THE SHIFTING DEMAND FOR HOUSING BY AMERICAN RENTERS AND ITS IMPACT ON HOUSEHOLD BUDGETS: 1940–2010*

From 1940 to 1960 across 20 large U.S. cities, rental housing's price fell, renters’ incomes rose, rent's share in household budgets fell, and, as expected, renters’ real housing consumption increased. From 1970 to 2010, rental housing's price increased, renters’ incomes decreased, but, unexpectedly, renters’ real housing consumption increased. We find neither demographics nor housing supply factors account for the anomalous post‐1970 increase in renters’ housing consumption. We conclude that after 1970 there was a nationwide increase in renters’ preferences for housing consumption. With incomes falling, renters increased housing consumption by decreasing consumption of other necessities including food, clothing, and transportation.     

Analyzing the Relationship Between Smoking and Coronary Heart Disease at the Small Area Level: A Bayesian Approach to Spatial Modeling

We model the relationship between coronary heart disease and smoking prevalence and deprivation at the small area level using the Poisson log-linear model with and without random effects. Extra-Poisson variability (overdispersion) is handled through the addition of spatially structured and unstructured random effects in a Bayesian framework. In addition, four different measures of smoking prevalence are assessed because the smoking data are obtained from a survey that resulted in quite large differences in the size of the sample across the census tracts. Two of the methods use Bayes adjustments of standardized smoking ratios (local and global adjustments), and one uses a nonparametric spatial averaging technique. A preferred model is identified based on the deviance information criterion. Both smoking and deprivation are found to be statistically significant risk factors, but the effect of the smoking variable is reduced once the confounding effects of deprivation are taken into account. Maps of the spatial variability in relative risk, and the importance of the underlying covariates and random effects terms, are produced. We also identify areas with excess relative risk.     

Party convergence reconsidered

That the major parties in Australia have converged is an idea of long standing. But proponents of the idea differ about when it happened, why it happened and what its consequences might be. In revisiting the party convergence thesis, this article does three things. First, it documents the recurrent nature of this thesis and its varying terms, arguing that claims of convergence: focus on some criteria while ignoring others; confuse movements in policy space with changes in party distance; and involve an implicit essentialism, so that any two parties that share an ideology are assumed to share policy positions that can be derived from that ideology. Second, it reviews studies of election speeches since the war, and studies of government expenditure patterns and tax schedules from Whitlam to Hawke, which cast doubt on, or heavily qualify, the idea that the parties have converged or lost their traditional distinctiveness. Third, it shows that on these matters the views of voters are closer to those of the policy analysts than to those of the pundits. Survey respondents continue to distinguish between the parties on particular policies and in Left–Right terms, they care who wins, and they think the party that wins matters.