The Effects of Welfare and Tax Reform: The Material Well-Being of Single Mothers in the 1980s and 1990s

The tax and welfare programs that provide income and in-kind benefits to single mothers have changed dramatically in recent years. These changes began as far back as the mid-1980s and culminated with the 1996 welfare law that 'ended welfare as we knew it.' These tax and welfare changes have sharply increased the employment of single mothers and cut welfare rolls. However, little is know about the effects of these policy changes on the living conditions of single mothers and their children. Studies of those leaving welfare have found that a substantial percentage have problems paying rent, purchasing enough food, and paying utility bills. Other studies have found a decline in income among the worst-off single mothers. The goal of this paper is to examine the material well-being of single mothers and their families before and soon after welfare reform. Using data from two nationally representative household surveys we examine the consumption patterns of single mothers and their families. We find that the material conditions of single mothers did not decline in recent years, either in absolute terms or relative to single childless women or married mothers. In most cases, our evidence suggests that the material conditions of single mothers have improved slightly, even for highly disadvantaged single mothers.

Further Results on Measuring the Well-Being of the Poor Using Income and Consumption

In the U.S., analyses of poverty rates and the effects of anti-poverty programs rely almost exclusively on income data. In earlier work (Meyer and Sullivan, 2003) we emphasized that conceptual arguments generally favor using consumption data to measure the well-being of the poor, and, on balance, data quality issues favor consumption in the case of single mothers. Our earlier work did not show that income and consumption differ in practice. Here we further examine data quality issues and show that important conclusions about recent trends depend on whether one uses consumption or income. Changes in the distribution of resources for single mothers differ sharply in recent years depending on whether measured by income or consumption. Measures of overall and sub-group poverty also sharply differ. In addition to examining broader populations and a longer time period, we also consider new dimensions of data quality such as survey and item nonresponse, imputation, and precision. Finally, we demonstrate the flaws in a recent paper that compares income and consumption data.

Nonadherence to primary prophylaxis against Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia.

BackgroundDespite the effectiveness of prophylaxis, Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PCP) continues to be the most common serious opportunistic infection among HIV-infected persons. We describe factors associated with nonadherence to primary PCP prophylaxis.Methodology/principal findingsWe used 2000-2004 data from the Supplement to HIV/AIDS Surveillance (SHAS) project, a cross-sectional interview project of HIV-infected persons >or=18 years conducted in 18 states. We limited the analysis to persons who denied having prior PCP, reported having a current prescription to prevent PCP, and answered the question "In the past 30 days, how often were you able to take the PCP medication(s) exactly the way your doctor told you to take them?" We used multivariable logistic regression to describe factors associated with nonadherence. Of 1,666 subjects prescribed PCP prophylaxis, 305 (18.3%) were nonadherent. Persons were more likely to be nonadherent if they reported using marijuana (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 1.6, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.1-2.4), non-injection drugs other than marijuana (aOR = 1.5, 95% CI = 1.0-2.1), or injection drugs (aOR = 2.3, 95% CI = 1.3-4.1) in the past year; their mental health was "not good" for >or=1 day during the past month (aOR = 1.6, 95% CI = 1.2-2.2); their most recent CD4 count was <200 cells/microL (aOR = 1.6, 95% CI = 1.1-2.2); or taking ART usually (aOR = 9.6, 95% CI = 6.7-13.7) or sometimes/rarely/never (aOR = 18.4, 95% CI = 11.1-30.4), compared with always, as prescribed.Conclusion/significanceProviders should inquire about and promote strategies to improve adherence to PCP prophylaxis, particularly among persons who use illicit drugs, have mental health issues, and who are not compliant with ART to reduce the occurrence of PCP

Consumption and Income Poverty over the Business Cycle

We examine the relationship between the business cycle and poverty for the period from 1960 to 2008 using income data from the Current Population Survey and consumption data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey. This new evidence on the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and poverty is of particular interest given recent changes in anti-poverty policies that have placed greater emphasis on participation in the labor market and in-kind transfers. We look beyond official poverty, examining alternative income poverty and consumption poverty, which have conceptual and empirical advantages as measures of the well-being of the poor. We find that both income and consumption poverty are sensitive to macroeconomic conditions. A one percentage point increase in unemployment is associated with an increase in the after-tax income poverty rate of 0.9 to 1.1 percentage points in the long-run, and an increase in the consumption poverty rate of 0.3 to 1.2 percentage points in the long-run. The evidence on whether income is more responsive to the business cycle than consumption is mixed. Income poverty does appear to be more responsive using national level variation, but consumption poverty is often more responsive to unemployment when using regional variation. Low percentiles of both income and consumption are sensitive to macroeconomic conditions, and in most cases low percentiles of income appear to be more responsive than low percentiles of consumption.

