employment discrimination an empirical test of forward versus reverse regression using data on faculty salaries at a large university we follow a methodology suggested by goldberger to conduct an empirical test of the conway roberts proposition that reverse and not forward regression is the proper way to detect salary discrimination we obtained 11 different estimates of the amount of salary discrimination not only are these estimates statistically inconsistent but they are also at variance with the estimate derived from the composite reverse regression therefore we conclude that in light of the econometric modeling used reverse regression does not yield an unbiased estimate of salary discrimination

food insecurity and public assistance this paper examines if welfare programs reduce the probability that vulnerable households experience food deprivation because of financial constraints although the 1996 welfare reform legislation specifically limited the eligibility of immigrant households to receive assistance many states chose to protect their immigrant populations by offering state funded aid to these groups i exploit these changes in eligibility rules to examine the link between food insecurity and public assistance the evidence indicates that a 10 percentage point cut in the fraction of the population that receives public assistance increases the fraction of food insecure households by about 5 percentage points

the effect of food stamps on labor supply a bivariate selection model abstract although there is a large literature on the effects of u s transfer programs on labor supply this is the first such study of the food stamp program we model the nonlinearity and nonconvexity of the budget constraint and use maximum likelihood methods to estimate hours of work functions for female heads of household the largest recipient group in the program we also model the joint response to afdc and food stamps and we account for the existence of a significant number of eligible households who do not participate in the programs a three equation bivariate selection model is estimated on a sample of eligible households with maximum likelihood

household history snap participation and food insecurity abstract food security in an important public policy issue in 2015 approximately 1 in 8 u s households experienced food insecurity at some point in the year low income families are at higher risk for food insecurity than other families and these families may also face higher levels of disruption e g moves loss of income or individuals entering or leaving the household than other families i use data from the survey of income and program participation to explore the relationship between food insecurity the household s history during the previous year and snap participation the results indicate that a number of aspects of the household s recent experience including negative income shocks moves and both increases and decreases in household size increase the probability of being food insecure while snap participation is estimated to reduce the probability of being food insecure

how much does the supplemental nutrition assistance program reduce food insecurity nearly 15 of all u s households and 40 of near poor households were food insecure in 2009 the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap is the cornerstone of federal food assistance programs and serves as the first line of defense against food related hardship this paper measures the effectiveness of snap in reducing food insecurity using an instrumental variables approach to control for selection our results suggest that receipt of snap benefits reduces the likelihood of being food insecure by roughly 30 and reduces the likelihood of being very food insecure by 20

the effect of safety net programs on food insecurity we investigate to what extent major safety net program benefits affect food insecurity in families we impute program eligibility and benefits in each state for 2001 2009 accounting for cross program eligibility rules we use simulated eligibility and benefits for a nationally representative sample as instruments for imputed eligibility and potential benefits among nonimmigrant low income single parent families 1 000 in potential cash or food benefits reduces the incidence of food insecurity by 1 1 percentage points on a base of 33 percent cash and food both reduce food insecurity the results highlight the importance of jointly considering a full range of safety net programs

food stamps and food insecurity what can be learned in the presence of nonclassical measurement error policymakers have been puzzled to observe that food stamp households appear more likely to be food insecure than observationally similar eligible nonparticipating households we reexamine this issue allowing for nonclassical reporting errors in food stamp participation and food insecurity extending the literature on partially identified parameters we introduce a nonparametric framework that makes transparent what can be known about conditional probabilities when a binary outcome and conditioning variable are both subject to nonclassical measurement error we find that the food insecurity paradox hinges on assumptions about the data that are not supported by the previous food stamp participation literature

who are the world s food insecure new evidence from the food and agriculture organization s food insecurity experience scale summary until recently there was lacking a common food security measure and the necessary data to study the individual level determinants of food insecurity around the world in 2014 the food and agriculture organization s voices of the hungry project developed an experiential measure of food insecurity the food insecurity experience scale fies translated it into 200 languages and contracted gallup inc for collection of data through the gallup world poll this is the first paper that identifies and examines the common determinants of food insecurity in 134 countries using this cross country comparable experiential measure of food insecurity we also investigate whether and to what extent the common determinants of food insecurity identified in a global model differ across rankings of economic development using a series of multilevel linear probability models we find that the five characteristics associated with the largest increase in the likelihood of experiencing food insecurity around the world are having low levels of education weak social networks less social capital low household income and being unemployed we also find significant heterogeneity in the determinants of food insecurity over development rankings this study is an important first step in utilizing the new fies to document risk factors of food insecurity around the globe

detecting and removing discrimination under equal opportunities policies abstract this paper surveys part of the recent voluminous literature on the economics of discrimination focusing on two key questions first how should discrimination be measured and can in fact unambiguous estimates be derived as the basis for detecting where discrimination is present and setting in train measures to eliminate it second to what extent has the implementation of equal opportunities legislation improved the relative standing of women and minority workers in the labour force this section includes a discussion of the likely effects of recent changes in the law such as the equal value amendment in the uk or the introduction of comparable worth in the usa the survey concludes that our ability to detect discrimination at all precisely is still rudimentary and consequently policy measures are likely to be inefficient for this reason

the thrifty food plan and low income households in the united states what food groups are being neglected food assistance programs in the united states provide low income households with the resources to purchase a healthy nutritious and palatable diet if they buy the market baskets of food outlined in the thrifty food plan this study compares the cost of these baskets with actual spending on food at home by low income households simulations reveal at home food spending by low income households to represent only 86 of what is needed to follow the thrifty food plan married couples with children and female headed households with children spend only 73 and 82 respectively and just 43 and 50 for at home fruits and vegetables

poverty and the distribution of material hardship public concern with poverty derives in large part from the assumption that low income families cannot afford necessities yet official poverty statistics focus on measuring income not on measuring material hardship two surveys of chicago residents measure whether families could afford food housing and medical care a family s official income to needs ratio explained 24 percent of the variance in the amount of material hardship it reported adjustments for family size age health noncash benefits home ownership and access to credit explain another 15 percent variations in permanent income explain almost none of the remaining variance in hardship among families with the same official income toneeds ratio material hardship varies by age family size and composition

partial identification methods for evaluating food assistance programs a case study of the causal impact of snap on food insecurity we illustrate how partial identification methods can be used to provide credible inferences on the causal impacts of food assistance programs focusing on the impact that the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap formerly known as the food stamp program has on food insecurity among households with children recent research applies these methods to address two key issues confounding identification missing counterfactuals and nonrandomly misclassified treatment status in this paper we illustrate and extend the recent literature by using data from the survey of income and program participation sipp to study the robustness of prior conclusions the sipp confers important advantages the detailed information about income and eligibility allows us to apply a modified discontinuity design to sharpen inferences and the panel nature allows us to reduce uncertainty about true participation status we find that snap reduces the prevalence of food insecurity in households with children by at least six percentage points

discrimination fact or fiction an examination using an alternative approach women earn less than men blacks earn less than whites these facts are blatantly observable in the economy with the proliferation of civil rights legislation in the last two decades social scientists have become increasingly concerned with the determination of the wage gap attributable to discrimination because workers have different productivities statistical methods have been used to isolate the discrimination effect from wage differences justified by differences in productivity the primary method estimates an equation with wages expressed as a function of productivity and sex or race since productivity cannot be directly observed a number of proxies for productivity have been used such as education tenure and experience statisticians 11 have shown that the necessity of using proxies results in statistical biases which may tend to overestimate discrimination they have shown that mismeasuring any independent variable can impart a bias on each regression coefficient thereby causing a severe misestimate of discrimination these errors are proportional to the degree of mismeasurement the relative degree of error variance in the independent variables as well as to the amount of intercorrelation between each variable and race or

an economic model of welfare stigma perhaps the most basic assumption of the economic theory of consumer demand is that more is better than less virtually all of the major propositions of consumer theory can in a certain sense be derived from the assumption that goods are good interestingly however this tenet seems to be violated by the behavior of many individuals in the low income population for many turn out to be eligible for a positive welfare benefit but do not in fact join the welfare rolls for example it has been estimated that in 1970 only about 69 percent of the families eligible for afdc aid to families with dependent children participated in the program see richard michel 1980 the corresponding percentage for afdc u the program for which families with an unemployed male are eligible was only 43 percent and the participation rate in the food stamp program was only 38 percent see maurice mcdonald 1977 this phenomenon has puzzled many investigators because such individuals do not locate on the boundaries of their budget sets consequently most investigators ignore the problem when studying the effects of welfare programs on behavior in this paper this seemingly irrational rejection of an increase in income is modeled as resulting from welfare stigma that is from disutility arising from participation in a welfare program per se 1 the existence of stigma has been amply documented in the sociological literature patrick horan and patricia austin 1974 lee rainwater 1979 where interviews of recipients have often uncovered feelings of lack of self respect and negative self characterizations from participation in welfare nevertheless this phenomenon has not been modeled and many questions consequently remain when is the disutility of participation strong enough to prevent participation shouldn t we expect individuals to weigh the disutility of participation against the potential benefit in their decisions what is the elasticity of participation with respect to the potential benefit also in a slightly different vein how are the work disincentives of welfare affected by stigma these questions have been given scant attention by economists yet they are crucial for our ability to predict the impact of various welfare programs on the lowincome population here these questions are addressed by modeling nonparticipation as a utility maximizing decision the model is developed and estimated for the afdc program 2 the model posits an individual utility function containing not just disposable income but

