have long recognized child care as a key ingredient in low‐income parents' employability. We examine the effects of expansions in child care policies that were bundled with a mix of employment‐related policies and implemented as part of several random assignment studies on families' child care access and cost. Almost all of these welfare and employment programs increased employment and led to concomitant increases in the use of child care, especially paid child care. Only the programs that also expanded access or affordability of child care consistently increased the use of child care subsidies and reduced out‐of‐pocket costs to parents, allowing parents to purchase center‐based care. With one exception, such programs had small effects on employment‐related child care problems, suggesting that broader and more generous targeting of child care assistance may be important for achieving the goal of enhancing the stability of employment among low‐income families. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Welfare and child support: Complements,not substitutes

In most states, child support paid on behalf of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) participants is used to offset TANF and child support administrative expenditures; this policy primarily benefits taxpayers. In contrast, Wisconsin allowed most custodial parents to keep all support paid on their behalf. This policy, which treats welfare and child support as complements, was evaluated through an experimental design. This paper reports the key results of the experimental evaluation, using state administrative data to examine the effects on child support outcomes and governmental cost. We find that when custodial mothers keep all child support paid on their behalf, paternity establishment occurs more quickly, noncustodial fathers are more likely to pay support, and custodial families receive more support. These outcomes are achieved at no significant governmental cost. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Expenditures on children and child support guidelines

This article examines the literature that estimates parental expenditures on children; describes the types of child support guidelines that are being used by the states; and compares how the child support awards that emerge from each state's guidelines compare to the empirical estimates of expenditure patterns on children. The findings indicate that the states' guidelines appear to be more or less consistent with the estimates of expenditures on children. In a few cases, however, the guidelines require less in support from the noncustodial parent than the parent would have spent on the child(ren) in an average intact family. In many other cases, the guidelines require child support payments that are very close to the lower bound of the estimates of expenditures. This article concludes with a discussion of the difficult value judgments that ultimately must be made in setting child support awards.     

The verdict in the polls: how government stability is affected by popular support

The idea that the stability of governments is affected by how they are performing in the polls is both intuitive and popular in the literature. When support is low the government might be inclined to replace parties or the prime minister in order to regain support, thus forming a replacement government. Alternatively, a government doing well in the polls might opportunistically try to schedule an early election to capitalise on its favourable prospects. But despite the popularity of the idea, it has thus far not been tested empirically whether government stability is in fact influenced by popular support. This article aims to address this lacuna. Using a relatively new dataset with more than 12,000 unique polls, and recently developed Bayesian models for pooling the polls, it is here shown that government stability is in fact impacted by popular support. Governments display clear signs of electoral opportunism when they are polling well and, conversely, dissolve the government, without calling an election, when polling is bad. The results are strongest when there are few parties in the government, since agreement on the timing for a discretionary termination is easier when fewer players need to agree.     

The devil may be in the details: how the characteristics of SCHIP programs affect take-up.

In this paper, we explore whether the specific design of a state's program has contributed to its success in meeting two objectives of the Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP): increasing the health insurance coverage of children in lower income families and doing so with a minimum reduction in their private health insurance coverage (crowd-out). In our analysis, we use two years of Current Population Survey data, 2000 and 2001, matched with detailed data on state programs. We focus on two populations: the eligible population of children, broadly defined--those living in families with incomes below 300 percent of the federal poverty line (FPL)--and a narrower group of children, those who we estimate are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP. Unique state program characteristics in the analysis include whether the state plan covers families; whether the state uses presumptive eligibility; the number of months without private coverage that are required for eligibility; whether there is an asset test; whether a face-to-face interview is required; and specific outreach activities. Our results provide evidence that state program characteristics are significant determinants of program success.     

Unchanging child support orders in the face of unstable earnings

The underlying theory behind child support guidelines implies that child support orders should change when the incomes of noncustodial parents change. This paper documents changes in noncustodial fathers' earnings over a five‐year period and examines the relationship between the changes in earnings and modifications in child support orders. Using detailed longitudinal administrative data from Wisconsin, the authors examine the history of orders and earnings for fathers in couples who had their first child support ordered in 2000. A substantial proportion of fathers experience large changes in earnings, but relatively few of the associated child support orders are modified. Using discrete‐time multinomial event history models that consider time‐varying variables and control for censored observations, we find some evidence of changes in earnings being associated with changes in orders, all else equal, but the relationship is relatively weak and order changes are not proportional to earnings changes. The findings highlight the challenges and importance of developing policies that result in child support orders being more responsive to changes in fathers' incomes. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Welfare and child support program knowledge gaps reduce program effectiveness

