The benefits and costs of the Section 8 housing subsidy program: A framework and estimates of first‐year effects

This paper provides estimates for a comprehensive set of social benefits and costs associated with the federal Housing Choice Voucher ( Section 8 ) program. The impact categories for which we provide empirical estimates include the value of the voucher to recipients; additional services and public benefits induced by voucher receipt; improvements in children's health, education, and criminal behaviors; the costs of voucher provision; the labor supply impacts on voucher recipients; and community effects. These estimates rest largely on empirical analyses of the effect of voucher receipt on several recipient and taxpayer behaviors and outcomes that occur in the first year of voucher receipt. The analysis distinguishes benefits and costs accruing to program participants, nonparticipants—including taxpayers and property owners—and society as a whole. Our analysis suggests that the program is likely to meet the efficiency standard of positive net social benefits. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Women’s Acceptance of Spousal Abuse in Iraq: Prevalence Rates and the Role of Female Empowerment Characteristics

This study examines the acceptance of spousal abuse among women living in Iraq and tests whether attitudes condoning abuse are associated with low female empowerment. Of 15,875 married women surveyed, 63?% agreed that a husband is justified in beating his wife. Women lacking education were 2.3 times more likely to justify this violence than those with secondary education. Women outside the labor force were 1.4 times more likely than working women to condone this abuse. Attitudes on spousal violence varied by region and rural/urban status. Female empowerment efforts may help combat spousal violence and change social norms condoning this behavior.     

Literature in the Dock: The Trials of Oscar Wilde

This essay uses the recently published expanded record of the Queensberry libel trial to revisit the relationship between the 'literary' and 'sexual' dimensions of the Wilde scandal. The defence was guided by an integrated conception of the links between the two that shaped both the public responses and the legal proceedings, including the criminal prosecution. The conflict between moral literalism and aesthetic indeterminacy not only informed the legal determination of sexual guilt but also was inflected by social class in ways that contributed to the construction of male homosexuality and of the 'literary'.     

Evaluating the effectiveness of one-officer versus two-officer patrol units

This article presents a model-based evaluation of one-versus two-officer patrol staffing. Postulated arguments for and against each strategy are outlined as they appear in the literature. Performance measures are elicited from this discussion. Several models are constructed that allow for a comparative analysis using these performance measures; equal cost staffing options are considered. Formal expectations of comparative strategic performance are presented along with suggestions for further analytical research.     

Psychosocial antecedents of unwed motherhood among indigent adolescents

Theoretically based hypotheses regarding psychosocial antecedents of unwed motherhood among indigent adolescents are tested. Data regarding psychosocial antecedents were obtained from a survey of a 50% sample of seventhgraders in a large urban school system. Hypotheses were tested by comparing three groups of subjects from among these respondents: (1) 82 female adolescents who received perinatal care at an adult development clinic for indigent adolescents (all gave birth out of wedlock at least one year following the baseline survey and prior to their eighteenth birthday); (2) 164 matched (by race, mother's education, and school) controls — two matches for each pre-unwed mother; and (3) 164 randomly selected controls — two controls for each preunwed mother. The results were consistent with the assertion that deviant behaviors related to and including unwed motherhood are alternative deviant responses to the subjectively recognized inability to defend against self-rejection in the course of membership group experiences in anticipation of self-enhancing consequences of the deviant behaviors. The positions in the social structure occupied by the pre-unwed mothers predispose the subjects to deviant responses by (1) increasing the probability of self-devaluing experiences and the subjective association of these experiences with the normative structure and (2) offering highly visible deviant alternatives that offer greater self-enhancing potential than the perceived low self-enhancing potential of the normative environment. The deviant patterns to which the subjects are predisposed are in fact adopted when prior social controls effictively exercised by parental and school authorities erode (as a result of the subject's identification of family and school as persistent sources of self-devaluing experiences). The specific modes of deviance adopted, including patterns associated with unwed motherhood outcomes, are apparently consistent with subculturally influenced values and adaptive/coping/defensive patterns. The total pattern of findings suggests that the same general theory of deviant behavior that has been applied to other modes of deviance is appropriate in understanding precursors of unwed motherhood among indigent adolescents.Received his Ph.D. in sociology from New York University in 1958. Current research interests are social psychiatry and, more specifically, the reciprocal relationship between self-attitudes and the adoption of deviant response patterns.Received her Ph.D. in educational psychology from University of Texas at Austin. Main interest is adult development.Received his M. D. from University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Research interests are self-destructive behavior and alcoholism.     

Increase in self-rejection as an antecedent of deviant responses

The hypothesis that increase in negative self-attitudes is an antecedent condition of deviant responses was tested. Subjects were seventhgrade students who responded to a questionnaire three times at annual intervals (N=3148). Self-attitudes were measured by a sevenitem self-derogation scale. Change in self-derogation was determined by expressing the posttest score as a deviation from the posttest-on-pretest regression line. For each of 22 deviant acts it was hypothesized and observed that, among students denying performance of the act prior to T₂ T₃, students affirming performance during T₂ T₃, relative to students continuing denial of performance, will have manifested significantly greater antecedent increases in self-derogation during T₁ T₂. The comparisons were significant in 19 of the 22 instances. The findings provide strong support for the position that the genesis of negative self-attitudes is a common influence mediating between adverse membership group experiences and the adoption of any of a wide variety of deviant responses.Received his Ph.D. in sociology from New York University in 1958. Current research interests are social psychiatry and, more specifically, the reciprocal relationship between self-attitudes and the adoption of deviant response patterns.