Do Housing Vouchers Improve Academic Performance? Evidence from New York City

The Housing Choice Voucher program is currently the largest federally funded housing assistance program. Although the program aims to provide housing assistance, it also could affect children's educational outcomes by stabilizing their families, enabling them to move to better homes, neighborhoods, and schools, and increasing their disposable incomes. Using data from New York City, the nation's largest school district, we examine whether—and to what extent—housing vouchers improve educational outcomes for students whose families receive them. We match over 88,000 school-age voucher recipients to longitudinal public school records and estimate the impact of vouchers on academic performance through a comparison of students’ performance on standardized tests after voucher receipt to their pre-voucher performance. We exploit the conditionally random timing of voucher receipt to estimate a causal model. Results indicate that students in voucher households perform 0.05 standard deviations better in both English Language Arts and Mathematics in the years after they receive a voucher. We see significant racial differences in impacts, with small or no gains for black students but significant gains for Hispanic, Asian, and white students. Impacts appear to be driven largely by reduced rent burdens, increased disposable income, or a greater sense of residential security.     

Labour of love: Female juvenile prostitution in the Netherlands

Summary

Although the number of young prostitutes increases, little systematic research has been undertaken to gain more insight into the trafficking of these young women. The main object of the present study was to describe the processes (that is, grooming, incorporation, and maintenance) that underlie the trafficking of young women for prostitution. Police records of 16 adolescent prostitutes were analysed. Results show that these prostitutes were recruited by so-called ‘lover boys’ who applied various seduction techniques to make the vulnerable young women fall in love with them. In general, the young women were incorporated into prostitution by means of physical violence. To protect and secure their income and organization, the pimps used a wide range of power and control tactics, of which the use of physical violence can be considered the most effective.     

Saddam's revenge: a post-Gulf War casualty.

Artillery weapons are designed to inflict death and destruction by way of fragmentary and blast injuries. As pieces of modern machinery, they are also capable of causing serious injury by their very complex nature. The authors present a case analysis of an artillery piece that caused a projectile death without a shell.     

Parental Representations in the Play of Preschool Aged Witnesses of Marital Violence

The play of young children has long been used clinically to understand children’s experiences and inner feelings. More recently, children’s play has been examined quantitatively to understand differences due to varying backgrounds, family relationships, etc. Forty preschool children (21 girls and 19 boys) aged 27 to 71 months from families with histories of domestic violence were observed using a play interview, The MacArthur Story Stem Battery, to determine if severity of violence, frequency of visitation with their previously violent fathers, and mother-child relationship functioning impacted how parents were represented in play. Overall, girls represented their parents more positively regardless of other family circumstances. Boys, especially those who did not visit regularly with their fathers, had negative representations of their mothers. Severity of violence did not predict negative parental representations in the sample.     

Utilization of serum tryptase and immunoglobulin e assay in the postmortem diagnosis of anaphylaxis

The postmortem diagnosis of anaphylaxis is difficult. Serum concentrations of tryptase (a mast cell product released during anaphylaxis) have been used after death as an indicator of possible antemortem anaphylaxis. However, studies have indicated that tryptase may be elevated with increasing postmortem interval (PMI), or in nonanaphylactic deaths with significant atherosclerosis or chest trauma. Serum total IgE has been used by some to confirm anaphylaxis when tryptase is elevated. Serum levels of tryptase from 57 decedents with varying PMI, all dying of presumed nonanaphylactic causes, were determined. In cases with elevated levels (>11.4 ng/mL), an assay of total serum IgE was also performed. Both tryptase and IgE demonstrated significant elevations with increasing PMI. Decedents were categorized according to presence of cardiovascular disease, chest trauma, or both; many demonstrated elevation of 1 or both markers, without statistically significant differences between categories. Postulated mechanisms for nonanaphylactic elevations of these markers are reviewed. The possible utility of allergen-specific IgE or allergen panels is discussed.     

The Cultivation of a Prosocial Value Orientation Through Community Service: An Examination of Organizational Context, Social Facilitation, and Duration

Community service is widely regarded as a fundamental experience in preparation for good citizenship, but it remains unclear whether common variants of service are consequential for civic outcomes. This study examines changes in the relative importance assigned to prosocial and egoistic values associated with service through different types of organizations, service prompted by external contingencies, and service that spans a narrow or wide frame of time. Data were drawn from the survey responses of 16,749 secondary school students (50 percent female, 28 percent ethnic minority, modal age = 15) who participated in the National Educational Longitudinal Study during their sophomore year in 1990 and completed a follow-up survey during their senior year in 1992. Results from a propensity score analysis indicated that service through humanitarian organizations but not other types of organizations was positively associated with the adoption of a prosocial value orientation. Service prompted by an institutional mandate or social pressure was negatively associated with prosociality relative to service characterized as strictly voluntary, although all students except those with an initially egoistic value orientation benefited from mandatory service relative to no service. While short-term service during the sophomore year had no enduring effect, long-term service predicted gains in prosociality above and beyond the effect of concurrent service. The findings suggest that the relationship between community service and prosocial value development can be optimized to the extent that service through a humanitarian organization is prompted by autonomy-supportive conditions over the course of 2 years.