Contextualizing Welfare's Work Disincentive: The Case of Female-headed Family Poverty

The conventional model of the relationship between welfare incentives and poverty rates holds that welfare payments produce an income-enhancement effect that removes families from poverty until some threshold. Beyond this point increased payments engender a work-disincentive effect resulting in increased rates of poverty. We challenge the model's assumption that poverty levels are a simple and spatially invariant response to welfare incentives, contending instead that local employment conditions may substantially alter the relation. Our reformulation of the conventional modeling approach is based on the expansion method. Specifically, we extend the model to include the effects of local labor-market conditions on the response of poverty levels to welfare incentives. In contesting the invariance assumption, the expansion method allows us to determine where and in what contexts welfare is “work discouraging.” The empirical analysis, which is undertaken at the county level, indicates that welfare payments vary in their influence on poverty rates across different employment contexts. A national map portraying this parameter instability demonstrates that female-family poverty rates are most responsive to welfare assistance in the rural South and least responsive in the metropolitan Northeast. Finally, we examine two sharply contrasting locales to illustrate how poverty is governed by specific employment and welfare characteristics.     

When Studies Collide*

Environmental epidemiology increasingly is being used as a foundation for environmental health policy. Since environmental epidemiologic studies have increased dramatically in number, approaches are needed to interpret them. Two approaches used in epidemiology are rules of evidence and meta-analysis. Rules of evidence pertain to the consistency, strength, uniqueness, and medical basis of the relationship between disease and risk factors such as chemicals. Meta-analysis is a systematic and rigorous approach to comparing studies and understanding their heterogeneity. Dioxins, benzene, and formaldehyde are three chemicals that are at the forefront of health policy debates. These chemicals illustrate some of the conditions under which researchers are drawn or are not drawn to approaches to compare studies. A meta-analysis was not conducted for dioxins or benzene, but was conducted for formaldehyde. Rather than addressing study comparisons, epidemiologic studies of dioxins are focusing on expanding the number of health effects studied and obtaining greater specificity for exposures, whereas studies of benzene are focusing on effects at low dose exposures. In the case of formaldehyde, meta-analysis has strengthened the evidence for some health effects beyond what individual studies could provide. Thus, whether rules of evidence and meta-analysis approaches to synthesizing information are used can depend upon where the debates are focused.     

Transformational versus transactional styles of cabinet leadership in Australian politics

Burns's classic study of leadership distinguished two types of leader. Transformational leaders are visionaries who are able to persuade followers to transcend their own self‐interest for the sake of a larger good. Transactional leaders, on the other hand, base their relationships with followers on an exchange, such as jobs for votes. The transformational/transactional model of leadership has been adapted by Bass for use in organisations. However, Burns's analysis focuses on what may be termed macro‐level leadership of entire states or organisations, whereas Bass's approach is used to study micro‐level leadership where there is ongoing direct interaction between leader and followers. This paper examines the cabinet leadership styles of four Australian political leaders: Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, John Cain and Joh Bjelke‐Petersen. Cabinet ministers who served under these leaders were asked to complete a questionnaire rating the leadership behaviours they experienced. The results are compared with the evidence on leadership style presented in biographical accounts.     

Book reviews‐comptes rendus

Peter GARNSEY & Richard SALLER, L'Empire romain. Economie, société, culture, Paris, La Découverte / Textes à l'appui, 1994.

Morris SLAVIN, The Hébertistes to the Guillotine: anatomy of a ‘conspiracy’ in Revolutionary France, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London, 1994, xvii + 280 p., ISBN 0–8071–1838–9.

Philippe BURRIN, La France à l'heure allemande, 1940–1944, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1995.

Emmanuel LE ROY LADURIE, Le siècle des Platter 1499–1628, t.1 “Le mendiant et le professeur”, Paris, Fayard, 1995, 529 p., 170 FF., ISBN 2–213–01444–2.