Search

The major research question in this report is the extent to which family membership disability affects the magnitude of internal family interaction. Other research foci addressed here are: the relationship that exists between parental-nonparental or husband-wife positional locations of disabled family members and the magnitude of internal family interaction; and the influence that community type (rural-urban) or family type (nuclear-extended or complete-incomplete) has. Data for this study came from interviews with 553 black homemakers conducted during the summers of 1970 and 1971 in a large metropolitan center, a small town, and two small open-country villages in East Texas. Four major abstract conclusions are drawn: disabled families generally experience lower levels of internal family interaction than nondisabled families; there are no universal relationships between the degree of family membership disability and the degree of internal family interaction; neither community nor family type significantly influences the impact of the incidence of family membership disability; and certain community and family types influence certain relationships between the degree of family membership disability and the degree of internal family interaction. (Author/JM)

Little of the profits produced by American agriculture stays in rural America. During 1973, the farmer received less than 46 cents of every food dollar spent at the supermarket even though food prices continued to soar. Farm subsidy payments, originally designed to protect the small farmer's income, were diverted to corporate giants, large farmers, or, in some instances, royalty. Food price and farm income increases did very little for the small farmer in 1973. Thus, the number of farms continued to decline (an estimated 100,000 people left rural America). Agribusiness corporations received 71% of all profits from the U. S. food industry. Also, the country's 2,809,000 farmworkers are suffering from low wages, seasonal work, limited coverage under protective labor legislation, increased mechanization, lack of alternative job opportunities, few marketable skills, poor education, and critical health and housing needs. Such organizations as the United Farm Workers of America, Southern Mutual Help Association, National Coalition for Land Reform, National Sharecroppers Fund, and Experimental Farm and Training Center are working on these problems, showing that reform and revitalization in rural America are possible. (NQ)

This report attempts to respond to a series of questions commonly asked about the nation-wide experiment to provide equality of educational opportunity to children born to families of poverty. The report focuses on the following questions: (1) Why did this program of experimenting with early childhood education happen to get launched midway in the early 1960s?, (2) What were the goals of the program, the hopes for it, and how realistic were these hopes? (3) What have been the accomplishments of Project Head Start and of the related investigations and developments that launching Head Start served to inspire?, (4) What have the public reactions been to what has been called the 'failure of Head Start'?, and (5) What have we learned that will be of use in the future? It is suggested that the challenge for the next decade in early childhood education rests on the construction of ordinal scales for assessing development taking place between the sensorimotor phase and the achievement of concrete operations. In total, this report is a comprehensive, descriptive, 'state of the art' analysis of the major early childhood programs of the sixties. (CS)

The purpose of this report is to describe the results of a series of studies conducted on the relationships between census information and school achievement in the Chicago Public Schools. These studies were designed as an exploratory investigation to determine the extent to which grade-level achievement averages could be predicted using data from the third count (block statistics) and fourth count (tract statistics) of the 1970 Census, without including data on race or ethnicity. In particular, one of the original purposes was to determine whether evidence could be found of a differential effect on school achievement associated with concentrated urban poverty. The results of the study suggest that differences in achievement among the schools in the sample are associated with differentials in the concentration of poverty and poverty-related characteristics. Stated differently, whether poverty and its correlates are relatively concentrated (or absent) in the urban neighborhoods in the sample is related to the degree to which achievement scores in local schools are unexpectedly different than would be predicted on the basis of a linear relationship between poverty and achievement. (Author/JM)

The past decade has seen a number of studies of how the poverty incidence (the percentage of families below the poverty line) of certain demographic groups changes in response to economic growth. The question of whether regional economic growth trickles down to rural and rural poor families was examined by statistically estimating the relationship between family income change and multicounty regional economic growth for a sample of 669 rural Wisconsin families with white, nonaged, nondisabled heads of household. These families, surveyed in 1968, were grouped according to farm poor, farm nonpoor, rural nonfarm (RNF) poor, and RNF nonpoor. Ordinary least squares regression was used to estimate the relationship between family income change and the two indicators of regional economic development (income growth and job growth) over the period 1965-67. The results indicated that poor farm families did not get a proportional share of additional regional income growth. Rural nonfarm nonpoor families appeared to be similarly unable to share proportionately in additional regional income growth. While farm nonpoor and RNF poor families did appear to respond somewhat to regional income growth, it appeared that, on the whole, additional regional income growth could be expected to widen the income gap between urban and rural families. (Author/NQ)

