Time Limits In Missouri

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 dramatically altered the social safety net. The federal legislation ended cash assistance as an entitlement program, shifted the funding stream to state block grants, and introduced time limits for individuals receiving cash assistance. According to federal guidelines, persons may not receive cash assistance for more than 60 months. Although states possess the option of implementing shorter time limits, Missouri, like many other states, adopted the federal guidelines of 60 months. Other states varied on both the length of a periodic time limit and the lifetime limit. Arizona, for example, does not have a lifetime limit but does not allow for more than 24 months of cash assistance within a 60 month period of time. Because of these variations in guidelines, the largest number of cases closed due to time limits are concentrated in states with shorter time limits such as Connecticut (21 months), Idaho (24 months), and Utah (36 months). Missouri's welfare plan was signed into law on July 1, 1997 and because of that time limits were first exhausted in July, 2002. This brief provides specific information regarding caseload trends in Missouri, including the length of time cases have been receiving benefits, the number of cases reaching the time limits, and the geographic distribution of case closures in Missouri.Includes bibliographical referece

Use of Cash Assistance by Non-Citizens in Missouri

"07-2005."The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) set in place restrictions on many forms of assistance, including cash grants or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Specifically, these new federal guidelines limited assistance for certain categories of immigrants, most notably those who entered the country after the federal welfare bill was signed in August of 1996. Most of these immigrants were required to have a five year minimum waiting period before they were eligible for cash assistance. However, as with most provisions, states had some ability to modify federal regulations. In Missouri, several groups of non-citizens are allowed to receive TANF. First, non-citizens who were in the country prior to August 22, 1996, and who otherwise meet criteria, maintained their eligibility. Additionally, certain groups who entered the country after August 22, 1996, were also classified as eligible. These included: refugees, asylees, and trafficking victims. According to a report by the Urban Institute, Missouri has a rather extensive safety net system still in place for immigrants, and is ranked among the top quarter of all states (Tumlim, Zimmerman, and Ost 1999). Given these changes, it is important to understand the situation of non-citizens with regard to the safety net in Missouri. How many non-citizens are receiving benefits? Where do they live in Missouri? In this brief, we assess patterns of cash assistance for non-citizens from 1999 to 2003. We find that, overall, noncitizens represent a very small percentage of the caseload, less than five percent at the peak in early 1999. Additionally, cases headed by non-citizens have declined substantially over the time studied, both in terms of raw numbers and relative to cases headed by citizens. The reason for the decline can not be known with certainty, but increased rates of naturalization have played a role. Finally, the non-citizen cases are not spread evenly across the state, but are concentrated in several counties, particularly those that have experienced recent increases in immigration.Includes bibliographical reference

Focus Groups on Infant Care Practices in Missouri

The goal of this research project was to better understand how individuals, primarily low-income African-American parents in Missouri, make decisions on infant care practices, specifically those focused around feeding and sleeping

The Vehicle, Spring 1972

Vol. 14, No. 3 Table of Contents HarvestAnne Bradypage 3 poemJann Briesacherpage 5 Monday MorningJohn Harthpage 6 cartoon montageV. Gene Myerspage 8 From Winter to Spring is 3 Years LongCathie Kayserpage 10 FascinationBettie Jane Williamspage 12 The Arithmetic ProblemJanice Forbuspage 12 The Three A.M. Summer Nightpage 13 AccidentMaude Dailypage 13 The DisciplinarianGeorge J. Bueningpage 14 Photography Credits Jim Diaspage 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14 CoverV. Gene Myershttps://thekeep.eiu.edu/vehicle/1027/thumbnail.jp

