Voters hold the key: lock-in, mobility, and the portability of property tax exemptions

Since California voters approved Proposition 13 in 1978, fifteen states have enacted caps on the annual growth in assessed property values. These laws often impose a great burden on municipal finances and create horizontal inequity among homeowners. Why do voters choose to limit local government in this way? Reasons may include controlling the power of special interests, addressing agency failures of government officials (the "Leviathan" hypothesis), or preserving the impact of a current but fleeting antitax political alignment. Yet research has found that voters' perception of a limitation's fiscal consequences do not match reality, questioning the rationality of voter behavior. To counter this position, another strand of literature argues that support for tax limitations is driven not by perceptions of government inefficiency but by reasonable expectations of who will ultimately bear the tax limitation's burden. We explore this view by exploiting the differential tax treatment generated by assessment caps in the context of a recent, novel referendum in Florida. We examine voter support for a 2008 constitutional amendment that included a unique provision making the existing assessment cap portable within the state. We test the hypothesis that voters understood the mobility consequences of tax limitations and the net burden of the cap. We find that high potential tax savings and high expected mobility rates result in higher support for portability. We also find that the degree of racial segregation, the presence of nonresidential tax bases, and the share of migrants from out of state all contribute to support for the amendment. Results suggest that voters were as concerned with reducing their own tax share at the expense of other property owners as they were with curtailing local expenditures.

Structure and Trends of Rural Employment: Canada in the Context of OECD Countries

In 1991, 33 percent of Canada's population lived in predominantly rural regions. Employment growth in rural regions averaged 1.3 percent per year over the 1980s, ranking fourth among OECD countries. In 1991, only 11 percent of the rural workforce in Canada were working in agriculture, forestry or fishing. Within rural regions, employment growth was highest in rural areas adjacent to metropolitan centres. Business services was the fastest growing sector in all types of regions, but rural regions received only a minor boost due to the relatively low share of their workforce in business services. On average, rural areas showed less growth - however, within rural areas, there were regions that showed more growth than urban regions. Rurality does not necessarily imply slow employment growth.Community/Rural/Urban Development, Labor and Human Capital,

A New Approach to Non-CMA/CA Areas

Non-metropolitan areas in Canada are often simply referred as rural Canada, without enough attention paid to their inner differences. The Metropolitan Influence Zones (MIZ) conceptual framework allows us to divide non-metropolitan areas into No Metropolitan Influence Zone (No MIZ), Weak Metropolitan Influence Zone (Weak MIZ), and Moderate Metropolitan Influence Zone (Moderate MIZ), according to the commuting flows to and from metropolitan areas. Analyses on New Brunswick show that the nonmetropolitan population are economically disadvantaged overall compared to metropolitan population. However, there are substantial differences within nonmetropolitan areas. Population in the No Metropolitan Influence Zone do not appear to be the most disadvantaged economically. In so far as the No Metropolitan Zone may be regarded as the most rural, this casts doubt on the conventional wisdom regarding "rural" as the synonym of socio-economic disadvantage. In fact, the urban population in the No Metropolitan Influence Zone is shown to be the most disadvantaged economically. The pattern in Saskatchewan is quite different from New Brunswick. In general, median family income decreases, unemployment rate and incidence of low income families increase as the influence of metropolitan areas decreases. Together with the findings concerning New Brunswick, it is clear that non-metropolitan Canada is anything but homogeneous. More research is needed to bring out this diversity so that social policies can be better tailored to the needs of non-metropolitan Canadian population.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Correlated physical and mental health summary scores for the SF-36 and SF-12 Health Survey, V.1

