Public employers contribute three times more to retirement benefits per hour worked than their counterparts in the private sector. Given the potential burden on taxpayers of underfunded pensions, efficient compensation mechanisms for teachers and other public employees are an imperative. The question addressed in this research is whether teachers value deferred compensation at the cost of providing it. One explanation offered for the heavy use of deferred compensation in the public sector is that these packages attract high quality employees. These employees may have low discount rates or, for some other reason, prefer to trade off lower current wages for guaranteed future compensation. At what rate teachers are willing to forgo current wages for future compensation is difficult to measure because wages and pension benefits both move cyclically, making it hard to disentangle differences in valuations of each. The introduction of the opportunity provided in 1998 to Illinois public school employees to purchase additional pension benefits allows me to estimate employees' demand for retirement benefits relative to the cost of providing them. The price charged for this product is directly proportional to a teacher's current salary. Because a teacher's salary is likely correlated with her health and other factors affecting demand, I create a simulated instrument for prices using exogenous variation in program rules. The instrument uses variation in salary schedules at the district level, purging unwanted individual- level variation in salaries that might be correlated with employee take-up. Identification follows from district differences in teacher salary schedules prior to the product's introduction. The fact that conditioning on observed demographic factors and market characteristics does not change the estimate instills confidence that the relationship between price and demand is identified from exogenous variation in price. The results show that the majority of Illinois public school teachers are willing to pay just 17 cents for a dollar increase in the present value of expected retirement benefits. The findings therefore suggest substantial inefficiency in compensation as the public cost of deferred compensation exceeds its value to employees. The results of this study suggest a Pareto- improving policy solution: governments can offer to buy back promised pension benefits for just a fraction of their expected present value.

This paper uses hedonic methods and variation in wages and housing costs to estimatehouseholds valuation of climate amenities. We find that, on the margin, households are willingto pay more to reduce extreme heat than to reduce extreme cold. Combining these estimates withbusiness as usual climate forecasts for the United States, we find welfare losses in most areasby 2100, with particularly large effects in California, southern states, and urban centers. Onaverage, the cost of hotter summers exceeds the gain from warmer winters by 2 to 3 percent ofincome per year. These results account for taste heterogeneity and sorting; moreover, they arenot substantially attenuated by allowing for migration.

The debate over the best way to organize the metropolis is a perennial interest of political science, economics and public administration. Is it better to centralize the metropolis into a single consolidated jurisdiction or to allow a polycentric metropolis? While much has been written on which is the better way to shift a metropolis, less has been written on the question of why the existing level of fragmentation is. Cities are a type of social organization and have similarities to interest groups a social organization for which there exist theories of fragmentation. Drawing variables from the metropolitan governance literature and the interest group literature, this paper analyzes a panel of American Metropolitan Statistical Areas and finds that fragmentation within MSAs is driven by the financial resources available to local governments, state laws governing local government powers, political liberalism, and the socio-economic diversity of the population.

Th e research in this paper investigates whether New Jersey public employees are overpaid at the expense of New Jersey taxpayers. Th is research is timely. Th e governor and the editorial board of the New Jersey Star-Ledger, the states largest newspaper, claim that public workers earn substantially higher salaries than average workers in the private sector, and the gap in benefits is even wider. Consequently, they are promoting public employee pay freezes, benefits reductions, and major revisions to the rules of collective bargaining as the antidote to the overpayment blight.

The purpose of this study was to examine how pre- and postmigration factors affect the psychological distress and adjustment for a community sample of Vietnamese refugees resettled in the United States. The sample included a substantial proportion of ex-political detainees who experienced a particularly large number of traumatic events prior to migration. Additionally, the study assessed postmigration experiences using multidimensional and bidirectional measures of acculturation to the Vietnamese and American cultures and measures of satisfaction with social support from like-ethnic and host culture network members. Psychological adjustment and distress were assessed with depression, anxiety, alienation, and life satisfaction. Findings show that premigration traumatic experiences predicted only measures of anxiety. The other measures of adjustment and distress were predicted by postmigration factors, including acculturation and social support. In sum, findings suggest that different psychological outcomes are predicted by different pre- and postmigration factors, suggesting that adjustment is a complex process that involves multiple indicators and dimensions. Significant differences were also found between ex-political detainees and other Vietnamese refugees suggesting the importance of considering their unique experience.

The elderly population is growing at a faster rate than the overall U.S. population. In addition, the elderly immigrant population is also growing at a fast rate in the U.S. Both population groups face various challenges concerning their needs and in receiving assistance from healthcare and human services. As scant literature concerning meeting the needs of elderly immigrants exists, this paper examines Human Services’ ability to provide adequate assistance and the efforts of multi-sectoral planning, while attempting to meet the needs of elderly immigrants in the U.S.