food environment in the united states as a complex economic system the food environment in the united states is complex sixteen socio economic demographic variables from various public data sources are studied with a machine learning algorithm to ascertain the causality structure associated with the food environment in the united states high levels of unemployment and poverty are direct causes of high levels of food insecurity while low income causes high levels of food insecurity via increased levels of poverty unemployment is a common cause for both increased levels of food insecurity and poverty we find that food insecurity and participation in supplemental nutrition assistance program snap are related yet no direct causality is observed contrary to past studies which find that snap participation decreased the occurrences of poverty in contemporaneous time we find that poverty and snap participation are related through several back door paths via food insecurity unemployment race and food taxes obesity and snap participation are indirectly related via several back door paths namely race income poverty and food insecurity and unemployment also food insecurity and obesity are related by several back door paths low income high food taxes and race being black and non hispanic are direct causes of obesity the complex causality structure in the us food environment reveals that policy variables cannot be treated independently of their rich causal structure government agencies responsible for designing policies for food assistance poverty alleviation combating food insecurity and obesity need to consider the interrelationships among these variables

the food stamp program and food insufficiency food stamp participants have higher food insufficiency rates than eligible nonparticipants even after controlling for other factors given the food stamp program s prominent role in the alleviation of hunger this is a counterintuitive result we conjecture that these higher rates are due to adverse selection insofar as households more likely to be food insufficient are also more likely to receive food stamps we establish a theoretical framework to address this adverse selection using a simultaneous equation model with two probits we show that once one controls for this adverse selection food stamp recipients have the same probability of food insufficiency as nonrecipients copyright 2001 oxford university press

the food stamp participation and labor supply of married couples an empirical analysis of joint decisions this paper examines the effect of the food stamp program on intrafamily labor supply and program participation decisions married couples simultaneously choose the labor supply of the husband and wife and whether to participate in the food stamp program using data from the survey of income and program participation the author estimates a nested multinomial logit model simulations indicate smaller labor supply effects to changes in the food stamp benefit than the previous research which focused on single parents married couple program participation is found to be relatively responsive to changes in food stamp benefits

the demand for episodes of treatment in the health insurance experiment abstract this paper analyzes claims data from the rand health insurance experiment which were grouped into episodes of treatment the insurance plans in the experiment have coinsurance and a cap on out of pocket spending using new statistical techniques to adjust for the increased sickliness of those who exceed the cap the effects of coinsurance on cost per episode and number of episodes are estimated cost sharing reduced the number of episodes but had little effect on cost per episode people in the experiment responded myopically as their current insurance status changed through the year the price elasticity of spending was about 0 2 throughout the range of coinsurance studied when data permit it the study of episodes complements analyses of annual medical spending by revealing more about how decisions to spend are made within the year

food stamp program participation and food insecurity an instrumental variables approach the relationship between food stamp program fsp participation and household food insecurity fi is investigated using data from the 1996 1997 national food stamp program survey endogeneity of fsp participation is accommodated with an instrumental variables approach in contrast to other findings reported in the literature results suggest participation in the fsp reduces the severity of fi sociodemographic variables play important roles in fsp participation and fi underreporting of fsp participation and limited observations of food insecure households in previous studies may have also been factors copyright 2008 oxford university press

