Bedrock geology of Carroll County, Illinois

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Bedrock geology map, Jo Daviess County, Illinois

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Guaranteed Income: SSI and the Well-Being of the Elderly Poor

Discussions of changes in the Social Security program must necessarily consider the impact of such changes on the well-being of the poor elderly. Under the current system, the financial needs of this population are met by the Supplement Security Income program (SSI). SSI has done much to improve situation of the poorest elderly but has the potential to do more. This paper examines that potential. One of the most surprising aspect of the program is that many of those eligible for benefits are not enrolled. Here I examine the correlates of participation for a sample of eligible individuals and use the results to simulate the effect of changes in eligibility criteria on participation and on costs. The largest expansion considered in the paper, providing an income guarantee for all elderly individuals that is equal to the poverty line, increases payments directed towards the elderly by 90 percent, to just over 8 billion in 1993 dollars. Although large, this $8 billion is less than half of the expenditures for the SSI disabled population in that year. Modifications to SSI that increase income disregards, eliminate the asset test, or base income eligibility solely on Social Security income, would be less costly, but would also provide less relief to the poor. Importantly, all programs, including the current system, could have substantially greater effects on poverty if participation rates were increased.

Testing Parental Altruism: Implications of a Dynamic Model

Each year parents transfer a great deal of money to their adult children. While intuition might suggest that these transfers are altruistic and made out of concern for the well-being of the children, the fundamental prediction of the altruistic model has been decisively rejected in empirical tests. Specifically, the required derivative restriction-that an increase of one dollar in the income of the recipient, accompanied by a decrease of one dollar in the income of the donor, leads to a one dollar reduction in transfers-fails to hold. I show in this paper that in fact, this prediction will not hold if parents use observations on the current incomes of children to update their expectations about future incomes. This result implies that many past studies have relied on too restrictive a test, and furthermore, that our ability to distinguish empirically between altruistic and exchange behavior is severely limited. The paper also analyzes the variation in transfer behavior over time and finds substantial change across periods in recipiency status as well as strong correlation between inter vivos transfers and the transitory income of the recipient. This evidence suggest that dynamic models can provide insights into transfer behavior that are impossible to obtain in a static context.

Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) data and information policy

The policies and overall procedures that are used in distributing and in making available products of the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) are discussed. The products include project data and measures, project source code, reports, and software tools

Three Generations of Changing Gender Patterns of Schooling in the People\u27s Republic of China

The phenomenon of son preference in the People’s Republic of China and throughout much of Asia has been well documented. However, changing economic conditions, such as increases in educational attainment and employment opportunities for women and the rise in the prevalence of one-child families, have likely changed the incentives for parents to invest in daughters. In this paper we take advantage of data spanning three generations of Chinese families to examine the evolution of educational attainment for boys and girls and importantly the relative levels of schooling of each gender. We also use variation in the timing of compulsory schooling laws and the implementation of the one-child policy to assess the effect of these policy measures on the relative educational levels. We find a substantial narrowing of the gap between the schooling of boys and girls, so much so that girls now have more schooling on average than boys. In addition, public policy initiatives had a larger effect in rural than urban areas

RETAIL BUYERS' EXPECTATIONS CONCERNING THE GROWTH OF VALUE-ADDED PRODUCE AND PERCEPTIONS OF THE IMPORTANCE OF PROMOTIONAL VEHICLES USED TO SELL VALUE-ADDED PRODUCE

The research was conducted through the use of a telephone survey of produce retail buyers during a two-year period, May 1996 through May 1998. This research shows that retail buyers expect value-added produce sales to continue to increase and that they rate promotional vehicles, related to pricing, as important factors in increasing their willingness to carry a value-added produce product. Branding is somewhat important in increasing their willingness to carry a value-added produce product.Consumer/Household Economics,

AN ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF PRICE ON CONSUMER PURCHASE INTEREST IN ORGANIC GRAPES AND A PROFILE OF ORGANIC PURCHASERS

This research uses simulated test marketing methodology to examine the consumer purchase interest in organic grapes and price sensitivity. A profile of the target organic food purchaser is identified and consumer perceptions of organic grapes are compared to their perceptions of regular (conventionally grown) grapes. The research uses a survey instrument and a concept exposure that were administered through the use of a personal interview of 342 randomly selected respondents at food stores in May 2001 in San Luis Obispo County, California. Comparisons of nominal and ordinal variables were generated through the use of chi-square tests. The statistical tests used to examine interval and ratio variables are t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, and multivariate analysis of variance.Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis,