\u3cem\u3eThe Segregated Origins of Social Security: African Americans and the Welfare State.\u3c/em\u3e Mary Poole.

Book note for Alejandra Marchevsky and Jeanne Theoharis, Not Working: Latina Immigrants, Low-wage Jobs and the Failure of Welfare Reform. New York: New York University Press, 2006. $75.00 hardcover,$22.00 papercover

\u3cem\u3eBacklash Against Welfare Mothers Past and Present.\u3c/em\u3e Ellen Reese

Book note for Ellen Reese, Backlash Against Welfare Mothers Past and Present. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005. $ 19.95 papercover

Welcome to the Neighborhood: Does Where you Live Affect the Use of Nutrition, Health, and Welfare Programs?

Despite the recent upsurge in neighborhood effects research, few studies have examined the impact of neighborhood characteristics on the use of nutrition, health, and welfare programs. To explore these issues, this study used data from Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study, a longitudinal dataset comprised of low-income neighborhoods in Boston, San Antonio, and Chicago (n=1,712). Using hierarchical linear models, the results indicated that both individual (education, employment, and marriage) and perceived neighborhood disorder factors were related to social service use

\u3cem\u3ePromises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women put Motherhood before Marriage.\u3c/em\u3e Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas.

Book note for Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, Promises I can Keep: Why Poor Women put Motherhood before Marriage. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005. $24.95 hardcover,$15.95 papercover

Can People Experiencing Homelessness Acquire Financial Assets?

Through an innovative Individual Development Account (IDA) program run by the Community Empowerment Fund (CEF), individuals at risk for or experiencing homelessness receive financial education, access matched savings accounts, and have saved a total of $89,831.55. This is notable as low-income individuals often lack access to the means to build assets, which can moderate financial distress. In this mixed-method study we examine the program\u27s impact through administrative data, surveys, and qualitative interviews. Of the 17 interview participants, 15 opened an account, saving an average of$1,356.24 toward housing, emergency savings, cars, education, and computers. Few U.S. IDA programs have served those experiencing homelessness, although the results demonstrate they can save, which is remarkable considering the U.S. saving rate has been steadily declining to close to zero. Our findings suggest that this model is effective in working with the most disadvantaged populations to successfully acquire financial assets

Rural Neighborhood Context, Child Care Quality, and Relationship to Early Language Development

Prior research with older urban children indicates that disadvantaged neighborhood context is associated with poorer early development, including poorer verbal ability, reading recognition, and achievement scores among children. Neighborhood disadvantage in rural communities and at younger age levels may also be related to development; however this relationship has received little examination. In this study we utilize data from the Family Life Project, a representative sample of babies born to mothers in poor rural counties in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, to address questions related to the relationship between neighborhood context (disadvantage and safety) and children’s early language development. We examine mediation of this relationship by child care quality. We also examine geographic isolation and collective socialization as moderators of the relationship between neighborhood context and child care quality. Results indicated that while neighborhood disadvantage did not predict children’s development or child care quality, neighborhood safety predicted children’s receptive language, with child care quality a partial mediator of this relationship. Collective socialization but not geographic isolation moderated the relationship between neighborhood safety and child care quality

Social work education in the shadow of confederate statues and the specter of white supremacy

Driven by our code of ethics and our call to reckon with our embeddedness within a white supremacist institution in the US South, the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work re-visioned our approach to the MSW curriculum. Using case study methods, we trace our history and on-going work through interviews, document review, and community conversations, centering student voices. Students interviewed spoke about activism prompted by racist events on campus and nationally, and the inadequate response from the administration. Their efforts led to school-wide initiatives including curriculum shifts and accountability and action. The first-year generalist course, Confronting Oppression and Institutional Discrimination was restructured and resituated. Critical Race Theory was infused across the coursework. Two new working groups were created: The Anti-Racism Task Force and Reconciliation Standing Committee. Efforts to address racism and white supremacy in academic spaces require sustained activism to expose how racism is embedded within our institutions. While much work remains in the practice of becoming an antiracist institution, this model can serve as a prototype for others as they work to create programs that are site-specific and universally reflective of the institutional changes we need

Unified N=2 Maxwell-Einstein and Yang-Mills-Einstein Supergravity Theories in Four Dimensions

We study unified N=2 Maxwell-Einstein supergravity theories (MESGTs) and unified Yang-Mills Einstein supergravity theories (YMESGTs) in four dimensions. As their defining property, these theories admit the action of a global or local symmetry group that is (i) simple, and (ii) acts irreducibly on all the vector fields of the theory, including the ``graviphoton''. Restricting ourselves to the theories that originate from five dimensions via dimensional reduction, we find that the generic Jordan family of MESGTs with the scalar manifolds [SU(1,1)/U(1)] X [SO(2,n)/SO(2)X SO(n)] are all unified in four dimensions with the unifying global symmetry group SO(2,n). Of these theories only one can be gauged so as to obtain a unified YMESGT with the gauge group SO(2,1). Three of the four magical supergravity theories defined by simple Euclidean Jordan algebras of degree 3 are unified MESGTs in four dimensions. Two of these can furthermore be gauged so as to obtain 4D unified YMESGTs with gauge groups SO(3,2) and SO(6,2), respectively. The generic non-Jordan family and the theories whose scalar manifolds are homogeneous but not symmetric do not lead to unified MESGTs in four dimensions. The three infinite families of unified five-dimensional MESGTs defined by simple Lorentzian Jordan algebras, whose scalar manifolds are non-homogeneous, do not lead directly to unified MESGTs in four dimensions under dimensional reduction. However, since their manifolds are non-homogeneous we are not able to completely rule out the existence of symplectic sections in which these theories become unified in four dimensions.Comment: 47 pages; latex fil

Unified Maxwell-Einstein and Yang-Mills-Einstein Supergravity Theories in Five Dimensions

Unified N=2 Maxwell-Einstein supergravity theories (MESGTs) are supergravity theories in which all the vector fields, including the graviphoton, transform in an irreducible representation of a simple global symmetry group of the Lagrangian. As was established long time ago, in five dimensions there exist only four unified Maxwell-Einstein supergravity theories whose target manifolds are symmetric spaces. These theories are defined by the four simple Euclidean Jordan algebras of degree three. In this paper, we show that, in addition to these four unified MESGTs with symmetric target spaces, there exist three infinite families of unified MESGTs as well as another exceptional one. These novel unified MESGTs are defined by non-compact (Minkowskian) Jordan algebras, and their target spaces are in general neither symmetric nor homogeneous. The members of one of these three infinite families can be gauged in such a way as to obtain an infinite family of unified N=2 Yang-Mills-Einstein supergravity theories, in which all vector fields transform in the adjoint representation of a simple gauge group of the type SU(N,1). The corresponding gaugings in the other two infinite families lead to Yang-Mills-Einstein supergravity theories coupled to tensor multiplets.Comment: Latex 2e, 28 pages. v2: reference added, footnote 14 enlarge