Testing a Financial Incentive to Promote Re‐employment among Displaced Workers: The Canadian Earnings Supplement Project (ESP)

This article presents findings from a randomized experiment conducted in four Canadian provinces to measure the effects of a generous financial incentive that was designed to promote rapid re‐employment among workers who were displaced from their jobs by changing economic conditions. The incentive tested was an earnings supplement which, for as long as 2 years and as much as $250 weekly, would replace 75 percent of the earnings loss incurred by displaced workers who took a new lower‐paying full‐time job within six months of receiving a supplement offer. Findings from the experiment indicate that although persons offered the supplement understood its terms and conditions, only 2 out of 10 actually received supplement payments. Furthermore, the supplement offer had little effect on job‐search behavior, employment prospects, or receipt of unemployment insurance. Nevertheless, persons who received supplement payments benefited from them substantially. On average, they received payments for 64 weeks, totaling $8,705. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

A new barrier to participation: Heterogeneous application of voter identification policies

In democratic societies there is a tension between maximizing ballot access and minimizing voter fraud. Since the 2000 presidential election, this tension has been central to discussions about election reform at the national, state, and local level. We examine this tension by focusing on the implementation of voter identification laws in one state that has experienced significant issues in recent elections, and that is currently implementing election reform: New Mexico. We hypothesize that Hispanic voters are more likely to show some form of identification than other types of voters. Using a voter data set from New Mexico's First Congressional District in the 2006 election, we find that Hispanic, male and Election Day voters are more likely to show some form of identification than non-Hispanic, female and early voters. In addition, using an overlapping study of Bernalillo County 2006 poll workers, which almost entirely overlaps with the First Congressional District, we find no evidence that differences in poll worker partisanship or ethnicity produce differences in voter identification procedures. Our findings suggest that broad voter identification laws, which may be applied unequally, may be perceived as discriminatory.     

Filial Daughter? Filial Son? How China’s Young Urban Elite Negotiate Intergenerational Obligations

ABSTRACT

This article deploys narrative method to explore how young adults in China enrolled in higher education negotiate future intergenerational obligations. The study finds that the process through which filial piety is being renegotiated is complex and sometimes contradictory, and norms and values do not always align with practices, as intergenerational obligations need to be managed in tandem with obligations envisioned towards future spouses, as well as work opportunities. Although no longer explicitly son-centred, the intergenerational contract is highly gendered, and patrilineality and patrilocality have not simply become attenuated through some general process of modernization. Rather, there are many ways in which they have become renegotiated, revealing both continuity and change in intergenerational relations. The article illustrates ways in which both patrilineality and patrilocality—whether endorsed, resisted, or negotiated—are still important organizing principles for how intergenerational relations play out. It introduces the concept of “neo-patrilocality” to denote the practice of families channelling resources along the patriline to organize housing for sons in order to enhance their prospect of getting married and having children, a central aspect of filial piety. While filial sons may be involved in more complex relations of reciprocity due to both cultural imperatives and material investments, filial daughters appear to have more leeway in negotiating intergenerational relations. This may reflect a watered-down, but still implicit, understanding that daughters and grandchildren by daughters are outside of the lineage. It seems that, for filial daughters, the parent–adult-child relation is both more intense and more central to filial piety, while for filial sons, intergenerational relations extend beyond the parent–child relation—to grandparents and future children—more than they do for young women. The article concludes that gender relations and intergenerational relations interact and mutually reinforce one another, and that there are differences in class. Patrilineality and neo-patrilocality were more central for affluent and less privileged families than for families belonging to the middle class.     

Cross-ethnic Invariance of Self-esteem and Depression Measures for Chinese,Filipino, and European American Adolescents

Self-esteem and depression are fundamental psychological adjustment constructs in the study of adolescent well-being. Most measures of these constructs have been developed and validated using European American samples, and while the correlates and predictors of psychological adjustment have been examined in multiple cultural settings, no existing research explicitly compares the equivalence of measures of self-esteem or depression for contemporary Chinese, Filipino and European American adolescents. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (the Add Health study), this study examines the factorial invariance of self-esteem and depression measures for European American adolescents and the two largest Asian American ethnic groups in the U.S.: Chinese and Filipino Americans. Results indicate strong evidence for invariance of the measure of self-esteem; however, the often-used measure of depression (CES-D) does not satisfy basic tests of measurement invariance for Asian Americans in this sample.

MEDIATING WITH HIGH-CONFLICT COUPLES

Models of mediation based on negotiation assume that participants can think and act rationally, whereas in reality, when individuals are overwhelmed by anger and pain, their capacity for reason and logic diminishes. Family mediators need to appreciate the intensity of the irrational feelings and reactions they see in mediation and to consider their personal impact. Mediators can help to contain family crises by adapting the family crises by adapting the model and methods in this article to fit different levels and patterns of conflict. An understanding of systems theory is particularly helpful in considering the functions of conflict and varying needs to maintain conflict. This article suggests that mediators can use different kinds of nonverbal and verbal communication and surprise those who expect mediators to give them a stock response.     

Will the introduction of an emotional context affect fingerprint analysis and decision-making?

Fingerprint identification relies on an expert's ability to accurately recognise differences and similarities in friction ridge detail. The process is open to the questioning of an expert's ability to accurately analyse and interpret friction ridges. It has been suggested that the interpretation and analysis of fingermarks becomes more subjective as clarity decreases and as a consequence the expert is more vulnerable to external stimuli. An experiment involving 70 fingerprint experts was conducted to establish whether the introduction of an emotional context would alter the experts' judgement of an ambiguous or poor quality mark. The emotional context did have a perceived effect on the experts' analysis, as more stated they were affected by the information they were given. However, it did not have any actual effect on their final opinions as no difference was observed between the high- and low-emotional contexts.