Savings and Financial Services in Native Communities

Savings and Financial Services in Native Communitie

The Earned Income Tax Credit and Financial Capability among Native Households

EITC refunds are often substantial sums of money entering households of working families each year. Many households use the EITC to meet their basic needs such as rent, utilities, food, groceries, clothing, and other household expenses. Other EITC recipients view the tax system as a savings mechanism. This is the first study of how the EITC is being used among Native populations. Study data includes 9,482 household surveys collected in over 80 urban, rural, and reservation communities across the U.S. Surveys were completed by EITC eligible households, both Native and non-Native in tax years 2005 - 2008. Results from this study suggest that EITC recipients first allocate their refund dollars to basic needs. However, once these needs are met, many will choose to save their EITC dollars. Factors associated with increased odds of saving include an established savings habit, bank account ownership, direct deposit, and financial education

Developing the Welfare-to-Work Participation and Employability Appraisal Screening: A Retrospective Study

CalWORKs recipients, unless exempt, are required to participate in welfare-to-work (WTW) program activities as a condition of receiving cash aid. A number of clients, however, may have issues that impede successful engagement in WTW program activities, such as substance abuse, mental health concerns, or domestic violence issues. The Riverside County (California) Department of Mental Health (RCDMH) and the Department of Public Social Services (DPSS) sought to develop a structured case management system to help ensure early identification of WTW customers with barriers to employment and, if necessary, to help facilitate quicker engagement in services to address those barriers and move customers into successful employment. A key component of the structured case management system is an actuarial appraisal screening to help identify those customers most in need of support to make a successful transition to self-sufficiency. This report describes the study conducted by Childrenas Research Center (CRC) to develop an appraisal screening that classifies customers by the likelihood of subsequent WTW program participation and employment. Employment counselors can complete the screening assessment soon after WTW assignment to help identify which customers are in greatest need of additional support and engagement to increase the likelihood of successful program participation

Developing an Actuarial Risk Assessment to Inform the Decisions Made by Adult Protective Service Workers

In 2008, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services Bureau of Elderly and Adult Services (BEAS) and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), with funding provided by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), collaborated to construct an actuarial risk assessment to classify BEAS clients by their likelihood of elder maltreatment and/or self-neglect in the future. Studies in adult and juvenile corrections and child welfare have demonstrated that active service intervention with high risk clients can reduce criminal recidivism and the recurrence of child maltreatment (Wagner, Hull, & Luttrell, 1995; Eisenberg & Markley, 1987; Baird, Heinz, & Bemus, 1981). The purpose of this research was to examine a large set of individual and referral characteristics, determine their relationship to subsequent elder self-neglect and/or maltreatment, and develop an actuarial risk assessment for BEAS workers to complete at the end of an investigation to inform their case decisions.BEAS and NCCD pursued development of an actuarial risk assessment with the goal of reducing subsequent maltreatment of elderly and vulnerable adults who have been involved in an incident of self-neglect or maltreatment by another person (i.e., abuse, exploitation, or neglect). The actuarial risk assessment described in this report provides BEAS workers with a method to more accurately identify high risk clients and therefore more effectively target service interventions in an effort to protect their most vulnerable clients

Silent Comediennes and “The Tragedy of Being Funny”

Articles in fan magazines of the 1910s and 1920s with titles such as “Is it Tragic to Be Comic?” and “The Tragedy of Being Funny” often situated comediennes as victims—of their circumstances, their talents, or their looks—and films such as Show People and Ella Cinders to some degree supported the idea that being a funny woman was cause for pity as well as praise. Longstanding cultural stereotypes held that women could be either feminine or funny, and as a result female comics were frequently labeled as unsuccessful women as well as comedians. Despite the fact that many women had lucrative careers in film comedy, comediennes were frequently depicted in the popular press as uncomfortable with building their careers in comedy, uneasy about performing physical comedy, or afraid of looking ridiculous. Paradoxically, fan magazines and trade journals generally acknowledged, and even promoted, women’s humor, although traces of pervasive stereotypes about the incompatibility of comedy and femininity are evident in these discourses, and reflect broader concerns in American society about appropriate behavior for women. This paper traces some of these complex discourses and debates surrounding funny women that played out in the press and onscreen in the early twentieth century

