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What's New at IRPIn 2008: Winter-Spring 2007-08 | Spring Spring
Guggenheim Fellowships to Wolfe and DanzigerTwo former IRP directors, Barbara Wolfe (1994–2000) and Sheldon Danziger (1983–1988), received 2008 Guggenheim Fellowships. Wolfe, UW–Madison Professor of Economics, Population Health Sciences, and Public Affairs, and current Director of the La Follette School of Public Policy, was awarded a fellowship to study the tie between income and health disparities. Danziger, University of Michigan Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, and co-director of the National Poverty Center, will examine four decades’ of antipoverty policies. Wolfe and Danziger were among the 190 Fellows named on April 3 by the
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation as 2008 awardees. The Fellows were selected
from a pool of more than 2,600 scholars, scientists, and artists, with
awards totaling $8,200,000. Winter-Spring 2007-08
Focus 25:2: Pathways to Self-SufficiencyThe latest issue of Focus was recently published and is available in full text on IRP’s Web site, at http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus.htm. It features articles drawn from some of the papers presented at IRP’s fall 2007 Pathways to Self-Sufficiency conference and a brief essay by conference organizers Carolyn Heinrich and John Karl Scholz. The other articles in this issue are: “Effects of Welfare and Antipoverty
Programs on Participants’ Children” by Greg J. Duncan, Lisa Gennetian,
and Pamela Morris; “Improving Educational Outcomes for Disadvantaged
Children” by David N. Figlio; “The Employment Prospects of Ex-Offenders” by
Steven Raphael; and “The Growing Problem of Disconnected Single Mothers” by
Rebecca Blank and Brian Kovak.
Measuring the Role of Faith In Program Outcomes ConferenceIn April 2008 IRP will hold a working conference that brings together faith-based service providers, policymakers, and evaluators interested in faith-based services for hard-to-serve populations. The conference's overall goal will be to outline issues important to the evaluation of these programs. This working conference is being organized by Jennifer Noyes and Maria Cancian,
Institute for Research on Poverty, with support from the Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, and from the Bradley Foundation.
Changing Poverty ConferenceIRP is hosting a small working conference May 29 and 30, 2008, to discuss a new set of commissioned papers that consider trends and determinants of poverty and inequality, the evolution of poverty-related policy, and the consequences of poverty for families and children. A book based on the conference to be published by the Russell Sage Foundation will continue the seminal book series on poverty policy and research, which includes Fighting Poverty (1986), Confronting Poverty (1994), and Understanding Poverty (2001). The book will be edited by Maria Cancian and Sheldon Danziger, with financial
support from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation,
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and from the Russell Sage Foundation.
Summer Research Workshop IRP will again host the annual workshop at which invited social scientists
present recent research on topics affecting low-income individuals and families.
Workshop organizers are Robert Moffitt, John Karl Scholz, Robert Hauser,
and Jeffrey Smith.
A State of Agents? ConferenceIn summer 2008 IRP will host a research conference, A State of Agents? Third Party Governance and Implications for Human Services, that will address important issues raised by public policy and management scholars regarding the burgeoning number of third-party entities that play increasingly central roles in the design, management, and execution of public policy. A central goal of this conference is to advance new ideas and theoretical arguments for research and generate new empirical evidence that sharpens the debate over the extent and impact of the increasing use of agents of the state to implement public policy. This conference is being organized by Carolyn Heinrich, with financial support
from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services; and from the University of Arizona,
School of Public Administration and Policy; Eller College of Management University
of Washington; and the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs University
of Southern California, School of Policy, Planning, and Development.
