Does Welfare Reform Work in Rural America? A 7-Year Follow-up

Even before the advent of welfare reform, studies of low income working and welfare dependent groups showed that low wage working women are worse off than those who combine welfare with other income sources and that most used a wide variety of livelihood strategies. This is especially the case in poor rural settings where work is scarce and additional obstacles to employment such as lack of transportation and childcare are endemic. Data from a selfadministered survey of users of human service agency programs in four counties in a distressed region of Appalachian Ohio in 1999, 2001, and 2005, provide a comprehensive picture of livelihood strategies, including labor force participation, informal and self-provisioning practices, and use of government and private transfers early and late in the welfare reform process. We compare working and nonworking human service clients at all three time periods and across communities with different levels of capacity to implement welfare to work policies to determine how labor force participants differ from other recipients and whether they are better or worse off. The data demonstrate the problems in making ends meet for all respondents, regardless of employment status and county capacity in all three time periods. While county differences are minimal, workers are better off than nonworkers and more so by the third survey year. They employ a wide variety of livelihood strategies beyond work for wages. Nevertheless, they remain poor and vulnerable to numerous hardships. 1Suppor

Morality Politics and New Research on Transgender Politics and Public Policy

Recent political debate over transgender military service and gendered bathroom use highlights a dramatic increase in salience over transgender issues in the US. In this essay, we examine a potential new front in the culture wars by reviewing recent empirical research in social science on the politics of transgender rights in the context of morality politics. Research on morality politics has often focused on LGBT rights, with an emphasis on gay and lesbian rights and little attention to transgender issues. We highlight the progress of research on transgender issues in the US, focusing on the study of attitudes about transgender people and rights, transgender rights in states and localities, and broader findings affecting transgender populations. Although there is ample research still needed, the current state of empirical social science on transgender issues has made great advancements in the past decade and shows that morality continues to shape LGBT politics and policy

Public Attitudes on Transgender Military Service: The Role of Gender

Policy regarding the inclusion of transgender soldiers in the U.S. military has shifted back and forth in recent years, with public opinion likely a significant factor shaping the eventual policy outcome. As such, this study examines the factors that shape public attitudes toward military service by transgender people. In particular, we examine the influence of sex, social gender roles, and attitudes toward gender in shaping transgender military service attitudes. Further, we hypothesize that personal experiences with the military and with transgender people, along with values, personality predispositions, and religion, are likely to influence individual attitudes. We test these hypotheses using data from a unique October 2015 national survey of American adults. The results suggest that personal experiences, attitudes toward gender roles, and religion have substantial, but sometimes conditional effects on attitudes towards military service by transgender people.University of toledoUniversity of KansasUCLA school of lawOhio Universit

Transgender prejudice reduction and opinions on transgender rights: Results from a mediation analysis on experimental data

Fears, phobias, and dislikes about minorities should be strong determinants of whether Americans support policies protecting such minorities. Studies suggest that discussions and information about transgender people can reduce transphobia. However, these studies also indicate that experimental treatments do not necessarily affect individual attitudes on policies concerning transgender rights. Scholars contend that durably reducing prejudice should increase public support for minority rights. In this study, we examine this causal mechanism utilizing an experiment. We find that reducing transphobia is a reliable mechanism to increase public support for transgender rights. These results are robust to causal identification assumptions, suggesting that this mechanism provides a clear avenue for stigmatized groups to increase public support of rights for those groups