The Technical Committee for NC-90, sponsored by the Agricultural and Home Economics Experiment Stations of 13 states (Alaska, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) and in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has compiled a basebook which identifies patterns of living among relatively disadvantaged families and determines factors significantly associated with these patterns of living for purposes of definition and measurement applicable to descriptive interpretation and intensive analysis related to selective aspects of family disadvantagement. This basebook provides an overview of findings from 2,650 rural and urban families in selected areas of the 13 cooperating states, including detailed information of six types: (1) conceptual background and objectives of the project; (2) committee organization and procedures; (3) percentage distributions and descriptive interpretations of family characteristics within each of the samples selected by the cooperating states; (4) similarities and differences in family characteristics within the selected area samples from the states, and among samples of rural, urban, and special types of populations; (5) family attributes associated significantly with an index of income adequacy; and (6) recommendations for further study of data. Examination of numerous family characteristics revealed extensive differences in family life situations. (JC)

The characteristics, particularly those related to low income and poverty, of rural Wisconsin households (families and individuals living along) whose head was age 63 or older were studied. "Rural" was defined as towns of 2,500 population or less and the open countryside, including farms. Data were gathered in early 1968 through interviews in 1,021 households of which 290 were with heads age 63 or older. The total household income for each respondent was compared with the poverty line as calculated by the Social Security Administration and then classified as poor, near poor, or above average income. Some findings were: (1) mean income was $3,678 for those 63 or older as compared to $7,927 for rural households with heads aged 21 to 62 years; (2) 68 percent of the heads had finished eight grades of schooling or less; (3) among rural aged households, 39 percent were poor, 34 percent were near poor, and 27 percent had above average income in 1967; (4) among the farmers, the poor received most of their income from farming but the nonpoor received half their income from a variety of nonfarm sources; (5) farmers held substantially more net worth than nonfarmers of comparable poverty position; and (6) relatively more female-headed households were poor than those with male heads. While primarily descriptive in nature, the report has implications for action programs, assistance agencies, and public policy makers, and it establishes the magnitude of the low income problem among Wisconsin's rural aged. (NQ)

Step-wise multiple regression and typological analysis were used to analyze the extent to which selected factors influence vertical mobility and achieved level of living. A sample of 418 male household heads who were 18 to 45 years old in Washington County, Mississippi were interviewed during 1971. A prescreening using census and local housing survey material determined black and white households. Respondents were interviewed by members of their own race. The analysis was based on two indexes which were also used to construct a typology of vertical mobility: (1) an index representing the respondents' level of living at childhood and (2) an index for achieved level of living (the dependent variable). The independent variables were race, ascribed rank, highest level of education, spouse's education, age, respondent's age at birth of first child farm residence, town or village residence, farm origin, town or village origin, birth rank, and military service experience. Some findings were: (1) race was the most important characteristic associated with vertical mobility and achieved level of living; (2) education, age, and urban residence had the greatest influence on the blacks' upward mobility, while for whites, education and farm residence were the most positive factors; and (3) postponement of family development, place of birth, and military experience had negligible influences on achievement for all respondents. (Author/NQ)

This research effort examines inequalities in educational input resources among school systems in Texas and California in light of the Rodriguez and Serrano court cases. Low-income families in both states were found to be in districts of low per-pupil-Expenditures and inferior educational services primarily because they are located in districts with low property valuations. Mexican-American pupils in Texas tend to be ethnically isolated in low-wealth districts and have fewer educational resources available to them than do Anglo pupils. Important differences were found between Texas and California in regard to ethnic isolation. Since Mexican-American pupils in California are not concentrated in predominantly ethnic districts, not much interethnic disparity in the distribution of educational resources among districts was found. Black pupils in both Texas and California are concentrated in large urban centers where expenditures are generally at or above the state average. These findings, however, do not take into consideration cost differentials between urban and nonurban areas and municipal overburden. The hypothesis that black pupils in large urban districts are disadvantaged by intradistrict inequalities is offered for further research. (Author/IRT)

This progress report describes the subjects, program and curriculum development, and collected psychological and medical data of the Carolina Abecedarian Project, an intervention program, begun in 1972. The purpose of this project is to bring together a multidisciplinary team of researchers to demonstrate that the developmental retardation of disadvantaged children can be prevented, and to explain how various psychological and biological processes are affected by such preventive attempts. Subjects are selected from families referred by hospital prenatal clinics and other community agencies, and rated according to an experimental "High-Risk Index." Infants are assigned to experimental and control groups, and given family support social work services, nutritional supplements, medical care, transportation, and payment for participation. The experimental group takes part in a planned curriculum (administered throughout the day) consisting of a series of learning activities developed (and evaluated) for children from birth to 36 months. Most of the report is a description of the processes of curriculum development and evaluation and the psychological and medical data collected. (ED)