IRP Hosts Applied Microeconometrics Workshop August 4-6, 2008, IRP will host an Applied Microeconometrics Workshop taught In this workshop Guido Imbens and Jeffrey Wooldridge will discuss developments in micro-econometrics over the last decade and a half. The focus will be on methods that are relevant for, and ready to be used by, empirical researchers, and the workshop is aimed exactly at such researchers. In contrast to much of the published literature in the more technical econometrics and statistics journals, we focus on practical issues important in implementation of the methods and for reading and understanding of the literature. There will be little discussion of technical details, for which we will refer to the literature. Visit IRP’s Web site at www.irp.wisc.edu for
syllabus and registration information and forms. This workshop
is being organized with financial support from the Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. Co-Sponsors include the University of Wisconsin Center for Demography
and Ecology, the Wisconsin Center for Education Research and the University
of Southern California IEPR/SCPRC.
SeminarsIRP seminars take place on Thursdays from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in room 8417 Sewell Social Science Building, 1180 Observatory Drive. For updates and further details, visit http://www.irp.wisc.edu/newsevents/seminars.htm. February 21 February 28 March 12 April 21 May 5 May 8
2008 New Perspectives in Social Policy Seminar Charles Karelis, author of The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of
the Well-Off Can’t Help the Poor (2007, Yale University Press) and
Research Professor of Philosophy, The George Washington University, will
present the 2007-2008 lecture in the IRP “New Perspectives in Social
Policy” seminar series April 3, 2008, 8417 Social Science Building.
Daniel M. Hausman, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Philosophy, UW-Madison,
will be the discussant.
2008 Robert Lampman Lecture Robert Haveman will deliver the 2008 Lampman Lecture June 18 at 4-6 p.m.
at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Pyle Center.
New AffiliatesMarkus Gangl, Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, focuses much of his research on social stratification, with a particular focus on analyses of labor markets, unemployment, poverty, and income inequality; the social consequences of economic inequality; and the relationship between educational policies and educational inequality in Western societies. Katherine J. Curtis White, Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, focuses her research on racial and gender inequality among participants of the Great Migration; racial inequality in early twentieth-century Puerto Rico; and U.S. poverty and racial inequality in the South, 1970-2000. Roberta Riportella,
Associate Professor of Consumer Science, School of Human Ecology, Health Policy
Specialist - Family Living Program, University of Wisconsin-Cooperative Extension,
is an applied medical sociologist/health services researcher and focuses her
work on consumer health education; improving access to health care coverage;
and public-health policy evaluation.
Visiting ScholarOscar Mitnik is an Assistant Professor at the Economics Department of the University of Miami. He will be in residence at IRP from March 3 through March 14, 2008. On March 6, he will present a seminar at IRP. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Mitnik’s interests include labor economics, applied econometrics, and applied microeconomics. His recent research has focused primarily on the determinants and effects of policies oriented to help welfare recipients (and low-income individuals in general) to become self-sufficient, and on the econometric methods for program evaluation. A recent publication is "Nonparametric Tests for Treatment Effect Heterogeneity," with R. K. Crump, V. J. Hotz, & G. W. Imbens, 2007, forthcoming in The Review of Economics and Statistics. IRP’s Visiting Scholar program began in 1998 and IRP invites applications
from U.S.-based social science scholars from underrepresented racial and ethnic
groups to visit IRP, interact with its faculty in residence, and become acquainted
with the staff and resources of the Institute. Applications are currently being
accepted for 2008-09, see details at http://www.irp.wisc.edu/initiatives/funding/vscholars.htm.
IRP Affiliates’ Awards And HonorsThe Russell Sage Foundation announced support for a project to study how poverty may affect brain development and what lies behind the income gradient of health, “Toward Improving Our Understanding of the Tie between Income and Health,” which was submitted by Barbara Wolfe, IRP Affiliate, Director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs, former IRP Director, and Professor of Economics and Population Health Sciences, UW-Madison. Wolfe and investigators—Seth Pollack, Professor of Psychology and Letters
and Science Distinguished Professor, UW-Madison; William N. Evans, Professor,
Department of Economics and Econometrics, University of Notre Dame; and Teresa
E. Seeman, Professor, Division of Geriatrics, Geffen School of Medicine at
UCLA—will analyze a new longitudinal database of children in the United
States, the NIH MRI Study of Normal Brain Development, to explore the relationship
between socioeconomic status, the development of the human brain, and aspects
of cognitive functioning related to children’s school readiness. Additional
support will be provided by IRP.