Equity Issues in Dual Enrollment Programs: Exploring African American Community College Students’ Perceptions of Dual Enrollment

Dual enrollment has been shown to increase post-secondary student success outcomes across a variety of measures such as retention, grade point average, and four-year attainment (Allen & Dadgar, 2012; Hoffman, 2012, Pretlow & Wathington, 2014). In Virginia, access to community colleges among students of color has increased from 32.3% in 2008 to 42.7% in 2018 (SCHEV, 2019-a). Despite these gains, far fewer African American students than White students participate in dual enrollment in Virginia, which has significant implications for their future success in post-secondary education. This study examined the experiences that influenced African American students’ choice to participate in dual enrollment, and the implications of these experiences. Using a phenomenological approach, this study sought to gain insight and understanding of the lived experiences of African American dual enrollment students. The findings from this study described African American high school students’ perceptions as they moved from awareness of dual enrollment to interest in dual enrollment to acting on a choice to dual enroll. The students’ experiences highlighted a lack of awareness and a belief that dual enrollment is more for White students. Despite this, the students identified the positive factors in participating, such as improving their GPA, getting a head start on college, and saving money. The students who were undecided about their post-secondary plans prior to participating in dual enrollment credit that experience with their decision to enroll in college

Lillian Case Russell

Born Lulu Case in rural South Dakota, Lillian Case Russell worked as a schoolteacher before beginning her writing career in New York shortly after the turn of the century. Living in Brooklyn with her husband John L. Russell (who would later become known in Western films as John Lowell) and their two children, Russell wrote stories and poetry for newspapers and magazines. Covering topics ranging from Reno divorces to men’s fashions to women’s suffrage, Russell’s early writing demonstrated the wit, flair for the dramatic, and social awareness that would inform many of her later screenplays. This is evident in the 1912 New York Times piece “You Mustn’t Ask to Vote,” in which she offers a biting criticism of anti-suffrage attitudes: “You may toil behind our counters, / In our factories you may slave, / You are welcome in the sweatshop / From the cradle to the grave; / If you err, altho’ a woman, / You may dangle by the throat, / But our chivalry is outraged / If you soil your hands to vote” (10)

An Analysis of Interviewer Travel and Field Outcomes in Two Field Surveys

In this article, we investigate the relationship between interviewer travel behavior and field outcomes, such as contact rates, response rates, and contact attempts in two studies, the National Survey of Family Growth and the Health and Retirement Study. Using call record paradata that have been aggregated to interviewer-day levels, we examine two important cost drivers as measures of interviewer travel behavior: the distance that interviewers travel to segments and the number of segments visited on an interviewer-day. We explore several predictors of these measures of travel – the geographic size of the sampled areas, measures of urbanicity, and other sample and interviewer characteristics. We also explore the relationship between travel and field outcomes, such as the number of contact attempts made and response rates.Wefind that the number of segments that are visited on each interviewer-day has a strong association with field outcomes, but the number of miles travelled does not. These findings suggest that survey organizations should routinely monitor the number of segments that interviewers visit, and that more direct measurement of interviewer travel behavior is needed

An Analysis of Interviewer Travel and Field Outcomes in Two Field Surveys

In this article, we investigate the relationship between interviewer travel behavior and field outcomes, such as contact rates, response rates, and contact attempts in two studies, the National Survey of Family Growth and the Health and Retirement Study. Using call record paradata that have been aggregated to interviewer-day levels, we examine two important cost drivers as measures of interviewer travel behavior: the distance that interviewers travel to segments and the number of segments visited on an interviewer-day. We explore several predictors of these measures of travel – the geographic size of the sampled areas, measures of urbanicity, and other sample and interviewer characteristics. We also explore the relationship between travel and field outcomes, such as the number of contact attempts made and response rates.Wefind that the number of segments that are visited on each interviewer-day has a strong association with field outcomes, but the number of miles travelled does not. These findings suggest that survey organizations should routinely monitor the number of segments that interviewers visit, and that more direct measurement of interviewer travel behavior is needed