Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Despite decades of research, our understanding of how institutional contexts influence urban political participation remains muddled. We argue that this confusion of empirical findings arises from the sheer diversity of competing hypotheses, a failure to thoroughly conceptualize the causal processes underlying these hypotheses, and the use of inadequate specifications to control for rival hypotheses. We provide a more comprehensive specification of the relationship between metropolitan jurisdictional contexts and two modes of participation: registering to vote and joining local civic organizations. After presenting a theoretical framework organizing the many extant hypotheses on the contexts of political participation, we test these hypotheses using survey data collected by the Knight Foundation from 2002 on 25 urban counties. Contrary to prior work, we find that the size of local governments is positively associated with participation, while governmental fragmentation diminishes the propensity for political action.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Crime presents a threat to the stability of neighborhoods, and researchers often attempt to measure this indirect cost of crime in terms of the impact on housing values. This paper argues that those models likely underestimate the true costs of crime because prices may not represent an accurate metric of changes in housing demand in housing sub-markets characterized by very low demand or high elasticity of supply. To help address this, we measure the impact of violent, property, and overall crime and changes in crime on the rate of housing transactions across three neighborhood classifications in Los Angeles between 1993 and 1997. We find that the same crime-induced demand shock can lead to differential impacts on the rate of housing transactions depending on the level of housing vacancies in a neighborhood. This provides further evidence that policies to encourage home ownership need to take into account the impact of crime.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines the Congressional ethics investigations of Democratic House Speaker James Wright, Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. I examine the origins, the investigations, and the resolution of these cases.
I consider the extent to which partisanship played an important role and also examine the content of the charges in and of themselves. I find that the initiation of ethics complaints, the conducting of the investigations, the resolution of the complaints and the resulting political fallout had a significant element of partisanship in all three cases. Yet there were also elements of each case that did not exhibit the straightforward partisanship that analysts have suggested. I therefore argue that the cases were about more than baseless partisan mud-slinging. The cases (particularly the last two) also point to an important distinction between 1) unethical activity based on improper private financial gain and 2) unethical activity based on improper political gain. Although the latter type of activity has not received as much attention from scholars as cases involving improper financial gain, it is both worthy of note and likely to become more important in the future.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Objective: We investigate how health status and the relationship between health status and income have changed over time.

Methodology: First, we document patterns of health status among children, prime-age adults, and adults over 65 using the National Health Interview Survey for selected years between 1978 and 2003. We measure income using three categories of poverty: poor for below 100% of poverty, near poor for between 100 and 200% of poverty, and non poor for above 200% of poverty. At the same time, we utilize three measures of health: self-reported fair or poor health, limitations in work, school, or home activities due to health problems, and a health-related quality of life index equal to one if individuals report both limitations and in fair or poor health. We track changes in health status by poverty status for all three age groups over the 25 year period. Next, we perform multivariate regression of the likelihood of having poor health for all three measures. Besides our investigation into the relationship between income and health, our probit model includes control variables for age, sex, race, ethnicity, education, and region.

Results: As expected, we find that poor health status and poverty are closely linked. For every age group and every heath indicator, the health of the poor is worse than that of the near poor or non poor. Adults show some slight improvement in health over time, using both measures. However, the gains appear greatest among the non poor, suggesting an increase in health disparities as income disparities increase. Health status as measured by health limitations has declined for all children from 1978 to 2003, though the greatest rate of increase was among the near poor children. In the probit estimates, we find poverty to have strong correlation with poorer health status and clear statistical evidence of the increasing association between income and health for nearly all age groups and all three measures of health.

Conclusions: The evidence suggests that poverty and near poverty play an increasingly important role in determining health status. The increase in income inequality when combined with the increase in reported disparities in limitations for children may have long run negative consequences for future earnings inequality and more fundamental measures of well-being. In conjunction with programs specifically directed to provide health insurance to the poor and near poor, public policies targeted at reducing poverty could have long term consequences on health.

Implications: We make a case that ill health is a separate and very important aspect of poverty that needs to be continuously monitored and reported in the same way that the number of uninsured are monitored and reported and the number of poor themselves are monitored and reported. Only when health status, SES, and access to care can be easily and systematically compared will we be in a position to say whether the poor and near poor are receiving adequate health care or are approaching the non poor in terms of access and health status.