New Discussion PapersIRP Discussion Papers “Temporary Help Service Firms’ Use of Employer Tax Credits: Implications
for Disadvantaged Workers’ Labor Market Outcomes” Temporary Help Services (THS) firms are increasing their hiring of disadvantaged individuals and claiming more subsidies for doing so. Do these subsidies—the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) and Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit (WtW)—create incentives that improve employment outcomes for THS workers? We examine the distinct effects of THS employment and WOTC/WtW subsidies using administrative and survey data. Results indicate that WOTC/WtW-certified THS workers have higher earnings than WOTC-eligible but uncertified THS workers. However, these workers have shorter job tenure and lower earnings than WOTC/WtW-certified workers in non-THS industries. Panel estimates suggest that these effects do not persist over time. “Welfare Reform: The U.S. Experience” The reform of the cash-based welfare program for single mothers in the US which occurred in the 1990s was the most important since its inception in 1935. The reforms imposed credible and enforceable work requirements into the program for the first time, as well as establishing time limits on lifetime receipt. Research on the effects of the reform have shown it to have reduced the program caseload and governmental expenditures on the program. In addition, the reform has had generally positive average effects on employment, earnings, and income, and generally negative effects on poverty rates, although the gains are not evenly distributed across groups. A fraction of the affected group appears to have been made worse off by the reform. “Human Services Systems Integration: A Conceptual Framework” It is generally believed that the human services structure is most accurately described as an array of potentially related programs that deliver distinct benefits or services to narrowly defined target populations. As a whole, the configuration of services available to support and assist families in their efforts to become self-sufficient can be complex, confusing, redundant, and incoherent. The opposite of this approach to organizing and delivering human services is often coined ‘systems integration.’ Building on lessons learned from the field, the authors provide a conceptual framework for understanding the systems integration concept and approach to human services delivery. “The Stability of Shared Child Physical Placements in Recent Cohorts
of Divorced Wisconsin Families,” Lawrence M. Berger, Patricia R. Brown,
Eunhee Joung, Marygold S. Melli, and Lynn Wimer This paper describes the living arrangements of children in Wisconsin families with sole mother and shared child physical placements following parental divorce and explores the stability of these arrangements during (approximately) the next three years. Contrary to prior research in this area, results provide little evidence that children in shared placement spend less time in their father’s care about three years after a divorce than they did at the time of the divorce. In contrast, children with sole mother placement appear to progressively spend less time in their father’s care in the years following a divorce, and a considerable proportion of these children spend little or no time in their father’s care about three years after divorce. Brookings Institution Discussion Paper “Employment-Based Tax Credits for Low-Skilled Workers,” John Karl
Scholz, IRP Affiliate and former Director and a Visiting Fellow in Economic
Studies at Brookings Institution in 2007-2008, recently released a discussion
paper which introduces policy recommendations designed to address interrelated
problems faced by families in low-income communities. The paper is part of
a series of Hamilton Project discussion papers published by the Brookings Institution.
A Decade of ‘W-2’: An Interview Are Wisconsin’s low-income families better off or worse off since the
state launched its welfare reform initiative called Wisconsin Works (W-2) ten
years ago? Bob Jacobson of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families (WCCF)
posed this question in fall 2007—W-2’s tenth anniversary—to
two Wisconsin Works experts. The
interview, of IRP Researcher Jennifer Noyes, a former Wisconsin Department
of Workforce Development administrator, and Pam Fendt, Director of the Good
Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods Coalition, was published in WisKids Journal,
a WCCF publication. |
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| Questions and comments email irpweb@ssc.wisc.edu Posted: 25 January, 2007 Last Updated: 16 July, 2008 |