We examine patterns of health seeking behavior prior to death among 1282 individuals who lived in the Umkhanyakude District of Northern KwaZulu-Natal. Information on the health care choices of these individuals, who died between January 2003 and July 2004, was gathered after their deaths from...

Empirical research on distributive politics emphasizes party and committee leaders in Congress. This paper highlights the president, who most credibly fills the role of the proposer in Baron and Ferejohn’s (1989) seminal model, and who has further opportunities to influence the distribution of...

Speech patterns differ substantially between whites and African Americans. I collect and analyze data on speech patterns to understand the role they may play in explaining racial wage differences. Among blacks, speech patterns are highly correlated with measures of skill such as schooling and...

This paper brings attention to the effects of PRWORA on household-level Food Stamps recipiency, Food Stamps allotments, and food security among children of immigrants using the Survey of Program Dynamics. This paper further seeks to examine the affect of cutbacks on welfare allotments on "mixed...

Recent studies argue that inequality exerts a negative influence on numerous social indicators. One explanation for this is that inequality reduces group cohesiveness (a component of social capital) and dampens popular support for expenditures on public goods and social programs. In light of...

Integrated governance holds promise as a strategy to improve urban school systems. It reduces the competing authorities that tend to constrain urban schools, thereby allowing the board and administration to implement their educational vision. Appointed administrators and board members often have...

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the long-run growth in weight over time. We argue that technological change has induced weight growth by making home- and market-production more sedentary and by lowering food prices through agricultural innovation. We consider how...

Benefit receipt in major household surveys is often underreported. This understatement has major implications for our understanding of the economic circumstances of disadvantaged populations, program takeup, the distributional effects of government programs, and studies of other program effects....

Households became more geographically segregated by income in the United States between 1970 and 1990. Research shows that growing up in a poor neighborhood is associated with worse outcomes for children. This suggests that economic segregation may be harmful to children. Economic inequality...

Objective: To illustrate the potential sensitivity of ecological associations between mortality and certain socioeconomic factors to different methods of age-adjustment. Data Sources: Secondary analysis employing state-level data from several publicly available sources. Crude and age-adjusted...