Marriage patterns among unwed mothers: Before and after PRWORA

The promotion of marriage and two‐parent families became an explicit public policy goal with the passage of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Marriage has the putative effect of reducing welfare dependency among single mothers, but only if they marry men with earnings sufficient to lift them and their children out of poverty. Newly released data from the 2002 cycle of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), along with data from the 1995 cycle, allow us to compare pre‐ and post‐PRWORA differences in (1) cumulative marriage rates among unwed mothers, and (2) patterns of marital choice (that is, differences in characteristics of the men these mothers marry, such as their education and employment status). Overall, our results show that unwed childbearing is associated with lower marriage rates and marital quality. Difference‐in‐difference models show that welfare reform was not strongly associated with pre‐ and post‐welfare reform changes in marriage among nonmarital birth mothers, even among the most disadvantaged mothers. Compared with other women, nonmarital birth mothers also were less likely than other women to marry “economically attractive” men in the post‐welfare reform period. The success of marriage promotion initiatives may depend heavily on whether women themselves are “marriageable” and whether potential spouses have the ability to support a stable family life. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The Gradual Defederalization of Canadian Health Policy

Health policy is an important facet of territorial politics,drawing the contours of the sharing community. Changes in themanagement of the division of powers in health policy pointto shifting understandings of the federal political community.This article adopts this approach in the Canadian case, whereobservers disagree about whether values of federal diversityremain robust or are eroding. It considers three Commissions(Rowell-Sirois, Hall, and Romanow) reporting over a 60-yeartime span. The Commissions adopt different understandings ofthe division of powers and of the proper forms of intergovernmentalhealth governance, moving from a robust understanding of federaldiversity and the division of powers in the 1940s, to an afederalemphasis on efficiency and pan-Canadian citizenship in the early2000s.     

Issue and leader voting in U.S. presidential elections

The “Issues and Leaders” model shows that aggregate votes for President in U.S. elections from 1972 to 2012 can be accurately predicted from people's perceptions of the candidates' issue handling competence and leadership qualities. For the past five elections, the model's ex ante forecasts, calculated three to two months prior to Election Day, were competitive with those from the best of eight established political economy models. Model accuracy substantially improved closer to Election Day. The Election Eve forecasts missed the actual vote shares by, on average, little more than one percentage point and thus reduced the error of the Gallup pre-election poll by 30%. The model demonstrates that the direct influence of party identification on vote choice decreases over the course of the campaign, whereas issues gain importance. The model has decision-making implications in that it advises candidates to engage in agenda setting and to increase their perceived issue-handling and leadership competence.     

Fatal propane-butane poisoning

Two lethal poisonings by butane and propane are described, and the corresponding concentrations in the body fluids and organ tissues are evaluated. One case appeared to be an accident after deliberate inhalation for butane, one was a suicide. The mechanism of the inhalation could be reconstructed in both cases. The concentrations in the biological material agreed well with observations in similar cases.