In this paper, the author offers an expanded explanation of just what difference sibling position should make, and then subjects this reasoning to a test that seems to meet all of the objections raised about empirical work linking sibling position to achievement. More specifically, the author (1) lays out a simple proximate explanation of the way in which family size, birth order, and child spacing should influence a child's subsequent attainments by governing the time and other inputs he or she receives; (2) transforms these three dimensions of family structure into a single quantitative family-inputs index; (3) tests the link between sibling position and achievement within families as well as across families; and (4) presents calculations suggesting the order of magnitude of the impact of improved contraception on the subsequent inequality and level of a cohort's educational and career attainments. It turns out that the link between sibling position and achievement is significant even when age and parents' attributes have been held constant. The impact of improved contraception on the distribution of achievements in the next generation turns out to be as important, or possibly more important, then would be inferred from past studies. The family-inputs index emerges as an important variable for future studies. (Author/JM)

The study is described as a carefully controlled field test of the effects on recipient families of eight different negative income tax or benefit formulas. The most striking finding was that observed changes in labor supply in response to the experimental payments were generally quite small. Chapter One, The Experiment: Background and Choices, reviews the policy debate in the mid-1960's, the negative income tax, and describes important considerations in the study. Chapter Two, Labor Supply Response, explains the methodology by which response variables were statistically related to treatment variables and control variables; the labor supply response--mean treatment-control differentials; and labor supply response--results of more complex models. Results are tabulated and summarized. Chapter Three presents qualifications, other findings, and further research suggestions. Data from the sample, weekly earnings, hours worked, employment rates, and percentage changes are presented in 19 tables. A list of technical papers arising from the Graduated Work Incentive Experiment and table of contents for an administrative procedures volume; abstracts of research into behavioral responses to the experiment other than the labor supply response; and an outline of the available data from the graduated work incentive experiment in New Jersey and Pennsylvania are appended. (Author/NH)

The concept of nonformal education (NFE) is explored in a series of team reports. These reports fulfill the first objective, knowledge building, of a program that will culminate in the application of the knowledge about NFE in developing areas of the world through consultation, technical assistance, workshops, and information dissemination. Cross-disciplinary team working papers and semiweekly debates are the basis for delineating the future role of NFE in development planning as described in this series. This team report integrates the following generalizations that emerge in the individual studies. The concept of NFE is dependent on context and defined by the form of sponsorship and pedagogical format used. For national development, the impact of the concept of nonformal education is the expansion of educational alternatives and a sharpened comprehension of the world of out-of-school learning. In practice NFE is a response to a demand originating with the learners, such as a need for occupational education or education designed for rural settings. Planning for NFE, within a concrete situation and specific demands, facilitates a systematic look at formal education and the development of more equitable formats for financing. (JH)

Providing information by counties, grouped according to Extension Areas and Area Development Districts, this data book is designed as an aid to identification of Kentucky problems. Included are definitions of terms, explanations of comparability of 1960 and 1970 figures, suggested uses, and exemplary uses. Tables provide 1960 and 1970 figures on: Population by Age Groups; Population by Residence; Number of Persons by Racial Groupings; Educational Status; Number of Employed Civilian Persons by Industry; Number of Workers by Type of Employer, Dependency Ratio, Percentage of Females in Labor Force, and Percentage of Total Working in County of Residence; Personal Income by Source; Number of Housing Units and Occupancy; Type and Age of Housing Units; Water, Sewage, Plumbing, and Kitchen Facilities in Housing Units; Appliances and Fuel Used in Housing Units; Selected Equipment and Financial Characteristics of Housing Units; and data on: Number of Families by Ratio to Poverty Threshold and Sources of Income for Families Below Poverty Threshold, 1970; Selected Health Indicators, 1950 to 1971; Crime Indices, 1970, 1971, and 1972; Persons per Household, Number of Crowded Units, 1960 and 1970, and Number of Units with Household Head 65 or Older, 1970; Characteristics of Farm Operators and Laborers, 1959 to 1970; and Population Change, Net Migration, 1950, 1960, and 1970, and Change of Residence, 1965 to 1970. (JC)

