Postwar changes in the income position of the aged

Since the war the relative number of aged persons with income from employment has declined, while the proportion with income from social insurance benefits has increased. Despite the fact that social insurance benefits yield a lower average income than do earnings, the averaged aged person's income in 1952 was higher in both current dollars and dollars of stable purchasing power than it was in 1945. The improvement is the result of several factors, including larger earnings by aged workers, increased benefits paid retired workers and their aged survivors under social insurance and related programs higher old-age assistance payments and the rise in the relative number of persons with money income. The growth in the average aged person's income, however, has been at a rate lower than that of the average income of the population as a whole. As a result the average person has had a smaller share in total consumer income in each of the years since 1945 that he had in that year.     

``That Woman Is a Woman!' the Case of Bellinger v. Bellinger and the Mysterious (Dis)appearance of Sex: Bellinger v. Bellinger [2003] 2 All E.R. 593; [2003] F.C.R. 1; [2003] 2 W.L.R. 1174; [2003] UKHL 21

In the case of Bellinger v. Bellingerthe House of Lords has for the first time exercised the power to make a declaration of incompatibility under s. 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998, finding that U.K. law on marriage is in breach of Articles 8 and 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This case note argues, however, that despite this decision, and despite also recent judgements of the European Court of Human Rights upholdingthe rights of transsexual people, the principles applied in Bellingerdemonstrate that judicial discourse on transsexuality remains bound within the heterosexual and biological framework of Corbett v. Corbett.     

How welfare reform affects young children: Experimental findings from Connecticut—A research note

As welfare‐to‐work reforms increase women's labor market attachment, the lives of their young children are likely to change. This note draws on a random‐assignment experiment in Connecticut to ask whether mothers' rising employment levels and program participation are associated with changes in young children's early learning and cognitive growth. Children of mothers who entered Connecticut's Jobs First program, an initiative with strict 21‐month time limits and work incentives, displayed moderate advantages in their early learning, compared with those in a control group. A number of potential mechanisms for this effect are explored, including maternal employment and income, home environment, and child care. Mothers in the new welfare program are more likely to be employed, have higher income, are less likely to be married, have more children's books in their home, and take their children to libraries and museums more frequently. However, these effects explain little of the observed gain in child outcomes. Other parenting practices and the home's social environment do explain early learning, but these remained unaffected by welfare reform. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Can public information programs affect risk perceptions?

This article provides the first controlled evaluation of how different information materials explaining the risks from radon influenced people's perceptions of these risks. Using a panel study, it was possible to observe how stated risk perceptions responded to information about indoor radon concentrations and brochures explaining the radon readings. The findings indicate that risk communication policies can be effective in modifying risk perceptions. Moreover, they have three specific implications for radon policy: (1) Public officials should not adopt strategies that provide minimal risk information to the public as a means of avoiding undue alarm, for this can have the reverse effect; (2) measures of the effectiveness of risk communication will depend on how education and behavior change are defined; (3) categorical guidelines about risk without quantitative information can lead people to treat the levels as thresholds, creating an artificial discontinuity in their responses to small changes in risk perceptions.