Robert Plotnick

Seattle raised its minimum wage to as much as $11 in 2015 and as much as $13 in 2016. We use Washington State administrative data to conduct two complementary analyses of its impact. Relative to outlying regions of the state identified by the synthetic control method, aggregate employment at wages less than twice the original minimum—measured by total hours worked—declined. A portion of this reduction reflects jobs transitioning to wages above the threshold; the aggregate analysis likely overstates employment effects. Longitudinal analysis of individual Seattle workers matched to counterparts in outlying regions reveals no change in the probability of continued employment but significant reductions in hours, particularly for less experienced workers. Job turnover declined, as did hiring of new workers into low-wage jobs. Analyses suggest aggregate employment elasticities in the range of —0.2 to —2.0, concentrated on the intensive margin in the short run and largest among inexperienced workers. (JEL J22, J23, J24, J31, J38, R23)

Government spending for social welfare purposes has grown rapidly in recent years as new programs have been enacted and the benefit levels and eligibility requirements in existing programs have expanded. This chapter examines the accomplishments and problems of the income maintenance programs that attempt to guarantee income security-an acceptable and stable standard of living. These programs reduce poverty facilitate access to essential goods and services and cushion disruptions in household income flows. However they deal differently with people having the same needs but different charateristics and they discourage work. Some suggestions are offered for reforming income maintenance programs that can correct some of the deficiencies of current programs while preserving their accomplishments. (authors)

Demand for livestock products, including poultry, is expanding in West Africa as a result of population growth, increased urbanization, and rising incomes. Trade liberalization has had differing effects on poultry markets in the region, with some countries experiencing large import flows of frozen poultry from the European Union and others receiving very little. A 2005 analysis from the Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Initiative of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) concluded that overall, West Africa did not have a comparative advantage in the global poultry trade.1 The West African poultry sector faces high production costs, safety concerns due to lack of sanitary controls, and technical constraints in processing and marketing. In addition to biological issues, the lack of breeders, marketing, and processing technology present technical constraints to poultry sector growth.2

Over the period from 1900 to 1990 there was no trend in income inequality. Inequality was high and rising during the first three decades of the century and peaked during the Depression. It fell sharply during World War I1 and remained at the lower level in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s it rose rapidly to pre-WWII levels. The rate of poverty exhibited a long-run downward trend from about 80 percent in 1900 to the 12 to 14 percent range in recent years. There was considerable fluctuation around this secular trend. Changes in inequality were largely produced by demographic changes, the growth and decline of various industries, changes in patterns of international trade, and World War 11. Economic growth, demographic change, unemployment, and inflation were the primary drivers of the rate of poverty. Public policy has reduced the marketgenerated level of inequality, but since 1950 has had little effect on the trend in inequality. Prior to 1950, the growth of government, an...

Using data collected in 2000 on a racially and ethnically diverse sample of high school seniors (typically 17-18 years old), this study analyzes teenagers' expectations and desires about marriage, having children, and becoming unwed parents. The study is the first to examine all six outcomes with a common conceptual framework and data set. The conceptual framework combines family context, opportunity cost, and social-psychological perspectives. Each perspective has predictive power. Race, ethnicity, gender, type of religious upbringing, parental education, and parental expectations for their child's education are aspects of family context that consistently show significant relationships with expectations and desires. Adolescents with higher opportunity costs - as indicated by having better grades and higher expectations and aspirations for their schooling - expect and desire to marry and have children at older ages. This finding should be regarded cautiously because there is...

The five papers in this symposium advance the vital task of disaggregating the impacts of welfare reform. Four report differences across groups defined by location (rural or urban), types of TANF-eligible family, type of family structure, and race and ethnicity. The fifth reports few differences across race and ethnic groups. As our experience with TANF-style welfare grows and opportunities arise to reshape it, policy makers need to understand whether its impacts differ among subgroups, and why any differences exist. These studies provide useful points of departure for future research on these important policy issues.

This study used logit models to provide new evidence on the relationship between adolescent nonmarital childbearing and self-esteem, locus of control, and attitudes towards women's family roles, school, and work The sample was drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a nationally representative data base containing information on attitudes obtained before nonmarital childbearing occurred. The evidence shows that higher self-esteem and more positive attitudes toward school have been associated with a lower probability of nonmarital childbearing. These are the effects predicted by theory. Locus of control was not systematically related to nonmarital childbearing. Attitudes towards work and towards family and gender roles were also unrelated to nonmarital childbearing. Educational expectations appeared to mediate a small part of the attitudinal effects. Controlling for those effects, higher educational expectations tended to reduce the probability of nonmarital childbearing, but their impact was not statistically significant.