The research reported here examines residence differences (metropolitan ghetto, non metropolitan, or rural) in characteristics purportedly associated with poverty among poor, black Americans--and particularly in family relationships and interaction. Samples, drawn from the eastern part of Texas, were restricted to families with children still in the home. Residence differences were searched for in education and occupations, aspects of family structure and interaction, interaction of the homemakers and husbands with persons and groups outside of their nuclear families, and aspirations and expectations of the black homemakers. Highlights of the findings of the study, as stated, include the following: (1) stable and healthy family relationships, as reflected by the variables of father-absence, the husband-father role in the family, family cohesiveness and marital satisfaction may be more difficult to maintain by poor blacks of metropolitan ghettos than nonmetropolitan areas; (2) future orientations appear more prohibitive of intra-generational mobility among nonmetropolitan than metropolitan poor blacks; and, (3) nonmetropolitan poor blacks might be more handicapped than metropolitan poor blacks by demands of kin relationships, larger families, the nature of their child-rearing practices, and their goals for their children. (Author/JM)

Today, there are 827,000 American Indians and Alaskan Natives in the United States. Although found throughout the U.S., nearly two-thirds live in the states of Oklahoma, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Alaska (including Eskimos and Aleuts), North Carolina, South Dakota, and Washington. While in 1930 only 10 percent of the Indians lived in urban areas, by 1970 45 percent lived in urban areas. Selected data from the 1970 U.S. Census were analyzed in this report. Detailed socioeconomic information by urban and rural residence was obtained from publications of the U.S. Census Bureau based on tabulations from the 1970 Census. Since data for Aleuts and Eskimos were not available in the 1970 Census, a data profile was derived from data on other races residing in Alaska. The analysis consisted of national and local data focusing on such population characteristics as family structure, education, employment, income, poverty, housing, sanitation, and health. Data from selected local areas were analyzed to highlight only those situations where local data varied markedly from or were otherwise notable in comparison to the national data. Problems such as rural isolation, language, self-identification, definitions of race and residence, and cultural factors which contributed to the Census undercount were discussed. (NQ)

The Ohio Instructional Grant Program is a financial aid program designed to assist low and middle income students who are enrolled for full-time undergraduate study in eligible Ohio institutions of higher education. These grants are not intended to cover all college costs nor are they intended to meet the total unmet need of participating students. Ohio Instructional Grants serve as one source of student assistance and should be combined with available funds from other financial aid programs. The major objective of the Ohio Instructional Grant Program is to assist in the elimination of the economic barrier that discourages many promising students in their plans to seek higher education. These grants are not awarded upon the basis of scholarship, as such, but upon the basis of relative financial need. Sections of this report cover the Ohio Instructional Grant Act; the purpose of the program; student profile, and student profile charts; financial profile, and financial charts and tables. Statistical tables accompany the text. (Author/PG)

The central issue of this report is the wide range of parameter estimates of labor supply responses produced by previous econometric studies based on cross sectional data. Considerable public and private debate as to how the existing welfare system should be reformed has fostered renewed study of how welfare related government policies affect people's behavior, particularly how different welfare reform proposals would alter the division of time between market work and other activities. The task undertaken here is a sensitivity analysis of the different methods and formulations by which researchers have previously estimated labor supply responses. The approach taken is a step-by-step exploration of alternative labor supply estimating equatios that attempts to identify the independent (marginal) effect of each particular change in the form of these equations. The sensitivity of response parameters to changes in the measure of market labor supply by an individual to changes in the way an individual's wage is measured, to how non-wage related income effects are estimated, and to who is included in the estimating sample is considered. By systematically exploring what difference each of these changes makes to the parameter estimates, it is possible to isolate which factors strongly affect estimated response parameters. (Author/JM)

Urban problems have been discussed for so long and with so little effect that the litany of urban crisis is now a hollow incantation. One way out is to go back to the neighborhoods and experience "urban problems" as they affect particular people and places. The author's own street-level perspective was gained in five months of field work on the Lower East Side of New York City. Today the area includes Jewish concentrations, Puerto Ricans, Blacks, some Italians, a burgeoning Chinese population, and Polish and Ukranian neighborhoods. To walk the streets of the lower East Side is to see the urban past and how it has evolved--both changing and unchanged--into the present. As a participant-observer in one urban neighborhood, the author tried to answer four different sorts of questions: (1) How did Government programs affect the neighborhood? (2) What was the impact of street-level bureaucrats' in the area? (3) How did local residents adapt to life in their neighborhood? (4) How did neighborhood organizations respond to local problems? The sidewalk observer's most important realization is that citizen resources and energies remain a powerful but still latent force at the street level and that there is little being done in City Hall to build neighborhood democracy on the foundation. (Author/JM)

