Something Borrowed and Something New?: Welfare Reform and Social Science

William M. Epstein, Welfare in America : How Social Science Fails the Poor.
Herbert J. Gans, The War Against the Poor : The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy
Joel F. Handler, The Poverty of Welfare Reform     

Iron Age Landscapes of the Benue River Valley,Cameroon

The Iron Age settlements of northern Cameroon were dispersed across the landscape, taking advantage of different eco-climatic zones to exploit a variety of natural resources. Situated at the interface of the upper and lower terraces of the Benue River, mound sites in the area around Garoua have occupation histories spanning multiple centuries. The site of Langui-Tchéboua displays evidence for rapid accumulation of sediments approximately 700 years ago, which may have been a deliberate construction strategy that would have allowed the site’s inhabitants to exploit resources in both floodplain and dryland contexts. The combined use of multiple dating methods and micromorphology provide novel insights into both the mechanisms of anthropogenic landscape change and possible motivations governing those choices.     

Bayesian Areal Wombling for Geographical Boundary Analysis

In the analysis of spatially referenced data, interest often focuses not on prediction of the spatially indexed variable itself, but on boundary analysis , that is, the determination of boundaries on the map that separate areas of higher and lower values. Existing boundary analysis methods are sometimes generically referred to as wombling , after a foundational article by Womble (1951). When data are available at point level (e.g., exact latitude and longitude of disease cases), such boundaries are most naturally obtained by locating the points of steepest ascent or descent on the fitted spatial surface (Banerjee, Gelfand, and Sirmans 2003). In this article, we propose related methods for areal data (i.e., data which consist only of sums or averages over geopolitical regions). Such methods are valuable in determining boundaries for data sets that, perhaps due to confidentiality concerns, are available only in ecological (aggregated) format, or are only collected this way (e.g., delivery of health-care or cost information). After a brief review of existing algorithmic techniques (including that implemented in the commercial software BoundarySeer), we propose a fully model-based framework for areal wombling, using Bayesian hierarchical models with posterior summaries computed using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. We explore the suitability of various existing hierarchical and spatial software packages (notably S-plus and WinBUGS) to the task, and show the approach's superiority over existing nonstochastic alternatives, both in terms of utility and average mean square error behavior. We also illustrate our methods (as well as the solution of advanced modeling issues such as simultaneous inference) using colorectal cancer late detection data collected at the county level in the state of Minnesota.     

The Location Choice of Employment‐based Immigrants among U.S. Metro Areas*

Abstract. This paper examines the initial location choice of legal employment‐based immigrants to the United States using Immigration and Naturalization Service data on individual immigrants, as well as economic, demographic, and social data to characterize the 298 metropolitan areas we define as the universal choice set. Focusing on interactions between place characteristics and immigrant characteristics, we provide multinomial logit model estimates for the location choices of about 38,000 employment‐based immigrants to the United States in 1995, focusing on the top 10 source countries. We find that, as groups, immigrants from nearly all countries are attracted to large cities with superior climates, and to cities with relatively well‐educated adults and high wages. We also find evidence that employment‐based immigrants tend to choose cities where there are relatively few immigrants of nationalities other than their own. However, when we introduce interaction terms to account for the sociodemographic characteristics of the individual immigrants, we find that the estimated effects of location destination factors can reverse as one takes account of the age, gender, marital status, and previous occupation of the immigrants.     

Birth of a brain disease: science, the state and addiction neuropolitics

This article critically interrogates contemporary forms of addiction medicine that are portrayed by policy-makers as providing a "rational" or politically neutral approach to dealing with drug use and related social problems. In particular, it examines the historical origins of the biological facts that are today understood to provide a foundation for contemporary understandings of addiction as a "disease of the brain." Drawing upon classic and contemporary work on "styles of thought," it documents how, in the period between the mid-1960s and the mid 1970s, such facts emerged in relation to new neurobiological styles of explaining and managing social problems associated with drug abuse, and an alliance between a relatively marginal group of researchers and American policy-makers who were launching the "War on Drugs." Beyond illustrating the political and material conditions necessary for the rise of addiction neuroscience, the article highlights the productivity of neurobiological thought styles, by focusing on the new biological objects, treatments and hopes that have emerged within the field of addiction studies over the last several decades.     

Electoral salience and the costs of voting at national, sub-national and supra-national elections in the UK: a case study of Brent, UK

This paper considers the impact of distance to polling station upon electoral turnout. Using polling station level data from a London borough, it examines three types of election – parliamentary, European and local elections – over a twenty year period. The UK is notable among western liberal democracies for its relatively large turnout gap – the percentage point difference between turnout at elections for the Westminster parliament compared to that for other institutions, including local councils and the supra-national European parliament. This research considers the hypothesis that in high information, high salience elections for the national parliament the costs of voting associated with travelling to a polling station to vote in person are perceived as either low or insignificant but that in low information, low salience elections, those costs are perceived as higher and may act as a deterrent upon voting. A series of multi-level models consider the relationships between the dependent variable, percentage turnout, and a range of independent variables, including socio-economic characteristics, marginality as well as the spatial context. We show that there is indeed a relationship between distance and voter turnout, and other spatial and contextual variables, which are stronger for the lower salience European and local elections than for the higher salience national elections. Hence we conclude that the local geography of the polling station can have a significant impact on voter turnout and that there should be a more strategic approach to the siting of polling stations.