Accessing Social Statistics

published or submitted for publicatio

Demographics of Homelessness Series: The Rising Elderly Population

There is some troubling evidence that homelessness is beginning to increase among elderly adults. In addition, there are demographic factors -- such as the anticipated growth of the elderly population as baby boomers turn 65 years of age and recent reports of increases in the number of homeless adults ages 50 to 64 -- that suggest a dramatic increase in the elderly homeless population between 2010 and 2020. While the country's changing demographics may make this finding unsurprising, it has serious implications for providers of homeless services and should be deeply troubling to the policymakers that aim to prevent poverty and homelessness among the elderly through local and federal social welfare programs. This paper provides an assessment of the recent and projected changes in homelessness among the elderly and assesses the ability of public affordable housing programs to handle the projected growth in elderly persons at-risk of housing instability and homelessness

What's Cooking in Your Food System? A Guide to Community Food Assessment

Learn about Community Food Assessments, a creative way to highlight food-related resources and needs, promote collaboration and community participation, and create lasting change. This Guide includes case studies of nine Community Food Assessments; tips for planning and organizing an assessment; guidance on research methods and strategies for promoting community participation; and ideas for translating an assessment into action for change

Data Snapshot: Doubled Up in the United States

There have been recent proposals to expand the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's definition of homeless to include households that are doubled up for economic reasons. To assess the impact of this proposal, a new data snapshot from the Homelessness Research Institute at the Alliance looks at how many people would be added to the homelessness population if the proposal were adopted. The data snapshot shows that expanding the definition would increase the current homeless population (744,313 on any given night) by 3.8 million. The amount that would have to be appropriated so that the amount of funding per homeless or doubled up person matched the actual amount of funding per homeless person in 2005 is $7.725 billion

Bridging the Innovation Divide: An Agenda for Disseminating Technology Innovations within the Nonprofit Sector

Examines technology practices -- such as neighborhood information systems, electronic advocacy, Internet-based micro enterprise support, and digital inclusion initiatives -- that strengthen the capacity of nonprofits and community organizations

Collective action in space: assessing how collective action varies across an African landscape

This paper develops and applies a new approach for analyzing the spatial aspects of individual adoption of a technology that produces a mixed public-private good. The technology is an animal insecticide treatment called a “pouron” that individual households buy and apply to their animals. Private benefits accrue to households whose animals are treated, while the public benefits accrue to all those who own animals within an area of effective suppression. A model of household demand for pourons is presented. As a private good, household demand for the variable input depends upon output price, input cost, and household characteristics. Input costs for pouron treatments include both the market price of the pourons and the transaction costs that the household must incur to obtain the treatments. Demand also depends upon the way that each household expects its neighbors to respond to one's own behavior. Free-riding is expected in communities with no tradition or formal organization to support collective action. Greater cooperation is expected in communities that have organizations that reward cooperative behavior and punish deviant behavior. Data for estimation of the model were collected for all of the 5,000 households that reside within the study area of 350 square kilometers in southwest Ethiopia. Geographic reference data were collected for every household using portable Geographic Positioning System units. GIS software was used to generate spatial variables. Variables for distance from the household to the nearest treatment center and number of cattle-owning neighbors within a 1-kilometer radius of the household were created. The density of cattle-owning neighbors was used as a measure of the potential benefits from cooperation; this variable was expected to have a positive effect on household pouron demand in communities able to support effective collective action and a negative effect in communities not able to support effective collective action. A set of community binary variables was interacted with the density variable to capture differences between communities. The results confirm the importance of the household-level variables. The results also indicate large differences in ability to cooperate between local administrative units. Everything else equal, the areas least able to cooperate were located farthest from the treatment center, were ethnically heterogenous, and had a different ethnic composition than areas around the treatment centers.