This document--one of six closely related studies designed to consider employability of rural labor, the impact of industry, and social adjustments in the Mississippi Delta and the Ozarks--examines the socioeconomic factors affecting employment in industry of black Americans living in a rural area of the Mississippi Delta. Madison, Arkansas, the study community, is 25 miles west of Memphis, Tennessee, in St. Francis County. In 1970, Madison had 985 inhabitants, mainly blacks. Researchers hypothesized that the people in Madison might exhibit physical and attitudinal differences which would affect their employability and social adjustment. Also investigated was the assertion that a general "culture of poverty" exists, especially among southern blacks. Attitudinal factors affecting employability were measured on five scales by race, sex, age, income, education, and welfare status. Although black groups uniformly scored lower on a scale to measure socioeconomic status (even when balanced by income level and educational attainment), blacks did not uniformly have lower mean scores than whites on scales measuring social participation and job satisfaction potential. Nor were blacks more externally controlled or more tolerant of deviant behavior. Major physical deterrents to employment were lack of transportation and unsatisfactory work environment. (Author/JM)

This fourth report of Follow Through Classroom Observation data, collected in Spring 1973 from 37 sites representing seven sponsors who participated in the planned variation studies, focuses upon the question of whether sponsors can deliver their educational systems to diverse kinds of communities. It is a study of the effects of training classroom personnel to use specific procedures in the classroom. The procedural specifications of the sponsors include the physical arrangement of the classroom, utilization of prescribed curricula, and interactions with children. A secondary analysis examines the relationships between educational processes and child outcomes. Substantial data and detailed descriptions of the procedures implemented explain and support the results. Most first and third grade teachers conformed to instructional procedures as specified by the sponsors. Time spent in reading and math and a high rate of drill, practice, and praise contributed to higher reading and math scores. Lower absence rates, higher scores on a nonverbal problem-solving test of reasoning is attributed in part to more open and flexible instructional approaches. The seven Follow Through models considered are seen as bringing different strengths to their pupils, and each is bringing advantages not usually found in traditional classrooms. (RC)

Presented is a two-part study which represents a broadly based effort to assess the consequences of federal compensatory funds being targeted toward elementary students showing low achievement rather than only to those who were first low income and then low achieving. Part 1 deals with the technical issues of suitability, feasibility, and cost implications of the use of performance criteria. Part 2 presents the fiscal issue of resource redistribution consequences of the use of performance criteria. Included in the findings are: (1) Variations in curriculum across states and to a lesser extent, among school districts within a state, raise complex questions regarding the practicality and meaning of any national measure of educational disadvantage at a given grade level. (2) Within states, the districts with currently low concentrations of Title I eligible students would gain funds, and those with high concentrations would lose funds. (3) A formula that would allow a school district to choose either the current Title I criterion or a performance criterion to calculate its Title I entitlement would aid educationally disadvantaged children of working and middle income families while not reducing funds to the children of poverty families, calculated at a national average cost increase of 25 percent. (Author/BJG)

This report begins with a demographic profile. Among the topics discussed are marital status and h ousehold composition, female heads of household, general income analysis, the earnings gap within occupations and industries, participation of women in the labor force and characteristics of women workers over the lifespan. The report then focuses on Public Assistance: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). This section includes an overview of AFDC and Work Incentive Program (WIN). Also discussed are selected welfare problem areas and status of welfare reform legislation. The report continues with an examination of Women and Work: The Impact on Poor Women of Federal Manpower Programs. Federal Child Care Legislation: History, Status, and Prospects is the next focus of this report. The report ends with a discussion of Income Maintenance: The Elderly Poor. Topics examined here include social security, private pension plans, pension rights of spouses, and legislative reform of the private pension system. The report includes seven tables and three appendices. The first appendix includes 33 tables. Appendix 2 tabulates Aid to Families with Dependent Children: Recipients of Money Payments and Amounts of Payments, by State, December 1973. Appendix 3 is a Chronology of Selected Federal Labor Legislation. (JM)

In November 1971, the Arkansas State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights conducted a two-day open meeting in West Memphis, Arkansas, to examine the problems of black people living in the Delta region of Arkansas. More than 40 people were invited to express their views concerning the problems of black people living in the Arkansas Delta. Issues related to the political participation of blacks in local and State government were discussed, and the administration of justice as it relates to black citizens in the Delta was examined. Also discussed was the manifold economic and social welfare problems of blacks living in the region. The present document is a report of the principal findings of the open meetings and subsequent investigations. The contents of the report include an introductory section, findings and recommendations, appended communications and Arkansas statutes, and three chapters, entitled respectively: The Economic and Social Welfare Conditions of Blacks in Eastern Arkansas, Political ParticiPation of Blacks in the Arkansas Delta, and The Administration of Justice in the Arkansas Delta. (Author/JM)