Natural capital informing decisions: from promise to practice

This is the accepted manuscript of a paper that will be published in PNAS. It is currently under an infinite embargo.The central challenge of the 21st century is to develop economic, social, and governance systems capable of ending poverty and achieving sustainable levels of population and consumption while securing the life-support systems underpinning current and future human well-being. Essential to meeting this challenge is the incorporation of natural capital and the ecosystem services it provides into decision-making. Here, we explore progress and crucial gaps at this frontier, reflecting upon the 10 years since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. We focus on three key dimensions of progress and ongoing challenges: raising awareness of the interdependence of ecosystems and human well-being; advancing the fundamental, interdisciplinary science of ecosystem services; and implementing this science in decisions to restore natural capital and use it sustainably. Awareness of human dependence on nature is at an all-time high, the science of ecosystem services is rapidly advancing, and talk of natural capital is now common from governments to corporate boardrooms. However, successful implementation is still in early stages. We explore why ecosystem service information has yet to fundamentally change decision-making and suggest a path forward that emphasizes: 1) developing solid evidence linking decisions to impacts on natural capital and ecosystem services, and then to human well-being, 2) working closely with leaders in government, business, and civil society to develop the knowledge, tools, and practices necessary to integrate natural capital and ecosystem services into everyday decision-making; and 3) reforming institutions to change policy and practices to better align private short-term goals with societal long-term goals.http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.150375111

Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of this dynamic; humanity has become the major force in shaping the future of the Earth system as a whole; and the scale and pace of the human dimension have caused climate change, rapid loss of biodiversity, growing inequalities, and loss of resilience to deal with uncertainty and surprise. Taken together, human actions are challenging the biosphere foundation for a prosperous development of civilizations. The Anthropocene reality—of rising system-wide turbulence—calls for transformative change towards sustainable futures. Emerging technologies, social innovations, broader shifts in cultural repertoires, as well as a diverse portfolio of active stewardship of human actions in support of a resilient biosphere are highlighted as essential parts of such transformations. © 2021, The Author(s)

Social Salience and the Sociolinguistic Monitor: A Case Study of ING and TH-fronting in Britain

This article examines the role of social salience, or the relative ability of a linguistic variable to evoke social meaning, in structuring listeners’ perceptions of quantitative sociolinguistic distributions. Building on the foundational work of Labov et al. (2006, 2011) on the “sociolinguistic monitor” (a proposed cognitive mechanism responsible for sociolinguistic perception), we examine whether listeners’ evaluative judgments of speech change as a function of the type of variable presented. We consider two variables in British English, ING and TH-fronting, which we argue differ in their relative social salience. Replicating the design of Labov et al.’s studies, we test 149 British listeners’ reactions to different quantitative distributions of these variables. Our experiments elicit a very different pattern of perceptual responses than those reported previously. In particular, our results suggest that a variable’s social salience determines both whether and how it is perceptually evaluated. We argue that this finding is crucial for understanding how sociolinguistic information is cognitively processed

Small farmers and sustainability: Institutional barriers to investment and innovation in the Malaysian palm oil industry in Sabah

The Malaysian palm oil industry is well known for the social, environmental and sustainability challenges associated with its rapid growth over the past ten years. Technologies exist to reduce the conflict between national development aims of economic uplift for the rural poor, on the one hand, and ecological conservation, on the other hand, by raising yields and incomes from areas already under cultivation. But the uptake of these technologies has been slow, particularly in the smallholder sector. In this paper we explore the societal and institutional challenges that influence the investment and innovation decisions of micro and small enterprise (MSE) palm oil smallholders in Sabah, Malaysia. Based on interviews with 38 smallholders, we identify a number of factors that reduce the smallholders' propensity to invest in more sustainable practices. We discuss why more effective practices and innovations are not being adopted using the concepts of, firstly, institutional logics to explore the internal dynamics of smallholder production systems, including attitudes to sustainability and innovation; and, secondly, institutional context to explore the pressures the smallholders face, including problems of access to land, labour, capital, knowledge and technical resources. These factors include limited access to global market information, corruption and uncertainties of legal title, weak economic status and social exclusion. In discussing these factors we seek to contribute to wider theoretical debates about the factors that block innovation and investment in business improvements in marginal regions and in marginalised groups