Location‐Efficient Mortgages: Is the Rationale Sound?

Location efficient mortgage (LEM) programs are an increasingly popular approach to combating urban sprawl. LEMs allow families who want to live in densely populated, transit‐rich communities to obtain a larger mortgage with a smaller down payment than traditional underwriting guidelines allow. LEMs are premised on the proposition that homeowners in such “location‐efficient” areas can safely be allowed to breach underwriting guidelines designed to prevent mortgage default because they have lower than average automobile‐related transportation expenses and more income available for mortgage payments. This paper employs records of more than 8000 FHA‐insured mortgages matched with data on various measures of location efficiency to test this proposition. The results suggest that it does not hold and that LEMs—like other low‐down‐payment mortgage programs—will raise mortgage default rates. This cost must be weighed against any potential anti‐sprawl benefits LEMs may have. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

An Experiment Testing the Relative Effectiveness of Encouraging Voter Participation by Inducing Feelings of Pride or Shame

Prior experimental research has demonstrated that voter turnout rises substantially when people receive mailings that indicate whether they voted in previous elections. This effect suggests that voters are sensitive to whether their compliance with the norm of voting is being monitored. The present study extends this line of research by investigating whether disclosure of past participation has a stronger effect on turnout when it calls attention to a past abstention or a past vote. A sample of 369,211 registered voters who voted in just one of two recent elections were randomly assigned to receive no mail, mail that encouraged them to vote, and mail that both encouraged them to vote and indicated their turnout in one previous election. The latter type of mailing randomly reported either the election in which they voted or the one in which they abstained. Results suggest that mailings disclosing past voting behavior had strong effects on voter turnout and that these effects were significantly enhanced when it disclosed an abstention in a recent election.     

Suffering What It Must? Mongolia and the Power of the ‘Weak’

Mongolia is not a hapless object on which the great powers may act at will. Like other small states existing on the periphery of great powers, Mongolia has—and does exercise—political agency. Its policies and actions affect not only the bilateral relationship it has with each of the greater powers, but—as an outgrowth of those bilateral relations—it also exerts some influence on the relationship that the great powers, in turn, have with each other. “… you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”¹     

Demographic change and forensic identification: problems in metric identification of Hispanic skeletons

The United States (U.S.) population structure is currently in a state of flux with one of the most profound changes being the increasing number of people referred to as Hispanic. In the U.S., much of the identification criteria for a biological profile are based on American Black and White individuals from anatomical collections. Using metric data from the Forensic Anthropology Data Bank (FDB), this paper will attempt to explore several issues that forensic anthropologists face when confronted with Hispanic remains. These will involve estimation of sex, height, and ancestry, the initial components of a biological profile. Discriminant function analyses indicate that American White criteria provide poor estimations of sex when applied to Hispanics and that ancestry estimation of Hispanic crania is difficult. Additionally, a new linear regression equation is presented that estimates stature for Hispanic individuals, although population specific criteria are still needed for Hispanic individuals from diverse geographical origins.     

Socioeconomic status,unemployment experience,and political participation: A disentangling of main and interaction effects

A clarification of the effects of unemployment on political participation attitudes and behaviors is developed by contrasting the effect of unemployment experience across categories of socioeconomic status. Data on employed and unemployed heads of household are drawn from the 1976 University of Michigan national presidential election survey. The results indicate both main and interaction effects. Regardless of employment status, lower socioeconomic status respondents are less committed to voting, feel less efficacious, are less interested in politics, and are less politically active than persons of higher status. However, participation attitudes and behaviors are more adversely affected by unemployment experience among those of lower than higher status. Among higher status respondents, attitudes toward self (i.e., feelings of efficacy) and political interest—but not political activity or attitude toward the importance of participation—are altered by unemployment.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Southwestern Sociological meetings in Ft. Worth, Texas, March 1979.