Transfer Behavior within the Family: Results from the Asset and Health Dynamics Survey

If an individual falls on hard times, can he rely on his family for financial support? In view of proposed reductions in public assistance programs, it is important to understand the mechanisms through which families provide support for their members. In this paper we provide evidence that intra-family transfers are compensatory, directed disproportionally to less well-off members. These results hold both for the incidence of transfers and for the amounts. Within a given year, adult children in the lowest income category are 6 percentage points more likely to receive a financial transfer from their parents, and on average they receive over $300 more than siblings in the highest income category. The data used in this study, the new Asset and Health Dynamics Survey (AHEAD), contain information on all children in the family. Thus we are able to estimate models which control for unobserved differences across families. Our results are robust to these specifications. Additionally, we do not find evidence that parents provide financial assistance to their children in exchange for caregiving.

Medicare Gaps and Widow Poverty

Several categories of medical expenditures are not covered by Medicare, including prescription drugs, most nursing home stays, and extended hospital visits. Out-of-pocket costs for these items can be substantial, and what’s more, they are likely to be concentrated at the end of life. At the same time, it is well documented that poverty is 3-4 times more common among widows than among similarly aged married women. This study examines the potential link between these two phenomena, asking the question: to what extent do out-of-pocket health care costs of a dying spouse affect the financial position of the survivor? We find that out-of-pocket medical spending increases substantially just prior to death, and that these expenditures are large relative to income for a large share of elderly couples. Simulations investigate the extent to which expansions in insurance coverage to include nursing home care or prescription drug coverage could improve the financial well-being of the surviving spouse.

How Priming Innocence Influences Public Opinion on Police Misconduct and False Convictions: A Research Note

Issues of innocence have become more salient to the public in recent years, including the problem of police misconduct. However, citizens also tend to be supportive of the police, perceiving them as ethical, honest, and trustworthy. Using a survey experiment with a nationally representative sample, we explore the degree to which public opinion toward police misconduct is influenced by priming respondents on the issue of innocence. We find that reminding citizens of these issues increases their willingness to admit police misconduct that contributes to this problem by roughly 7 percentage points overall. Moreover, this effect is driven by conservatives and, to a lesser extent, moderates, presumably because liberals do not need priming. In contrast, the efficacy of the prime was not affected (i.e., moderated) by the race of the respondent. We place these results in the context of the current debate regarding police use of force as well as the ideological divide in rhetoric surrounding the recent string of high-profile police shootings

Understanding perceptions of citizen demeanour: using an experimental design to understand the impact of encounter and observer characteristics

Systematic social observations of police-citizen encounters have revealed that citizen demeanour is an important predictor of outcomes (e.g. arrests and searches). Drawing from research on stereotypes and impression formation, we examine whether characteristics of the encounter and/or observer affect how respondents perceive demeanour. We exposed undergraduates (n = 255) to a randomly rotated series of five between-subjects design, in which characteristics of the encounter (citizen race, gender, or age; officer gender; neighbourhood context) and the level of demeanour displayed were manipulated. OLS regression was used to examine how these manipulations interact to produce our dependent variable – perceptions of demeanour – and whether characteristics of the observer matter for perceptions, independent of the manipulations. We find that some aspects of the encounter, specifically officer gender and the socio-economic context of the neighbourhood, influence perceptions of demeanour. Previous victimisation, observers’ race, and perceptions of the police also impact how demeanour is perceived. These findings suggest that understanding the impact of citizen demeanour on police-citizen encounters requires consideration of encounter and observer characteristics

SOME EMPIRICAL METHODS OF ESTIMATING ADVERTISING EFFECTS IN DEMAND SYSTEMS: AN APPLICATION TO DRIED FRUITS

Two different methods of incorporating advertising effects into Almost Ideal Demand Systems (AIDS) are presented. Both advertising schemes are designed to allow theoretical restrictions to hold globally rather than at particular sample points. The models are estimated for California figs, prunes, and raisins. Empirical results indicate that generic advertising effects for these three dried fruits are generally weak when compared to price and total expenditure effects. Estimated cross-commodity effects also are relatively small except for the negative effect of raisin advertising on the quantity of prunes demanded.Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing,

In Appreciation of the Kind of Rhetoric We Learn in School: An Institutional Perspective on the Rhetorical Situation and on Education

Theoretical discussion of the rhetorical situation has been dedicated largely to questions of its ontology and of how it is constituted. Where this ontological orientation has inclined theorists to treat the concept as a theoretical premise, an institutional orientation would instead frame constructivist accounts of the rhetorical situation as a political-pedagogical commitment and treat the ethical obligations that arise from any given situation as bound to specific institutional forms. From an institutional perspective, the rhetorical situation is to conscience as the institution of school is to education. The distinction of both rhetorical situations and schools lies not in their contrivedness per se, but in the inventional capacities their contrived qualities sustain

Wetlands Reform and the Criminal Enforcement Record: A Cautionary Tale

Anecdotal narratives about environmental criminal enforcement policies and records are suspect. Their often distorted pictures of reality can lead to exaggerated claims about the existence or dimensions of problematic criminal enforcement issues. Uncritically accepted as true, those claims can provide a seemingly credible basis for misguided proposals that have the potential to do more harm than good. In the case of wetlands criminal enforcement, the anecdotal narrative would have us believe that the government is shooting wildly from the hip, with little rhyme or reason. After studying the criminal enforcement record, the best that can be said is that no matter how sincere the narrator, the narrative is utterly uninformed