Did the Tax Reform Act of 1986 Improve Compliance? Three Studies of Pre- and Post-TRA Compliance Attitudes*

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 rewrote the federal income tax code, bringing it closer to policy professionals' vision of what constitutes an equitable and efficient income tax. Research on tax compliance suggests the law might have affected taxpayer compliance in three ways: by reducing opportunities to overstate deductions, by changing perceptions of fairness, and by altering tax liabilities. Changes in taxpayer perceptions, attitudes, and noncompliance intentions were examined in three bodies of survey data, each containing pre-and post-reform data from independent samples of the same population. The results show an improved normative climate for taxpayer compliance and point to both the feasibility and the importance of examining the effects of substantive tax policies on taxpayer perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions.     

Prison mental health services: results of a national survey of standards, resources, administrative structure, and litigation

The formation of adequate mental health systems within prisons has accelerated as a result of successful class action lawsuits. Our recent national survey questioned all state correctional departments about the existence of standards in each system, compliance with such standards, prevalence of class action lawsuits involving the issue of providing adequate mental health services for inmates, issues related to consent decrees, available mental health resources within the correctional system, and the administrative structure of the mental health system. Our purpose was to identify those factors correlated with certified class action lawsuits involving issues related to mental health services. Twenty-one states were involved in such litigation. Only the presence of psychiatric hospitals operated by the department of corrections correlated with the presence of certified class action lawsuits involving mental health services. Prison systems larger than 15,000 inmates were at higher risk for such litigation. Smaller systems having psychiatric hospitals run by the state mental health agency appeared to be at less risk for such litigation.     

Recovery of decomposed and skeletal human remains in the "Green River Murder" Investigation. Implications for medical examiner/coroner and police

The Green River Murder Investigation in King County, Washington, is currently the longest active serial murder investigation in U.S. history. During its course, over 26 separate scenes with from one to five victims each have been processed. The experience of the authors is presented in order to acquaint other agencies with techniques of outdoor scene processing that have evolved during recovery of remains from Green River and other skeletal cases.     

Reassessing the Effect of Economic Growth on Well-being in Less-developed Countries, 1980–2003

Development debates have been greatly influenced by the growth consensus: the conventional wisdom that economic growth should be the primary priority for less-developed countries (LDCs) because it most effectively improves the well-being of the world’s poor. We compare the impact of growth to other independent variables in an unbalanced panel analysis of up to 109 LDCs and 580 observations across six time points (1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2003). Our dependent variables include caloric consumption, infant survival probability, one-to-five year survival probability, female life expectancy, and male life expectancy. First, we find that gross domestic product (GDP) has significant positive effects on caloric consumption, female life expectancy, and male life expectancy. Second, GDP does not have robust effects on infant and one-to-five survival probabilities. Third, fertility, urbanization, and secondary school enrollment have larger effects than GDP in the majority of models. The more powerful effects of fertility, urbanization, and secondary schooling cannot simply be attributed to an indirect effect of GDP. Fourth, we find that dependency variables do not have robust significant effects. Fifth, over time, GDP has become much less effective at improving caloric consumption and infant and one-to-five survival. We infer that there are serious limitations to concentrating exclusively on economic growth to improve well-being in LDCs.