Benefits and costs are discussed when substance use prevention programs are proposed and evaluated, but systematic benefit-cost analysis has rarely been applied to such programs. This article argues that benefit-cost analysis can and should be used to structure evaluations of substance use prevention programs, and, in general, any program aimed at preventing dysfunctional behavior. It presents the basic ideas of benefit-cost analysis and its closely related tool, cost-effectiveness analysis. It then sketches a "blueprint" for a benefit-cost analysis of an experimental drug use prevention program intended to prevent relapse into drug use by parents receiving methadone maintenance and to lower the risk that the children of these parents will become substance users. The blueprint can help structure evaluations of other prevention programs.

ABSTRACT Background/Purpose: The economic downturn that started in November 2007 had the potential to affect implementation of science-based prevention activities by coalitions in the CYDS because of diminishing funding sources and rising unemployment. Community support and political will may also have declined in the wake of scarce resources. CTC’s strong prevention infrastructure, including key community leader support and emphasis on evidence-based programs, could buffer CTC coalitions to economic downturn effects. We examined whether economic conditions were associated with science-based prevention implementation in 2009, two years after the downturn began, and whether CTC communities were better able to maintain implementation compared to control communities in a period of economic distress. Methods: Community economic conditions in 2009, two years after the downturn began, were measured using annual unemployment, home loan performance, poverty, and income data as well as reports of key community leaders. Prevention coalition leaders (N = 11 CTC coalitions, 14 control coalitions) were surveyed in 2007, before the downturn began, and again in 2009 about the degree to which they had implemented 15 benchmarks indicating the use of science-based prevention (e.g., Has the coalition assessed risk and protective factors in the community?; implementation score range: 1-15). We expected that implementation of science-based prevention would decline from 2007 to 2009, that 2009 implementation scores would be negatively related to problematic economic conditions, but that CTC coalitions would better maintain implementation of science-based prevention than control coalitions under these conditions. Differences in implementation levels were evaluated by F-tests. Other hypotheses were evaluated using multiple regression analysis. Conclusions: Implementation of science-based prevention declined in both CTC and control communities from 2007 to 2009, but CTC coalitions scored significantly higher than control coalitions at each point. However, deteriorating economic conditions challenged the ability of some CTC coalitions to maintain high levels of science-based prevention. The four CTC coalitions in communities with unemployment rates exceeding 10% lost ground in science-based implementation in 2009 compared to 2007. Economic conditions did not predict implementation of science-based prevention by control coalitions, but these coalitions were not doing much science-based prevention even when economic conditions were favorable. Implications: CTC coalitions were better able to sustain science-based prevention implementation during the economic downturn, but implementation of science-based prevention was vulnerable to very high rates of economic distress. Compared to control coalitions, CTC coalitions’ strong prevention infrastructure may have contributed to greater sustainability of science-based prevention as economic conditions worsened.

ABSTRACT This study contributes to the debate about tolls’ equity impacts by examining the potential economic costs of tolling for low-income and non-low-income households. Using data from the Puget Sound metropolitan region in Washington State and GIS methods to map driving routes from home to work, we examine car ownership and transportation patterns among low-income and non-low-income households. We follow standard practice of estimating tolls’ potential impact only on households with workers who would drive on tolled and non-tolled facilities. We then redo the analysis including broader groups of households. We find that the degree of regressivity is quite sensitive to the set of households included in the analysis. The results suggest that distributional analyses of tolls should estimate impacts on all households in the relevant region in addition to impacts on just users of roads that are currently tolled or likely to be tolled.

... wealth and special concern for the welfare of persons in the lower tail of those distributions are persistent claimants Robert D. Plotnick ... Williamson and Lindert (1980) provide the most comprehensive survey of the time series on US income inequality during the relevant period. ...

Outreach programs attempt to overcome obstacles that deter persons from partici-pating in social programs for which they are eligible. This article identifies two broad approaches to how an outreach program might define its goals and operate. One is more suitable for local, small-scale ...

... F( recent reviews of these contributions, see Hicks and Swar (1983) and Isaac and Kelley (1981). [ 594 1 Copyright ? 198( Page 2. ... In 1981 for a four person family its standard devia-tion was $125 relative to a mean of $354, with a minimum of $120 and a maximum of $634. ...

... Related Items: Show Related Items. Click on any of the links below to perform a new search. Title: Using Benefit-Cost Analysis to Assess Child Abuse Prevention and Intervention Programs. ... More Info: Help Peer-Reviewed: N/A. Publisher: N/A. Publication Date: 1999-00-00. ...