Various economic theories suggest that one reason for low rates of employment among low-skill, inner-city residents is that they are spatially separated from jobs that have moved out to the suburbs. To test this, I exploit variation in state Dprior approval insurance rate regulation which has been shown to suppress auto insurance prices, thereby decreasing the cost of owning a car. I find that rate regulation increases the proportion of multi-car households among married couples with children. In those households, I find that the additional car in the household encourages mothers to decrease their labor supply while their husbands increase their labor supply. One possible explanation of this result is that second cars are stronger complements to time spent in home production (and especially childrearing) than they are to time spent in the labor market.

What drives governments with similar revenues to publicly provide very di erent amountsof goods for which private substitutes are available? Key examples are education andhealth care. In this paper, I focus on pre-primary education in Brazil. I show that areaswith higher median income and more income inequality allocate less of an exogenousrevenue increase to education and more to public infrastructure, which does not haveprivate substitutes. I exploit a 1998 education nance reform to ensure that my resultsare credibly causal and do not merely reect omitted variables that a ect both tastesand income. This result can be explained by two separate theories. The rst, \collectivechoice," hypothesizes that richer people are more likely to consume the privateversion of a good, especially as their incomes diverge from those of others in their area.Because they do not use the publicly-provided good, they do not support governmentspending on it. The second, \political power," hypothesizes that the rich are able toexercise control over public policy that is roughly proportionate to their share of income,as opposed to their share of votes. Thus, the poor may have little ability to makegovernment publicly supply the goods they most demand. I attempt to apportion theestimated e ect between these two theories by examining whether Brazilian municipalitieswith Participatory Budgeting, a form of governance designed to ensure that thepoor have a strong role in policy making, allocate exogenous revenue di erently thanother municipalities. My results suggest that both the collective choice and politicalpower theories are operative.

The Code of Virginia ( 33.1-23.03) requires that the Statewide Transportation Plan include quantifiable measures and achievable goals relating to . . . job-to-housing ratios. Such ratios reflect jobs/housing balance, defined as an equivalence in the numbers of an areas jobs and area residents seeking those jobs. This report identifies planning policies based on jobs/housing balance, examines the impact of such balance on commuting, and demonstrates how to measure this balance using Virginia data. The research suggests that the Code requirement may be satisfied by using the ratio of jobs to labor force, as this ratio is highly correlated with the job-to-housing ratio (based on examining 1980, 1990, and 2000 data) and is computationally feasible, at the jurisdictional level, on an annual basis. Alternative approaches for satisfying the requirements of the Code are also described in the report; these alternative approaches require additional effort but may be productive in certain circumstances. A simple longitudinal model developed using changes in Virginia jurisdiction commute time from 1990 through 2000 estimates that the average impact of a given urban jurisdiction improving its balance by 20% is a reduction in commute time of about 2 minutes. This effect is evident only if several factors, such as the manner in which the urban region is defined, are carefully controlled. Otherwise, there is no significant impact of a change in jobs/housing balance on a given jurisdictions commute time. This finding is within the wide range of impacts of jobs/housing balance noted in the literature.

We propose a modeling of the problem of privacy-compliantdata publishing that captures confidentiality constraints onone side and visibility requirements on the other side. Confidentiality constraints express the fact that some attributes, or associations among them, are sensitive and cannot be released. Visibility requirements express requests for views over data that should be provided. We propose a solution based on data fragmentation to split sensitive associations while ensuring visibility. In addition, we show how sensitive associations broken by fragmentation can be released in a sanitized form as loose associations formed in a way to guarantee a specified degree of privacy.

Purpose: Obtaining an accurate understanding of a childs cancer prognosis may allow for informed parent decision making, as well as an ability to balance aggressive treatment with maintaining the childs quality of life throughout the disease course. Research has shown that parents tend to overestimate their childs cancer prognosis relative to physicians. The current study examined an integrated model that included parent adjustment, coping, and health literacy variables for its ability to account for differences in the accuracy of parents understanding of their childs cancer prognosis. Methods: Seventy-seven mothers and forty-two fathers of children with cancer completed questionnaires regarding their own adjustment, coping, and sources of medical information. Physicians reported on the content of their communication with parents regarding the childs prognosis. Both parents and physicians estimated the childs chance of 5-year survival using a visual analogue scale. Assessments occurred within 3-8 weeks of a childs new diagnosis or relapse of cancer. Mothers were on average 36.89 years old (SD = 7.57), and 92% (n = 71) were Caucasian. Sixty-eight percent (n = 52) were married, and mean years of education was 14.90 (SD = 3.53). Fathers were on average 40.45 years old (SD = 7.01), and 98% (n = 41) were Caucasian. Eighty-three percent (n = 35) were married, and mean years of education was 15.26 (SD = 4.04). Children were on average 10.77 years old (SD = 3.88); the majority were male (52%; n = 40) and Caucasian (90%; n = 69). Diagnoses included leukemias (26%; n = 20), lymphomas (36%; n = 28), brain tumors (12%; n = 9), and other solid tumors (26%; n = 20). Results: Both mothers and fathers reported a more favorable prognosis for their child than physicians. Agreement between physician and mother prognosis estimates was moderated by mothers symptoms of depression and anxiety. Agreement between physician and father prognosis estimates was moderated by fathers use of secondary and disengagement coping, as well as father age and sources of medical information. Conclusion: Results provide partial support for an integrated model of parent prognosis literacy that highlights various coping, adjustment, and health literacy variables as important factors that play a role in mothers or fathers understanding of their childs cancer prognosis. In addition, findings indicate that the specific factors involved in influencing prognosis understanding vary between parents. Additional research on these and other factors is needed to assist in developing clinical interventions aimed at improving informed parental knowledge during a childs cancer treatment.

