Texas Integrated Child Support System: Final Evaluation Report

The Ray Marshall Center is conducting a program evaluation to measure the impacts of the Integrated Child Support System (ICSS) that requires those getting divorced or separated to be referred to the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) for IV-D child support services. Operating under a waiver from the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) in 17 counties, the ICSS changes the default action from opt-in to opt-out in order to increase participation in IV-D services, raise child support compliance, and avoid the accumulation of child support debt.The evaluation will report on child support compliance over time, including amount of payment and stability of payment as well as enforcement actions taken, cost effectiveness, and reasons parents choose to opt out.Researchers will conduct the waiver evaluation using a combination of random assignment and comparison site evaluation designs to measure the impacts of the waiver at statewide and county-level operational scales in Texas. The evaluation will use multiple data sets, including OAG administrative records data for determining child support case characteristics, child support obligations, collections, and enforcement actions; Unemployment Insurance (UI) quarterly wage records, U.S. Census data, county level child support data, and other data sources.Texas Office of the Attorney General, Office of Child Support EnforcementRay Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resource

Detection of x-rays from galaxy groups associated with the gravitationally lensed systems PG 1115+080 and B1422+231

Gravitational lenses that produce multiple images of background quasars can be an invaluable cosmological tool. Deriving cosmological parameters, however, requires modeling the potential of the lens itself. It has been estimated that up to a quarter of lensing galaxies are associated with a group or cluster which perturbs the gravitational potential. Detection of X-ray emission from the group or cluster can be used to better model the lens. We report on the first detection in X-rays of the group associated with the lensing system PG 1115+080 and the first X-ray image of the group associated with the system B1422+231. We find a temperature and rest-frame luminosity of 0.8 +/- 0.1 keV and 7 +/- 2 x 10^{42} ergs/s for PG 1115+080 and 1.0 +infty/-0.3 keV and 8 +/- 3 x 10^{42} ergs/s for B1422+231. We compare the spatial and spectral characteristics of the X-ray emission to the properties of the group galaxies, to lens models, and to the general properties of groups at lower redshift.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 17 pages, 5 figures. Minor changes to tex

A Spectroscopic Study of the Environments of Gravitational Lens Galaxies

(Abridged) We present the first results from our spectroscopic survey of the environments of strong gravitational lenses. The lens galaxy belongs to a poor group of galaxies in six of the eight systems in our sample. We discover three new groups associated with the lens galaxies of BRI 0952-0115 (five members), MG 1654+1346 (seven members), and B2114+022 (five members). We more than double the number of members for another three previously known groups around the lenses MG 0751+2716 (13 total members), PG 1115+080 (13 total members), and B1422+231 (16 total members). We determine the kinematics of the six groups, including their mean velocities, velocity dispersions, and projected spatial centroids. The velocity dispersions of the groups range from 110 +170, -80 to 470 +100, -90 km/s. In at least three of the lenses -- MG0751, PG1115, and B1422 -- the group environment significantly affects the lens potential. These lenses happen to be the quadruply-imaged ones in our sample, which suggests a connection between image configuration and environment. The lens galaxy is the brightest member in fewer than half of the groups. Our survey also allows us to assess for the first time whether mass structures along the line of sight are important for lensing. We first show that, in principle, the lens potential may be affected by line-of-sight structures over a wide range of spatial and redshift offsets from the lens. We then quantify real line-of-sight effects using our survey and find that at least four of the eight lens fields have substantial interloping structures close in projection to the lens, and at least one of those structures (in the field of MG0751) significantly affects the lens potential.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Figure 6 posted as a JPEG image. Requires emulateapj.st