Visible and near infrared observation on the Global Aerosol Backscatter Experiment (GLOBE)

The Global Aerosol Backscatter Experiment (GLOBE) was intended to provide data on prevailing values of atmospheric backscatter cross-section. The primary intent was predicting the performance of spaceborne lidar systems, most notably the Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder (LAWS) for the Earth Observing System (EOS). The second and related goal was to understand the source and characteristics of atmospheric aerosol particles. From the GLOBE flights, extensive data was obtained on the structure of clouds and the marine planetary boundary layer. A notable result for all observations is the consistency of the large increases in the aerosol scattering ratio for the marine boundary layer. Other results are noted

Five Decades of Consumption and Income Poverty

This paper examines poverty in the United States from 1960 through 2005. We investigate how poverty rates and poverty gaps have changed over time, explore how these trends differ across family types, contrast these trends for several different income and consumption measures of poverty, and consider explanations for the differences in trends. We document sharp differences, particularly in recent years, between different income poverty measures, and between income and consumption poverty rates and gaps. Moving from the official pre-tax money income measure to a disposable income measure that incorporates taxes and transfers has a substantial effect on poverty rate changes over the past two decades. Furthermore, consumption poverty rates often indicate large declines, even in recent years when income poverty rates have risen. We show that bias in the CPI-U has a sizable effect on changes in poverty. Between the early 1960s and 2005, an income poverty measure that corrects for bias in this price index declines by 14 percentage points more than a comparable measure based on the CPI-U. The patterns are very different across family types, with consumption poverty falling much faster than income poverty for single parents and the elderly, but more slowly for married couples with children. Income and consumption measures of deep poverty and poverty gaps have generally moved sharply in opposite directions in the last two decades with income deep poverty and poverty gaps rising, but consumption deep poverty and poverty gaps falling. While relative poverty rose in the early 1980s, changes in relative poverty have been fairly small since 1990. We examine the role that demographics, taxes, and transfers play in explaining changes in poverty over the past three decades. We also consider whether measurement error, saving and dissaving, and other explanations can account for income and consumption differences.

Improving initialization and evolution accuracy of cosmological neutrino simulations

Neutrino mass constraints are a primary focus of current and future large-scale structure (LSS) surveys. Non-linear LSS models rely heavily on cosmological simulations -- the impact of massive neutrinos should therefore be included in these simulations in a realistic, computationally tractable, and controlled manner. A recent proposal to reduce the related computational cost employs a symmetric neutrino momentum sampling strategy in the initial conditions. We implement a modified version of this strategy into the Hardware/Hybrid Accelerated Cosmology Code (HACC) and perform convergence tests on its internal parameters. We illustrate that this method can impart $\mathcal{O}(1\%)$ numerical artifacts on the total matter field on small scales, similar to previous findings, and present a method to remove these artifacts using Fourier-space filtering of the neutrino density field. Moreover, we show that the converged neutrino power spectrum does not follow linear theory predictions on relatively large scales at early times at the $15\%$ level, prompting a more careful study of systematics in particle-based neutrino simulations. We also present an improved method for backscaling linear transfer functions for initial conditions in massive neutrino cosmologies that is based on achieving the same relative neutrino growth as computed with Boltzmann solvers. Our self-consistent backscaling method yields sub-percent accuracy in the total matter growth function. Comparisons for the non-linear power spectrum with the Mira-Titan emulator at a neutrino mass of $m_{\nu}=0.15~\mathrm{eV}$ are in very good agreement with the expected level of errors in the emulator and in the direct N-body simulation.Comment: 33 pages, 8 figures, 1 table. To be submitted to JCA

A preliminary study of extended magnetic field structures in the ionosphere

Several plasma phenomena which are to be expected around a magnet in LEO were identified and analyzed qualitatively. The ASTROMAG cusp magnet will create an extended field whose strength drops to the ambient level over a scale length of approx. 15 m; the combined field has a complex topology with ring nulls and open and closed field lines. The entire configuration is moving through the partially ionized F-layer of the ionosphere at a speed slow compared to the local Alfven speed but fast compared to the ion sound speed. The ambient plasma crosses the extended field structure in a time short compared to the ion Larmor period yet long relative to the electron Larmor period. Thus, electrons behave as a magnetized fluid while ions move ballistically until reflected from higher fields near the cusp. Since the Debye length is short compared to the field scale length, an electrostatic shock-like structure forms to equilibrate the flows and achieve quasi-neutrality. The ambient plasma will be excluded from a cavity near the magnet. The size and nature of the strong interaction region in which the magnet significantly perturbs the ambient flow were determined by studying ion orbits numerically. Lecture viewgraphs summarizing these results are presented