This paper describes a particular perspective on the causes of poverty: a memberships based theory. The idea of this theory is that an individual's socioeconomic prospects are strongly influenced by the groups to which he is attached over the course of his life. Such groups may be endogenous;...

Americans are again concerned about welfare - Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) - and politicians are again proposing to reform the system. According to the author, at issue is not the cost of AFDC, but what the money is supposedly being spent for: to "reward" young women without...

The authors evaluate the effectiveness of two models often used to measure the extent of nonparticipation bias in survey estimates. The first model establishes a "continuum of resistance" to being surveyed, placing people who were interviewed after one phone call on one end and nonparticipants...

This study had three objectives: (1) to assess the validity of questionnaire-based measures in identifying households experiencing hunger and food insecurity, (2) to examine the interrelationships of different questionnaire-based measures, and (3) to examine the construction of a continuous food...

This report examines data from the court record of 9,500 Wisconsin divorce cases in twenty-one representative counties for a period of twelve years, from 1980 to 1992, in order to document how child custody is being handled in divorce. We find an increased involvement of fathers with their...

The United States will begin another round of debate on welfare reform during the 107th Congress, which convened in January 2001. The new congress and administration must decide on reauthorization of funding for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the program established in 1996 as a...

This paper analyzes welfare recipiency and recidivism of first-time AFDC recipients over the 168-month (14-year) period from January 1978 to December 1991 using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) database. Duration of a single AFDC spell is short, but repeated welfare dependency is...

New Zealand recently initiated sweeping reforms to its social welfare program by cutting benefits and tightening eligibility criteria. One of the objectives of these reforms was to provide incentives for people to enter or re-enter the labor force. Econometric analysis is used in this paper to...