The Role of Randomized Field Trials in Social Science Research: A Perspective from Evaluations of Reforms of Social Welfare Programs

One of the areas of policy research where randomized field trials have been utilized most intensively is welfare reform. Starting in the late 1960s with experimental tests of a negative income tax and continuing through current experimental tests of recent welfare reforms, randomized evaluations have played a strong and increasing role in informing policy. This paper reviews the record of these experiments and assesses the implications of that record for the use of randomization. The review demonstrates that, while randomized field trials in the area of welfare reform have been professionally conducted and well-run, and have yielded much valuable and credible information, their usefulness has been limited by a number of weaknesses, some of which are inherent in the method and some of which result from constraints imposed by the political process. The conclusion is that randomized field trials have an important but limited role to play in future welfare reform evaluations, and that it is essential that they be supplemented by nonexperimental research.

Subsurface Fish Handling to Limit Decompression Effects on Deepwater Species

A method of handling hooked fish at intermediate depth was developed for species which occur deeper than conventional scuba depths. Juvenile pink snappers, Pristipomoides filamentosus, were hauled from 65-100 m to a depth of only 30 m, where the ambient pressure change was a fraction of that produced by hauling fish to the sea surface. This method afforded a unique opportunity to acoustically tag deepwater, physoclistous fish without the need to alter the fish's original swim bladder volume and without the high risk of further injury associated with surface handling. Tagged P. filamentosus survived and behaved well and were tracked successfully. This basic method could be applied to a variety of deepwater species in a number of research approaches, including tagging and dietary studies

Changing caseloads: macro influences and micro composition

Welfare ; Public welfare

Multiple Program Participation and the SNAP Program

Receipt of benefits from other traditional transfer programs by SNAP families is common, with 76 percent of those families receiving at least one other major benefit of that type, excluding Medicaid, in 2008. However, over half of these only received one other benefit and only a very small fraction received more than two others. Over the long-term, multiple benefit receipt among SNAP families has been falling, a result of declines in the TANF caseload offsetting rises in the SSI, SSDI, and WIC caseloads. Finally, the analysis shows that high marginal tax rates generated by multiple program receipt are relevant for only a small portion of the TANF caseload, namely, the portion of the caseload that is nondisabled, nonelderly, and have earnings in the phaseout regions of the programs where marginal tax rates are high. The vast majority of SNAP families are not affected and, indeed, most have sufficiently low earnings that they face negative cumulative marginal tax rates

The Negative Income Tax and the Evolution of U.S. Welfare Policy

The negative income tax proposed by Milton Friedman represents one of the fundamental ideas of modern welfare policy. However, the academic literature has raised two difficulties with it, one challenging its purported work incentives and the other suggesting the possible superiority of work requirements. In addition, work requirement approaches have gained ground in actual U.S. welfare policy over the last 30 years and the number of different programs has proliferated, another development counter to the negative income tax. On the other hand, the Earned Income Tax Credit has produced a negative-income-tax-like program on a vast scale.

Demographic Change and Public Assistance Expenditures

Growth in overall real welfare expenditures per capita has been a noted trend in the last thirty years in the U.S. The influence of demographic forces in contributing to this growth is considered in this paper. It is found that the growth of female-headed families is the strongest and dominant force in contributing to trends in real AFDC expenditures per capita over the long run. The influence of demographic growth is especially strong for the black population. For the Food Stamp and Medicaid programs, increases in participation rates, on the other hand, have been more important. Projections of future trends in the age, race, and sex composition of the U.S. population show that expenditures in none of these programs is likely to respond to such basic demographic trends, however.

Relative pleopod length as an indicator of size at sexual maturity in slipper (Scyllarides squammosus) and spiny Hawaiian (Panulirus marginatus) lobsters

Body size at gonadal maturity is described for females of the slipper lobster (Scyllarides squammosus) (Scyllaridae) and the endemic Hawaiian spiny lobster (Panulirus marginatus) (Palinuridae) based on microscopic examination of histological preparations of ovaries. These data are used to validate several morphological metrics (relative exopodite length, ovigerous condition) of functional sexual maturity. Relative exopodite length (“pleopod length”) produced consistent estimates of size at maturity when evaluated with a newly derived statistical application for estimating size at the morphometric maturation point (MMP) for the population, identified as the midpoint of a sigmoid function spanning the estimated boundaries of overlap between the largest immature and smallest adult animals. Estimates of the MMP were related to matched (same-year) characterizations of sexual maturity based on ovigerous condition — a more conventional measure of functional maturity previously used to characterize maturity for the two lobster species. Both measures of functional maturity were similar for the respective species and were within 5% and 2% of one another for slipper and spiny lobster, respectively. The precision observed for two shipboard collection series of pleopod-length data indicated that the method is reliable and not dependent on specialized expertise. Precision of maturity estimates for S. squammosus with the pleopod-length metric was similar to that for P. marginatus with any of the other measures (including conventional evidence of ovigerous condition) and greatly exceeded the precision of estimates for S. squammosus based on ovigerous condition alone. The two measures of functional maturity averaged within 8% of the estimated size at gonadal maturity for the respective species. Appendage-to-body size proportions, such as the pleopod length metric, hold great promise, particularly for species of slipper lobsters like S. squammosus for which there exist no other reliable conventional morphological measures of sexual maturity. Morphometric proportions also should be included among the factors evaluated when assessing size at sexual maturity in spiny lobster stocks; previously, these proportions have been obtained routinely only for brachyuran crabs within the Crustacea