The Effect of State Welfare Waivers on Family Earnings and Income Growth of AFDC Recipients, 1993-1995

SUMMARY

Many observers of welfare reform have argued that self-sufficiency on the part of welfare recipients is desirable. This would require, at least, that recipients' economic well-being not fall as a result of welfare reform. That question is addressed here by analyzing the impact of early state-level welfare waivers on the growth of earnings and income received by welfare recipients. Analysis of data from the Current Population Survey found that among welfare recipients (1) early work-related welfare reforms generally did not improve the growth in family earnings, and (2) waivers often had a small but negative effect on the growth of family income. Waivers were less detrimental for rural than for urban recipients. Since research has shown that rural employment and earnings generally lag behind urban areas, this is an interesting finding. It suggests that even though rural residents face greater barriers to employment, welfare reform has a smaller marginal effect on rural recipients.     

Trajectories of Administrative Reform: Institutions,Timing and Choices in France and Spain

The influence of national administrative institutions on contemporary reforms has often been noted but insufficiently tested. This article enriches the comparative perspective of administrative reform policies by focusing on four interrelated dimensions: the choices of reformers, institutional constraints, timing and sequencing and long-term trajectories. This article tries to determine whether most similar administrative systems exhibit analogous contemporary reform trajectories in content, timing and sequence. By comparing the administrative reform policies of two ‘most similar’ Napoleonic countries, France and Spain, this article analyses the commonalities and divergences of decentralisation, territorial state reorganisation, civil service reforms and policies that focus on performance management and organisational design. The article identifies the ‘causal mechanisms’ that characterise the specific role of institutions and considers both the role of context and the importance of policy intersections.     

电子商务发展与进出口贸易：基于动态面板数据模型的实证研究

该文选取中国2003—2010年面板数据,考虑进口、出口贸易变量的滞后效应,建立进口、出口与电子商务发展水平等相关影响因素之间的动态面板计量模型,分别从进口和出口两个层面进行了实证研究,得出一些启示性结论。     

Disentangling the Effects of Bounding and Mobility on Reports of Criminal Victimization

Replacement respondents who move into NCVS households after the initial bounding interview can introduce measurement error since their reports of victimization may be influenced by their mobility (actual experiences) and by their unbounded interview status (response error). Which of these factors affects reporting is unknown and is the focus of this research. The availability of incoming respondent data from the NCVS School Crime Supplement and mobility status from the NCVS provides a unique opportunity to study these effects separately. Both bounding and mobility were found to influence reporting; however, this influence was not consistent. Unlike findings from past research, bounding only had significant effects on reports of property victimization. Conversely, moving only significantly affected reports of violent victimization. As this study is the first to disentangle the effect of unbounded interview status from mobility on reports of victimization, the findings emphasize the need for further research to better understand these issues.     

Homo– et hétérogamie dans les attitudes et le comportement politique en Suisse

Ce texte est consacré au comportement politique de partenaires hétérosexuels vivant en couple, interrogés durant la première vague d'en quête du Panel suisse de ménages ( www.swisspanel.ch ). L'hypothèse générale défendue est que le comportement politique est influencé par une multitude de flux et d'interactions personnelles, notamment au sein du foyer. Considérant les caractéristiques des deux partenaires d'un couple, plutôt que d'interroger un individu isolé de son contexte familial, comme c'est généralement le cas dans les études électorales, on peut raffiner l'analyse et l'interprétation du comportement politique. Les résultats présentés montrent notamment que les comportements politiques sont indubitablement convergents au sein des couples, mais qu'il existe aussi une large part d'autonomie pour chacun des partenaires. Ils mettent en évidence l'influence prééminente de l'homme dans les foyers, ainsi que le faible impact des variables socio‐démographiques quant à l'explication du comportement politique.     

A shortened child behavior checklist for delinquency studies

This study examines the reduction of the number of items in the scales of the Child Behavior Checklist, while maintaining the reliability and predictability of its original scales. For that purpose, the original scales were replicated with data from the Pittsburgh Youth Study. New, abbreviated scales were constructed using the most potent items. This process yielded trimmed scales that were highly correlated with the full scales and that still reflect the original meanings of the scales. Further, there was no loss of reliability or predictability with the trimmed as opposed to the full scales. The results were replicated in an analysis with identical variables from the Rochester Youth Development Study. This replication produced equally high reliabilities with similar levels of prediction of delinquent behavior.We would like to thank Terence P. Thornberry for helpful comments and advice on early drafts of this paper.     

Lifestyle changes and risks of criminal victimization

Routine activity/lifestyle theories have been used to explain temporal changes in crime rates, the social ecology of crime, and individuals' risks of criminal victimization. Using a panel of 33,773 individuals and 19,005 households at two points in time, the current study extends previous research by examining whether changes in lifestyles are associated with changes in individuals' risks of personal and property victimization. Changes in lifestyles which signal greater target visibility or exposure to motivated offenders (greater daytime and nighttime activity outside the home) and reduced guardianship (decreases in the number of household members) are generally associated with increased risks of both types of victimization. Persons who maintained high levels of nighttime activity outside the household were also more likely to remain victims at both time periods. However, active lifestyle changes (increased precautionary actions) did not have their expected impact on reducing victimization risks, and several other changes over time also were inconsistent with expectations. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of passive and active lifestyle changes on victimization risks and the implications of our findings for developing sociological theories of criminal victimization.An early draft of this paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Society of Criminology, November 11–14, 1987. The data for this study were originally collected by the Bureau of Census for the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration and were made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. Neither the collectors of the data nor the Consortium bears any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.     

Priming Issues,Party Visibility,and Party Evaluations: The Impact on Vote Switching

Voter volatility has become a hallmark of Western democracies in the past three decades. At the same time short-term factors—such as the media’s coverage of issues, parties, and candidates during an election campaign—have become more important for voters’ decisions. While previous research did look at how campaign news in general affects electoral volatility in general, it has omitted to explicitly test the mechanisms underlying these effects. Building on theories of agenda setting, (affective) priming, and issue ownership, the current study aims to explain why certain news aspects lead voters to switch their vote choice. We theorize it is the visibility of a party, the evaluation of a party, and the attention for issues owned by a party that primes voters to switch to a certain party. We use national panel survey data (N = 765) and link this to an extensive content analysis of campaign news on television and in newspapers in the run up to the 2012 Dutch national elections. The results show that issue news leads to vote change in the direction of the party that owns the issue. Even stronger is the effect of party visibility on vote switching. Our results, however, find the strongest support for the effect of party evaluations on vote change: More favorable news about a party increases switching to that party.     

Changes in Prosocial Motivation over Time: A Cross-Sector Analysis of Effects on Volunteering and Work Behavior

A gap in research on prosocial motivation is that very little is known about its change across time, let alone, how such changes affect employee behavior. Using multiple waves of panel data, covering a period of sixteen years, this article finds that prosocial motivation is mostly stable, and there are no broader socialization effects in the private and public sector. However, when prosocial motivation increases, it leads to increases in either work or volunteering behavior, suggesting that public employees may use alternative outlets to realize their motivation if such motivational capital cannot be linked to the mission of their organizations.     

How political malpractice affects trust in EU institutions

Abstract

Political misconduct is known to harm the politicians involved. Yet, we know less about how such events affect trust in political institutions. We study a real-world political malpractice affair in the European Commission, using a three-wave panel design to investigate how information about the affair influences trust in EU institutions. This enables us, first, to isolate the impact of new information on political trust, remedying endogeneity issues common in political trust research. Second, we assess which institutions are affected most (specificity) and whether effects depend upon citizens’ sophistication levels (conditionality). Finally, we assess the durability of effects over time. Our findings demonstrate that citizens obtain knowledge about EU affairs through the media, and use this knowledge in their trust evaluations. In doing so, citizens differentiate between EU and national institutions, with trust in the European Commission affected most. This suggests a sophisticated process and highlights the evaluative nature of political trust.