There is little research on knowledge of the policy rules that could affect individuals, either in general or in evaluations of new programs. The lack of research is surprising, given that knowledge gaps could limit the effectiveness of reforms or lead to incorrect inferences regarding the effects of a policy change. In this article, we use survey data to examine the level and sources of welfare participants' policy knowledge in the context of a substantial change in child support and welfare policy in Wisconsin. We find very low levels of knowledge of child support policy rules. Multivariate analyses suggest that people tend to learn policy rules by experience; we find less consistent support for knowledge being primarily imparted through interactions with caseworkers. A difference‐in‐difference analysis suggests that if participants had been more knowledgeable, program impacts would have been larger. Implications of this research for policy implementation and policy evaluations are discussed. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Why teens do not benefit from work experience programs: Evidence from brother comparisons

Social scientists' research on the consequences of teenage employment suggests that government programs providing teenagers with work experience should have worked better than they have. One explanation is that the government failed to deliver an otherwise effective treatment. This article considers three alternative explanations. The first is that the apparent benefits of working during the teenage years are illusory, reflecting only unmeasured differences between teens who do and do not work. A second explanation is that the groups targeted by government programs, the disadvantaged, benefit less from working as teenagers. A third explanation asserts that program participants and working teens experience different benefits because they have different employment experiences. Using information on brother pairs, this article examines these issues. It determines that conventional analyses of the returns to teenage employment greatly overstate the benefits poor minority teenagers receive from working. Our results suggest that the mixed success of previous programs is not primarily due to poor implementation or government involvement per se. Rather, these programs have had limited success because, for those teenagers targeted, work experience during the teenage years does not raise future earnings.     

The effect of child support on welfare exits and re‐entries

Much of the literature on welfare dynamics has focused on the effects of recipient characteristics and state‐level characteristics such as welfare benefits and economic conditions; there has been very little analysis on the effects of child support. This paper, using the 1979‐1996 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, examines whether child support affects the likelihood of leaving and re‐entering welfare. The results indicate that strong child support enforcement is important in helping young mothers exit and stay off welfare. Women with $1000 child support payments in the previous year were 18 percent more likely to exit welfare and 12 percent less likely to re‐enter welfare. Compared with women in states that pursued child support least vigorously, women in states that had passed extensive child support enforcement legislation and that spent more money on child support enforcement were 79 percent more likely to exit welfare and about 60 percent less likely to re‐enter welfare. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Declining employment among young black less‐educated men: The role of incarceration and child support

In this paper, we explore the continuing decline in employment and labor force participation of nonenrolled Black men between the ages of 16 and 34 who have a high school education or less in the 1980s and 1990s. We focus on two fairly new developments: (1) the dramatic growth in the number of young Black men who have been incarcerated and (2) strengthened enforcement of child support policies. We analyze micro‐level data from the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Groups (CPS‐ORG), into which state‐level data over time on incarceration rates and child support enforcement have been merged. Our results indicate that previous incarceration and child support enforcement can account for half or more of the decline in employment activity among Black men aged 25–34. Previous incarceration also contributes to the decline among those aged 16–24. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Effective child support policy for low‐income families: evidence from street level research

Since 1984, policymakers have increasingly turned their attention to reforming the child support system. Despite this attention, the child support system has often failed to increase the economic security of single‐parent families. This article analyzes findings from recent qualitative studies to explain why the child support system breaks down for so many low‐income families. This research suggests that parents often prefer informal arrangements of support and do not comply with child support regulations they perceive to be unfair, counterproductive, or punitive. It also suggests that there is a mismatch between the premises and goals of child support policy and what low‐income parents desire from the system. This mismatch impedes low‐income parents' willingness and ability to comply with existing policy, even when they wish to do so, and will make reform difficult. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

浅谈如何做好新时期企业离退休管理和服务工作

在市场经济新形势下,管理和服务离退休人员,要贯彻＂老有所养、老有所医、老有所教、老有所学、老有所为、老有所乐＂的方针,把离退休老同志政治和生活待遇落到实处。充分认识离退休工作的重要性和加强与离退休老同志的感情联系,充分发挥老同志作用,重视其思想政治工作及信访工作。     

潜规则生发机制及其遏制——兼论吏治规范

潜规则是官场正式规则背后的另类规则，它像癌细胞一样寄生于正式规则又不断地侵蚀着正式规则。正式规则下的自由裁量权和官员的个人理性是潜规则生存的充分必要条件，基于个人理性的自组织(self—organizing)机制则是潜规则得以扩张的根本原因。潜规则遏制的核心问题是如何提高控制的有效性，在当前的转型期社会，吏治规范的主要思路是强化人民代表大会的监督职能，建立相对独立的监督行政体系。