Family, society and the individual: determinants of entrepreneurial attitudes among youth in Chennai, South India

High rates of youth unemployment across the world have captured the attention of many world organizations and other policy makers. One policy solution that has been proposed to curb these high rates is encouraging youth entrepreneurship. In this paper, we examine the formation of attitudes that are favorable to entrepreneurship using data from 185 business students in South India. We adopt an approach that tests the relative efficacy of two principal factors in the formation of entrepreneurial attitude, i.e., stocks of youth human/social capital and a series of personality traits. Results from a probit model suggest that the youth’s prior labor market experience, the social capital that youth have accumulated through volunteering, and the social connections that parents have made are all highly predictive of pro-entrepreneurial attitudes; personality traits exert less importance. Implications for these findings are discussed for the creation of strategies that can stimulate entrepreneurship among youth as one way to combat high rates of youth unemployment

Isolating the Family Cap Effect on Fertility Behavior: Evidence From New Jersey's Family Development Program Experiment

This study examines the unbundled impacts of a family cap policy and enhanced JOBS program on the fertility of 2100 women on welfare who were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups as part of New Jersey's welfare reform program. Data were collected quarterly from December 1992 through March 1997 on births, abortions, contraceptive pill use, and contraceptive sterilizations from welfare and Medicaid claim files. Results indicate that the family cap lowered births and increased abortions and contraception use but only for women who were short-time welfare users. Enhanced JOBS exerted an independent effect on fertility of more chronic recipients. (JEL "I38") Copyright 2004 Western Economic Association International.

Message and price components of Family Caps: Experimental evidence from New Jersey

In this paper, we examine the relative efficacy of two mechanisms--price consideration and the message of social responsibility--in accounting for Family Cap effects on fertility behavior. The Family Cap is a component of welfare reform policy that denies additional cash benefits to children born 10 or more months after a woman entered the welfare rolls. We use data from the New Jersey Family Development Program (FDP) evaluation that employed a classical experimental design. We find that fertility behaviors are influenced by both Family Cap price and message mechanisms but that these effects are conditioned by welfare recipients' time on welfare and race. Black women who have longer stays on welfare are more likely to be influenced by price while women with shorter stays are influenced by both price and the social message. We believe our results have implications not only for future public welfare policy initiatives but for any social policies that attempt to influence behavior directly, through individual rewards and punishments, and indirectly through the activation of social or community pressures.Family Cap Social experiment Price effect Message effect IV probit Fertility impacts

The crucial role played by social outrage in efforts to reform child protective services

In this paper, we question the widely, if tacitly, held perspective that exceptional and immensely publicized instances of child abuse and neglect offer little guidance or understanding in improving the efficacy of child protective services (CPS). Using insights from Carl Jung, Max Weber and Henry Mintzberg, we argue that not only do such archetypical cases and the attendant moral outrage serve as catalysts for legislative and judicial actions; they also motivate structural and procedural changes in CPS operations. We propose extending to CPS a risk model commonly considered in the fields of environmental science, food safety and chemical engineering, where risk is conceptualized as a function of both technical hazard and moral outrage. We point out, however, that unlike in these non-CPS fields where the typical response is to 'manage' outrage via public education or public relations campaigns and to allow outrage to influence only the more immediate and exceptional decisions following an outrageous event, in the CPS field where children are the focal point, exceptional decision processes also seep into routine decision making by necessity. We term our proposed enhanced risk model the Socially Outraged Risk Expression (SORE). We conclude with recommendations for an empirical test of SORE.Child welfare Risk assessment Moral outrage Child welfare reform

A Public-Private Partnership Designed to Improve Student Soft Skills: The Johnson & Johnson Bridge-to-Employment Program

In this paper we describe a corporate-education partnership between Johnson & Johnson and disadvantaged public schools called Bridge-to-Employment (BTE) and examine the program’s impact on student acquisition of soft or non-cognitive, school-to-career transition skills. We model the differences in the attainment levels of eight soft skills in a sample of 236 BTE and 308 Comparison students from 10 BTE program sites in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Using cross-site trajectory analysis, we find that BTE participation had a positive impact on BTE students’ communication skills, perceived readiness for an immediate job, readiness for career, teamwork, and persistence in pursuing a task/goal (grit). BTE did not have an impact on students’ problem solving skills, readiness for college or ability to set long-term goals. We discuss the possible reasons for these mixed results and the need for encouraging more direct business-public school partnerships to address the growing knowledge and skills gaps facing our nation

New Jersey's Family Cap Experiment: Do Fertility Impacts Differ by Racial Density?

Using experimental design, this research examines the impact of the nation's first family cap policy, implemented in New Jersey, on the fertility behavior of welfare recipients. We explore whether the change in welfare parameters mandated by the policy induces differential impact among black, white, and Hispanic recipients. We examine if impacts are conditioned by racial-ethnic group concentration. Results show that reduced welfare payments have contributed to a decline in births for black women. While we find a large response for blacks (on average), we find no response for blacks who live in geographic areas where they form a racial-ethnic majority.