Decreasing Opportunities for Low-Wage Workers: The Role of the Nondiscrimination Law for Employer-Provided Health Insurance

As of 1978, the favorable tax treatment of fringe benefits, including health insurance, has been regulated via a nondiscrimination clause such that low-wage, full-time workers must be offered health insurance (and other benefits) that are offered to higher-wage workers by the firm. Part-time workers may be excluded from coverage, however, creating incentives for firms to hire some types of workers part time to deny them coverage. We hypothesize that firms will hire fewer workers whose relative costs have increased, that is, low-wage workers. These workers will be less likely to work for firms that offer coverage, and those that do will be more likely to work part time without being eligible for the firm’s health insurance benefits. We use the 1988 and 1993 Employee Benefits Supplements to the Current Population Surveys and an employer premium imputation to examine these hypotheses. Both the descriptive and multivariate analysis are consistent with our hypotheses. We predict the probability of working for a firm that offers health insurance to decrease as premiums increase for both high- and low-wage workers. An increase in the premium is also associated with a decrease in the probability of part-time work, but an even greater decrease in the joint probability of part-time work with eligibility for health insurance.

Housing flexibility effects on rotor stability

Preliminary rotordynamic evaluations are performed with a housing stiffness assumption that is typically determined only after the hardware is built. In addressing rotor stability, a rigid housing assumption was shown to predict an instability at a lower spin speed than a comparable flexible housing analysis. This rigid housing assumption therefore provides a conservative estimate of the stability threshold speed. A flexible housing appears to act as an energy absorber and dissipated some of the destabilizing force. The fact that a flexible housing is usually asymmetric and considerably heavier than the rotor was related to this apparent increase in rotor stability. Rigid housing analysis is proposed as a valuable screening criteria and may save time and money in construction of elaborate housing finite element models for linear stability analyses

Incentives, Challenges, and Dilemmas of TANF

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 changed the U.S. welfare system dramatically. Its primary goal was to reduce dependency by moving most of those receiving cash welfare into the work force. One tool to accomplish this objective was a change in the incentives facing actual and potential recipients. States were granted flexibility in how to accomplish this objective. This paper evaluates the program in four states in terms of efficiency and equity. It looks briefly at resulting labor force participation and incomes of those most directly affected by welfare reforms. The analysis highlights the difficulty of simultaneously providing incentives to work and incentives to increase individuals’ labor market productivity while maintaining a minimal safety net and avoiding high marginal rates of taxation. None of the states studied is able to avoid a “poverty trap” in its program. The need to coordinate the benefit and withdrawal schedule of programs designed to help this population flows from the analysis.

Plasmas in Saturn's magnetosphere

The solar wind plasma analyzer on board Pioneer 2 provides first observations of low-energy positive ions in the magnetosphere of Saturn. Measurable intensities of ions within the energy-per-unit charge (E/Q) range 100 eV to 8 keV are present over the planetocentric radial distance range about 4 to 16 R sub S in the dayside magnetosphere. The plasmas are found to be rigidly corotating with the planet out to distances of at least 10 R sub S. At radial distances beyond 10 R sub S, the bulk flows appear to be in the corotation direction but with lesser speeds than those expected from rigid corotation. At radial distances beyond the orbit of Rhea at 8.8 R sub S, the dominant ions are most likely protons and the corresponding typical densities and temperatures are 0.5/cu cm and 1,000,000 K, respectively, with substantial fluctuations. It is concluded that the most likely source of these plasmas in the photodissociation of water frost on the surface of the ring material with subsequent ionization of the products and radially outward diffusion. The presence of this plasma torus is expected to have a large influence on the dynamics of Saturn's magnetosphere since the pressure ratio beta of these plasmas approaches unity at radial distances as close to the planet as 6.5 R sub S. On the basis of these observational evidences it is anticipated that quasi-periodic outward flows of plasma, accompanied with a reconfiguration of the magnetosphere beyond about 6.5 R sub S, will occur in the local night sector in order to relieve the plasma pressure from accretion of plasma from the rings

Chemical Abundances of the Damped Lya Systems at z>1.5

We present chemical abundance measurements for 19 damped lya systems observed with HIRES on the 10m W.M. Keck Telescope. Our principal goal is to investigate the abundance patterns of the damped systems and thereby determine the underlying physical processes which dominate their chemical evolution. We place particular emphasis on gauging the relative importance of two complementary effects often invoked to explain the damped lya abundances: (1) nucleosynthetic enrichment from Type II supernovae and (2) an ISM-like dust depletion pattern. Similar to the principal results of Lu et al. (1996), our observations lend support both for dust depletion and Type II SN enrichment. Specifically, the observed overabundance of Zn/Fe and underabundance of Ni/Fe relative to solar abundances suggest significant dust depletion within the damped lya systems. Meanwhile, the relative abundances of Al, Si, and Cr vs. Fe are consistent with both dust depletion and Type II supernova enrichment. Our measurements of Ti/Fe and the Mn/Fe measurements from Lu et al. (1996), however, cannot be explained by dust depletion and indicate an underlying Type II SN pattern. Finally, the observed values of [S/Fe] are inconsistent with the combined effects of dust depletion and the nucleosynthetic yields expected for Type II supernovae. This last result emphasizes the need for another physical process to explain the damped lya abundance patterns. We also examine the metallicity of the damped lya systems both with respect to Zn/H and Fe/H. Our results confirm previous surveys by Pettini and collaborators, i.e., [] = -1.15 +/- 0.15 dex. [abridged]Comment: 18 pages, 4 embedded figures, 20 additional figures. Accepted to the Astrophysical Journal 10/20/98. Uses Latex2e, emualteapj.sty, and onecolfloat.st

The Organic Research Centre; Elm Farm Bulletin 84 July 2006

Regular bulletin with technical updates of the Organic Advisory Service Issue contains: Battling on for Avian Flu preventive vaccination; Organic Colombian Blacktail eggs; UK Co-existence - GMOand non-GMO crops; Aspects of Poultry Behaviour; CAP in the service of biodiversity; Seeing the Wood, the Trees and the Catch 22; Beware of organic market "statistics"; A central role in energy review

The Future Environmental and Health Impacts of Coal

In the United States, coal consumption in the last 12 years has declined from 1,045,140 million short tons in 2007 to 539,420 million short tons in 2019, a decrease of almost 50%. During that period the number of electric power coal generators has declined from 1,470 to 738 accounting for 21% of capacity. An even more dramatic decrease in coal use has occurred in Western Europe. This significant reduction in coal use and the concomitant closure of coal mines and coal-burning power plants will result in substantially cleaner air, reductions in respiratory problems such as asthma, less heart disease, fewer hospitalizations, and other health benefits, as well as a reduction in occupational health problems such as silicosis and Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis (Black Lung Disease). However, in China, India, Russia and in several other Asian countries some projections indicate an increase in coal production and use. In some situations, the coal is burned in old, highly polluting power plants. In these regions the health impacts of coal use could worsen. In addition, millions of people in these regions still burn coal in their homes resulting in maximal exposure to the pollutants such as arsenic, selenium, fluorine, and mercury released from coal combustion