Causes of Poverty: Findings from Recent Research

Over the past 25 years significant structural changes have occurred in the United States that have influenced poverty, making current-day poverty different in some ways from poverty just a few decades ago. These structural changes include transformations in our economic structure such as the shift from manufacturing employment to service-sector employment; the deinstitutionalization of people with mental illnesses into community settings; welfare reform, which resulted in a an emphasis on work over welfare; changes in immigration patterns; and skyrocketing rates of incarceration. Given these considerable changes, the vast majority of theliterature referenced in this summary is from the mid-1990s through 2007 to capture what has been learned about poverty within this new context. Studies prior to this time period are referenced when they are the most recent available and/or are landmark studies that are still applicable to the issue being addressed.The majority of the literature referenced here on each specific poverty-related issue is primary research that used rigorous econometric or statistical methods and robust nationally representative data sets. Included are studies and findings that surface throughout high quality literature reviews on the specified issues. Most have been published in journals or at poverty institutes affiliated with universities. The assessment of the methods of analysis used in the referenced research was rooted in peer reviews, frequency of citations, and perceived quality; for the purposes of this summary the methods were not re-analyzed or tested. Though there is a large body of international research on issues related to poverty, the research addressed here is almost exclusively focused on findings within the context of the United States.What follows is an analysis of these characteristic causes of poverty as well as research on issues that impact income, earnings, and poverty, some of which can be considered proximate determinants of poverty. These issues include characteristics and life experiences that put people at risk of not working or not working enough to prevent entry into poverty, such as race and gender of head of household, strength of the economy, quality of wages, human capital (education) of working age adults, health or disability status of household members, having acriminal record, being an immigrant, having experienced domestic violence, and neighborhood conditions. Certain events are more influential for various subgroups within the at-risk-of poverty population than they are for others

Assessing the effectiveness of a longitudinal knowledge dissemination intervention: Sharing research findings in rural South Africa

Knowledge dissemination interventions (KDIs) are integral to knowledge brokerage activities in research as part of the ethics of practice, but are seldom evaluated. In this case study, we critically reflect on an annual KDI as part of knowledge brokerage activities in the MRC/Wits-Agincourt Unit health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) in rural South Africa from 2001 to 2015. The HDSS findings on births, deaths and migrations, as well as nested research project results, were shared with villagers, village leaders and service providers. The data used for this case study comprised secondary analysis of 13 reports and 762 evaluation forms of annual village-based meetings; records of requests for data from stakeholders; and qualitative analysis of 15 individual and five focus group interviews with local leaders and service providers involving 60 people. Over time, the KDI evolved from taking place over one week a year to being extended over six months, and to include briefings with service providers and local leaders. Attendance at village-level meetings remained low at an average of 3 per cent of the total adult population. Since 2011, the KDI village-based meetings have developed into an embedded community forum for discussion of topical village issues. There has been a decrease in requests for health-care and other services from the research unit, with a concurrent increase in research-related questions and requests for data from service providers, village leaders and political representatives. We conclude that, in this setting, the dissemination of research findings is not a linear exchange of information from the researchers to village residents and their leadership, but is increasingly multi-directional. KDIs are a key component of knowledge brokerage activities and involve, influence and are influenced by other aspects of knowledge brokerage, such as identifying, engaging and connecting with stakeholders and supporting sustainability

Applied Research Through Partnership: the Experience of the Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Research Observatory

Paper presented at a seminar on ‘Los Observatorios Regionales de Políticas Públicas como Herramientas de Gestión de Información: Una Aproximación al Estudio del Rendimiento Autonómico, at the Centro de Estudios de Gestión, Análisis y Información, Campus de Somosaguas, La Universidad Complutense, Madrid, 23-24 November, 2000 Ten years ago, a Regional Research Observatory (ReRO) was established to provide ‘clients’ in Yorkshire and Humberside with a single point access to a region-wide data and analysis service. The Observatory’s portfolio covered activities relating to applied research and consultancy, intelligence, education and training, publications and networking. The first part of the paper explains the concept of the Observatory as it was initially conceived as a form of partnership across all the universities in the region, outlines the structure of the organization that was created, explains the arrangements for operating the Observatory as a partnership initiative, and exemplifies the outputs and achievements during the first half of the decade. In order to facilitate its regional monitoring activities, ReRO constructed a Regional Intelligence Centre (RIC), a customised geographical information system in which to store key data sets and generate a range of statistical indicators for the region as a whole or its constituent parts. The second part of the paper explains the structure of the RIC and its contents. It argues that the main advantage that derives from the construction of such a centre is the value that is added to raw information through data handling and integration, through skilled interpretation and through the provision of new information, maybe in the form of forecasts of what is likely to happen in the future, as well as analyses of what has happened in the past. The third and final part of the paper explores some of the key issues and difficulties relating to the operation of the Observatory and considers some of the reasons that have accounted for its loss of momentum in the last few years. This has occurred over a period of increased political attention to regional administration and planning in the UK, exemplified by the creation of Scottish and Welsh Assemblies and the emergence of Regional Development Agencies and Regional Assemblies across England. A retrospective evaluation demonstrates a number of lessons that have been learnt and provides a number of useful guidelines to those attempting to establish similar structures elsewhere in the developed world