Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: To evaluate the validity of health insurance coverage estimates from surveys, we selected a sample from four health insurance under-writing pools of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and administered a health insurance screener module from the Coordinated State Coverage Survey (CSCS) to 4,500 respondents in the state of Minnesota (AAPOR response rate 4 was 62 percent). The four under-writing pools were Medical Assistance (i.e., Medicaid), seniors (i.e., Medigap policies), commercially insured (both privately purchased and employer sponsored), and Minnesota Care (a Minnesota specific public health insurance program). Our main concern is to examine whether people who have health insurance coverage self-report that they are uninsured and therefore bias our estimate of uninsurance upward. In addition we also attempt to identify the validity of the respondent’s answers to the various types of health insurance coverage survey items. We are interested in whether respondents are able to correctly classify themselves as to whether they are on public coverage (Minnesota Care, Medicare, and Medicaid) or private coverage (commercial insurance that is employer sponsored or privately purchased). Furthermore, we examined whether respondents are able to correctly identify what type of public and private insurance they are covered under. Most surveys of health insurance coverage (e.g., The Current Population Survey Annual Demographic Supplement, the National Survey of America’s Families, and the National Health Interview Survey) ask very specific questions about public programs and the counts from these survey items are used to analyze health policy. Our analysis will shed light on whether this is a valid practice. The implications of our results for health insurance surveys and health policy will be discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In the United States and in many other countries around the world, small loans with triple digit interest rates, sometimes called “payday loans”, are a growing and troubling segment of the consumer credit marketplace. In the United States, where credit reporting has become widely accepted by mainstream financial institutions, a fierce debate is emerging over whether and how payday loan repayment histories should be compiled and shared. Unlike most American creditors, payday lenders typically do not share information on borrower payment behavior with the credit reporting agencies that compile and sell credit histories on all U.S. consumers. Some have argued that instead of eliminating or strictly regulating payday lenders, policymakers should require that payday lenders report borrower repayment behavior to consumer reporting agencies. The most notable proponent of this view, Professor Richard Brooks of Yale University, has argued that mandatory payday lender credit reporting would benefit the more creditworthy payday loan borrowers by establishing a track record attractive to traditional lenders. Professor Brooks also points out that payday lender credit reporting could moderate racist underwriting by removing the incentive to use race as a poorly calibrated proxy variable in underwriting decisions. Taking a skeptical view of the efficacy of payday lender credit reporting, this essay attempts to make three intellectual contributions. First, it queries whether successful repayment of high cost payday loans would be viewed by traditional lenders as a positive indicator of creditworthiness. Second, it suggest that many payday loan borrowers may not actually benefit from positive fringe credit records because market imperfections undermine the usefulness of this information in negotiating lower prices. Third, this essay explores the possible use of threats of false credit reports to coerce excessive and unfair repayment from payday loan borrowers. Final comments are made on the political opportunity cost of advocating payday lender credit reporting.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Concern with work-family balance and by implication, work-family conflict, has prompted interest in its workplace correlates, both as antecedents and outcomes. One of the most frequently studied outcomes of work-family conflict is job satisfaction. We add to the existing literature on this relationship by examining the role played by self-reported and partner-reported negative work-to-family spillover among dual-earner men and women (N = 156 couples or 312 individuals). We control for workplace characteristics (supportive workplace culture, job flexibility, work pressure, average work hours) and family/respondent characteristics (age, income, education, number of children), finding differences by gender. For men, workplace culture is the only correlate of job satisfaction, whereas for women, both workplace culture and partner’s perception of her work-to-family spillover are significant.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Current research has established that what individual workers define as sexual harassment is influenced by a number of factors including workplace culture, race, and citizenship status (Dellinger and Williams 2002, Welsh et al. 2006). Less clear is what these contextualized understandings mean for women’s decision to report their workplace harassment experiences. We build on previous work to examine how women’s understanding of their ability to report, as well as their decision to report, are affected by the intersection of race and citizenship status. Relying on recent work in legal consciousness, we demonstrate the variability in women’s legal consciousness around sexual harassment as well as in their belief that the law can help them We use data from twelve focus groups and seventeen interviews of Canadian women (N=67) in our analysis. White women with full citizenship rights fit most closely in either the before the law or with the law categories of legal consciousness. The against the law category of legal consciousness is populated predominately by the women of colour and women without full citizenship rights. By using Ewick and Silbey’s three categories of legal consciousness to frame our analysis, the importance of considering intersectionality as closely connected to women’s experiences of harassment and the decision to report is evident.

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: This paper explores multiple regimes of “biocommunicability” in news coverage of health issues. Through discourse and quantitative content analysis of newspaper coverage, we look at how news texts create differing subject positions in health discourse, embedded in differing ideologies about who is authorized to create and circulate public knowledge about health. In an earlier paper, we argue that neoliberalism has lead to the hierarchical “doctor’s orders” model of biocommunicability giving way to an “active patient-consumer” model, and explore contradictions that arise from the clash between the ideology of scientific authority and professional responsibility and that of the market. Here we show how the weakening of biomedical authority not only by the market, but also by social movements and the rights revolution sometimes propduces a “public sphere” model of biocommunicability in which citizens are seen as participants in democratic debate about health issues, and show how this model interacts with the other two in health care coverage.