This analysis uses data from the University of Washington Beyond High School Research Project to examine how racial/ethnic inequality develops across four of the key educational transitions in the college completion process: formation of college plans, college preparation, attendance, and completion. Also it examines whether a cumulative model of educational attainment can explain the racial/ethnic variation at each of these key points. Preliminary analyses indicate that African American, Native American, and Mexican youth are just as likely as their peers to have college plans. However, due to their disadvantaged family backgrounds, they are less likely to attend or complete college. Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese& Chinese students receive increased levels of support from their significant others, which they are able to translate into increased levels of success at nearly all stages of the college completion process.

Little is known about the validity of group-level theories of ethnic intermarriage despite the factthat such theories are often invoked in explaining why certain ethnic groups are closed, whereasothers are relatively open. We develop a comparative perspective by analyzing the marriage choicesof 94 national-origin groups in the United States, using pooled data from the Current PopulationSurveys, 19942006, and multilevel models in which individual and contextual determinants of intermarriageare included simultaneously. Our analyses show large differences in endogamy acrossgroups. After taking compositional effects into account, we fi nd that both structural and culturalgroup-level factors have signifi cant effects on endogamy. Cultural explanations (which focus on therole of norms and preferences) play a more important role than structural explanations (which focuson meeting and mating opportunities). Our results reinforce the common but untested interpretation ofendogamy in terms of group boundaries.

Labor supply theory makes strong predictions about how the introduction of a social welfare program impacts work effort. Although there is a large literature on the work incentive effects of AFDC and the EITC, relatively little is known about the work incentive effects of the Food Stamp Program and none of the existing literature is based on quasi-experimental methods. We use the cross-county introduction of the program in the 1960s and 1970s to estimate the impact of the program on the extensive and intensive margins of labor supply, earnings, and family cash income. Consistent with theory, we find modest reductions in employment and hours worked when food stamps are introduced. The results are larger for single-parent families.

The share of metropolitan residents living in central cities declined dramatically from 1950 to 2000. We show that, if not for a series of demographic factors notably renewed immigration, delayed child bearing, and a decline in the share of households headed by veterans, who are eligible for military housing benefits cities would have contracted even further over this period. We provide causal estimates of the relationship between the living in the central city and the presence of children in the household using the occurrence of twins as an exogenous event and of the relationship between the living in the central city and veteran status, relying on a discontinuity in the probability of military service during and after the mass mobilization for World War II. Demographic trends were only strong enough to stanch the flow of population from cities, not to generate an urban revival.

Early studies of the impact of information technology (IT) on society suggested that it had a negative impact on social life as well as on mass media use. This article reviews the results from several subsequent studies both in the United States and other countries that show little such societal change in terms of users’ daily behavior. It then proceeds to document further negative evidence from two more recent large national surveys with high response rates: the 2006 General Social Survey (GSS), with more than 2,500 respondents, and the 2003—2005 American Time-Use Survey (ATUS), with more than 40,000 respondents, aged 18 and older. The GSS survey collected time-estimate data on particular social and media (mainly free-time) activities, while the ATUS study collected diary data on all daily activities across a single day. In general, Internet use was not consistently correlated with significantly lower levels of socializing or other social activities (such as church attendance) nor with lower time with mass communications media in the GSS. For reading and some other behaviors, the Internet was associated with increased media use. Respondents who reported more time on the Internet did report fewer social visits with relatives, but more visits with friends, compared to those who spent no time on the Internet. The main difference between users and nonusers in the ATUS was with time at paid work, which was only partially explained by higher Internet use by teens and on days off from work. For reading and some other behaviors, the Internet was associated with increased use.