How Do People-Based Housing Policies Affect People (and Place)?

Assisted housing programs in the United States aim to provide decent, safe, and affordable housing for low-income households. Increasingly, policymakers have also considered how assisted housing can provide access to lower poverty, income-diverse, and higher opportunity neighborhoods. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development currently balances two strategies. First, place-based programs—immoveable subsidies linked to particular units—can both revitalize distressed neighborhoods and provide access to higher opportunity neighborhoods. Second, people-based assistance—housing vouchers for use on the private rental market—can facilitate moves out of high-poverty, low-opportunity neighborhoods. During this policy moment with fair housing priorities receiving national attention, understanding the efficacy of each approach is critically important. This article synthesizes past research on housing vouchers to identify the impact of people-based assistance on four outcomes: residents’ neighborhood attainment, education, economic outcomes, and health. I also review the scant literature examining how vouchers affect place rather than people. I conclude by identifying aspects of special voucher programs that promote positive outcomes that could potentially be scaled up.     

Evaluating the Concept of Location Affordability: Recent Data on the Relationship Between Transportation,Housing, and Urban Form

The concept of location affordability holds that housing affordability should be augmented to include transportation cost as a related and substantial household cost burden. The recent United States foreclosure crisis of 2006–2008 offers an opportunity to evaluate location affordability as a concept for policy and practice by investigating the relationship between transportation cost burdens and negative housing outcomes. This article contributes to the growing literature on location affordability and the recent crisis with an analysis of default and foreclosure data for 70 metropolitan areas. The analysis includes transportation and housing cost burdens and demographic data, as well as multidimensional measures of urban form. High rates of automobility are associated with increased foreclosure. The urban form variables yield mixed results, suggesting the relationship between urban sprawl and affordability is complex. However, across a range of specifications, high levels of development intensity are associated with increased foreclosure rates. The results have implications for both the housing and transportation sectors and lend support for the notion of location affordability.     

Intergovernmental councils in the United States

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on intergovernmental councils (IGCs) in the United States in which prominent state-level executive politicians, that is, governors, play a leadership role. In the US case, these IGCs developed out of a desire to facilitate interstate information exchanges and a need for state governments to join forces to protect their autonomy vis-à-vis the federal government. In this latter role, the councils function as lobbyists for state government interests. The research question driving the analysis has to do with impact: what difference do executive-led IGCs make, either vertically or horizontally, in the US federal system? The question of impact is particularly relevant because growing partisan polarization in contemporary federal and state political institutions complicates collective action by states.     

Celebrity-led development organisations: the legitimating function of elite engagement

The past decade has seen a frontier open up in international development engagement with the entrance of new actors such as celebrity-led organisations. We explore how such organisations earn legitimacy with a focus on Madonna’s Raising Malawi and Ben Affleck’s Eastern Congo Initiative. The study draws from organisational materials, interviews, mainstream news coverage, and the texts of the celebrities themselves to investigate the construction of authenticity, credibility, and accountability. We find these organisations earn legitimacy and flourish rapidly amid supportive elite networks for funding, endorsements, and expertise. We argue that the ways in which celebrity-led organisations establish themselves as legitimate development actors illustrate broader dynamics of the machinery of development.     

Implementation Challenges of the National Health Insurance Scheme in Selected Districts in Ghana: Evidence from the Field

Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme, introduced in 2003, aims to remove financial barriers to health-care access and bridge the inequality gaps in health care. This paper reports on a study of the implementation process in four local government areas in southern and northern Ghana. The paper profiles key institutional actors and draws on qualitative interview data from 33 in-depth interviews. Findings highlight the gaps and challenges that have emerged in the implementation process. Issues of managerial capacity, inadequate and uneven distribution of medical facilities and health-care professionals, cost escalation, fraud and abuse, and reimbursement of providers threaten the sustainability of the scheme.     

Consequences of Involvement in Distinct Patterns of Adolescent Peer and Dating Violence

Typological theoretical perspectives suggest that the consequences of involvement in peer and dating violence may depend on the particular pattern of violent behaviors that youth experience and/or engage in. Yet few studies have examined whether distinct patterns of dating and peer violence involvement differentially predict developmental outcomes. Using two waves of data, the current study examined the prospective associations between distinct patterns of peer and dating aggression and victimization, identified using latent class analysis, and a range of potential developmental outcomes in a general population sample of adolescents in the 8th to 10th grades (n?=?3068; 46% female, 58% White, 31% Black, 11% other race/ethnicity). The findings suggest that, compared to youth involved in other patterns of violence, youth involved in peer and dating violence as aggressors and victims are at greatest risk for negative sequelae, although results differed considerably for girls and boys and on the outcome variable and comparison groups being examined.     