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The SF-36 and SF-12 summary scores were derived using an uncorrelated (orthogonal) factor solution. We estimate SF-36 and SF-12 summary scores using a correlated (oblique) physical and mental health factor model.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We administered the SF-36 to 7,093 patients who received medical care from an independent association of 48 physician groups in the western United States. Correlated physical health (PCS_c) and mental health (MCS_c) scores were constructed by multiplying each SF-36 scale z-score by its respective scoring coefficient from the obliquely rotated two factor solution. PCS_c-12 and MCS_c-12 scores were estimated using an approach similar to the one used to derive the original SF-12 summary scores.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The estimated correlation between SF-36 PCS_cand MCS_cscores was 0.62. There were far fewer negative factor scoring coefficients for the oblique factor solution compared to the factor scoring coefficients produced by the standard orthogonal factor solution. Similar results were found for PCS_c-12, and MCS_c-12 summary scores.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Correlated physical and mental health summary scores for the SF-36 and SF-12 derived from an obliquely rotated factor solution should be used along with the uncorrelated summary scores. The new scoring algorithm can reduce inconsistent results between the SF-36 scale scores and physical and mental health summary scores reported in some prior studies.</p> <p>(Subscripts C = correlated and UC = uncorrelated)</p

Impact of the New Malaysian Cigarette Pack Warnings on Smokers’ Awareness of Health Risks and Interest in Quitting Smoking

The objective of this research was to compare the response of adult smokers in Malaysia to newly proposed pictorial cigarette warnings against the current text-only warnings. The study population included 140 adult male smokers who were enrolled in a randomized trial to view either the new pictorial warnings (intervention) or the old text-only warnings (control). Participants completed pre-exposure and post-exposure questionnaires that assessed their awareness of the health risks of smoking, response to the package warnings, and interest in quitting smoking. Exposure to the pictorial warnings resulted in increased awareness of the risks of smoking, stronger behavioral response to the warnings and increased interest in quitting smoking. The new warnings in Malaysia will increase smokers’ knowledge of the adverse health effects of smoking and have a positive effect on interest in quitting

Predictive Value Tools as an Aid in Chemopreventive Agent Development

Over 25 years, the National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Prevention has entered some 800 agents into a chemopreventive agent testing program. Two critical steps involve: 1) in vitro/in vivo morphologic assays and 2) animal tumor assays (incidence/multiplicity reduction). We sought to determine how accurately the earlier-stage (morphologic) assays predict efficacy in the later-stage (animal tumor) assays

Underutilization of Social Insurance among the Poor: Evidence from the Philippines

Many developing countries promote social health insurance as a means to eliminate unmet health needs. However, this strategy may be ineffective if there are barriers to fully utilizing insurance.We analyzed the utilization of social health insurance in 30 hospital districts in the central regions of the Philippines between 2003 and 2007. Data for the study came from the Quality Improvement Demonstration Study (QIDS) and included detailed patient information from exit interviews of children under 5 years of age conducted in seven waves among public hospital districts located in the four central regions of the Philippines. These data were used to estimate and identify predictors of underutilization of insurance benefits--defined as the likelihood of not filing claims despite having legitimate insurance coverage--using logistic regression.Multivariate analyses using QIDS data from 2004 to 2007 reveal that underutilization averaged about 15% throughout the study period. Underutilization, however, declined over time. Among insured hospitalized children, increasing length of stay in the hospital and mother's education, were associated with less underutilization. Being in a QIDS intervention site was also associated with less underutilization and partially accounts for the downward trend in underutilization over time.The surprisingly high level of insurance underutilization by insured patients in the QIDS sites undermines the potentially positive impact of social health insurance on the health of the marginalized. In the Philippines, where the largest burden of health care spending falls on households, underutilization suggests ineffective distribution of public funds, failing to reach a significant proportion of households which are by and large poor. Interventions that improve benefit awareness may combat the problem of underutilization and should be the focus of further research in this area

Consensus Statement on Public Involvement and Engagement with Data-Intensive Health Research.

This consensus statement reflects the deliberations of an international group of stakeholders with a range of expertise in public involvement and engagement (PI&E) relating to data-intensive health research. It sets out eight key principles to establish a secure role for PI&E in and with the research community internationally and ensure best practice in its execution. Our aim is to promote culture change and societal benefits through ensuring a socially responsible trajectory for innovations in this field.Peer reviewe