assessing food insecurity in latin america and the caribbean using fao s food insecurity experience scale abstract the complexity of the operational concept and definition of food insecurity has complicated the study of the food insecure and efforts to determine clear policy directions previous findings on the prevalence and severity of food insecurity are inconsistent and often depend on the measure used to overcome limitations in food security measurement the food and agriculture organization of the united nations developed the food insecurity experience scale which is the first survey protocol to measure people s direct experience of food insecurity on a global scale using this new measure our study contributes to the understanding of the food insecure by examining the determinants of food insecurity within and across countries in latin america and the caribbean lac using a series of multilevel linear models we find the three determinants associated with the largest increase in the likelihood of experiencing food insecurity in lac are low levels of education limited social capital and living in a country with low gdp per capita results suggest the need to promote education of the most vulnerable encourage social interactions that help build individuals social capital and adopt gender sensitive programs the results also suggest the need for a shift in policy from short term strategies to long term efforts that sustain household productive capacity and employment to promote sustained economic growth

redirecting reverse regression i am not sure that the imperfect correlation between workers productivity and their measured qualifications creates as conway and roberts suggest a profound dilemma for the theory of distributive justice on the other hand i am fairly sure that it raises issues of statistical inference and i am quite sure that statisticians are better equipped to resolve the latter than the former so i will consider the choice of regression for inferring salary discrimination in the context of a causal model of employer behavior rather than in the context of a philosophical model of fairness i focus on the empirically relevant case where several qualification variables are observed suppose that employers assess productivity and then set salaries deterministically as

the impact of food stamp program participation on household food insecurity this study examines the impact that participation in the food stamp program has on household food insecurity using data from the panel survey of income dynamics two strategies are used to identify the causal effect of the program first endogenous treatment effect models are estimated using state level errors in payments of benefits as instruments additionally the impact of losing benefits due to a government decision on the food insecurity of program participants is examined the paper finds that program participation lowers food insecurity by at least 18

cash equivalence welfare stigma and food stamps the food stamp program fsp is one of the largest domestic redistributive transfer programs with approximately 22 million participants at a cost of 12 billion in 1983 the stated objective of the fsp is to raise the levels of nutrition among low income households by providing such households with an opportunity to obtain a low cost nutritionally adequate diet 29 5 for program evaluation and cost forecasting accurate estimates of the determinants of eligible households program participation and food expenditure decisions are of particular concern in light of the elimination of the purchase requirement epr and other recent structural changes in the program the problem of obtaining these estimates has three dimensions first observations on the behavior of eligible households under the post epr institutional setting are required second the roles of welfare stigma and the cash equivalence of the in kind food stamps must be clarified finally because program participation is a household choice that affects food expenditures the interdependence of eligible households fsp participation and food expenditure decisions must be accommodated emphasizing an important component of this interdependence the connection between cash equivalence of stamps in the participation decision and in expenditures for food this paper tackles all three dimensions the purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which food stamps are cash equivalent and to determine which program and household characteristics including the degree of cash equivalence and stigma affect post epr food stamp program participation

food stamp benefits and child poverty in 2000 8 8 million children lived in households participating in the food stamp program making this assistance program a crucial component of the social safety net despite its importance little research has examined food stamps effect on children s overall well being using the current population survey from 1989 to 2001 we consider the impact of food stamps on three measures of poverty the headcount the poverty gap and the squared poverty gap we find that in comparison to the headcount measure food stamp benefits lead to large reductions in the poverty gap and squared poverty gap measures

the role of food stamps in consumption stabilization although the food stamp program is the largest universal entitlement program in the social safety net little is known about its stabilizing role in household income and consumption using data from the panel study of income dynamics spanning 1980 99 we estimate the volatility of income with and without food stamps coupled with a variance decomposition of consumption among families at high ex ante risk of food stamp participation food stamps reduced income volatility by about 12 percent and food consumption volatility by about 14 percent there was however a marked decline in consumption smoothing benefits of the program in the early 1990s relative to the 1980s

dietary effects of the food stamp program based on data from the 1979 80 survey of food consumption in low income households this paper estimates the effects of changes in cash income and the food stamp benefit on household nutrient availability while controlling for two potential sources of selection bias the major finding of the empirical analysis is that the estimated dietary effects of changes in food stamp benefits are considerably larger than those resulting from changes in cash income with estimates of the ratios of the mpc for the food stamp benefit to the cash income mpc ranging from three to seven across nutrients no significant evidence of selection bias was found and the estimated dietary effects of food stamp benefits from the selection bias models are similar to those from the basic model estimated by ordinary least squares regression