Duale oder schulische Berufsausbildung? Entwicklungen und Weichenstellungen in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz

In der vergleichenden politischen Ökonomie hat das Thema Ausbildung vor allem seit der “Varieties of Capitalism”‐Forschung an Popularität gewonnen. Deutschland, Österreich und die Schweiz gelten dabei als Länder, die ihre Arbeitskräfte im Rahmen einer korporatistisch gesteuerten dualen Ausbildung beruflich bilden. Unser Beitrag zeigt jedoch, dass sich die relativen Teilnehmerzahlen verschiedener Bildungsgänge im Sekundarbereich II seit Mitte der 1970er Jahre unterschiedlich entwickelt haben. In Österreich hat sich über die Zeit die staatlich gesteuerte vollzeitschulische Berufsausbildung neben der dualen Ausbildung etabliert. In Deutschland und in der Schweiz ist das duale Ausbildungssystem nach wie vor dominierend. Als ausschlaggebend für die Expansion der vollzeitschulischen Ausbildung in Österreich identifizieren wir drei zentrale Punkte: erstens die Dominanz der österreichischen Sozialdemokratie und deren informelle Zusammenarbeit mit den Christdemokraten, zweitens die Steuerung des österreichischen Bildungswesens durch den Zentralstaat und drittens die breite Unterstützung der Berufsbildungsreformen durch Arbeitgeber und Gewerkschaften. Bedeutende Weichenstellungen erfolgten in den 1970er Jahren.     

Social Coping Among Gifted High School Students and its Relationship to Self-Concept

Several authors suggest that gifted adolescents employ a variety of strategies to cope with perceived negative social effects of recognized high ability. The Social Coping Questionnaire (SCQ) is designed to measure the use of several such strategies. Previous SCQ studies were based on participants who earned high scores on above-level standardized tests. The current study uses a revised SCQ and a differently identified group of gifted students. Factor analysis produced 7 social coping scales similar to those found in previous studies. The scales had adequate internal consistency and test-retest reliability at an 8-week interval. Gender differences at Time 1 suggest that females are more likely than males to deny giftedness and maintain high activity levels, whereas males are more likely than females to use humor. Grade level (9–12) main effects and gender by grade level interactions were absent. Relationships with self-concept scores suggest that problem-focused social coping strategies are more adaptive than are emotion-focused, denial-based strategies.     

Gazing into the Future through a VDU: Communications, Information Technology, and Law Teaching

The article deals with the interaction of computers, informationtechnology, and legal education. It considers the technical achievementsof communications and information technology (C&IT) in the practiceand teaching of law, then the jurisprudential paradigms which underliethese issues. To the extent to which law is conceived as a form ofinformation, existing assumptions about the theory, practice, andteaching of law are challenged. Where, on the other hand, law is regardedas a collection of rules, reversal to formalism, driven by C&IT, isidentified as a concern for socio-legal scholars. Other concerns addressedby this article include the exclusive economics of the C&IT revolution,the power dynamics of technophobia, and the interaction of computersand gender. The article concludes with suggestions for alternative visonsof the future of C&IT and legal education.     

What Can Be Done to Internationalize Teacher Training? A Research Report on the Undergraduate Training of Secondary School Teachers

Editor's Introduction : The following excerpted report discusses the interaction of the international studies field and teacher education programs at colleges and universities around the country. The reform of teacher education in whatever substantive area is a topic at the forefront of initiatives from the federal government in Washington, DC, as well as ones from private foundations. One such initiative has recently been launched by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and is called Teachers for a New Era (TNE). Linking 11 universities across the country, TNE can be viewed as an innovative attempt to better integrate the content education provided by colleges of arts and sciences with the pedagogical knowledge resident in schools of education. The ultimate aim is to impact student learning by producing better classroom teachers nation-wide. The following article engages many of these same topics as they relate to the international studies education. The Editors hope that you will find the article thought-provoking, and we invite comments and responses from members of the ISA community.