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Benefit-cost analyses of regulations address Kaldor-Hicks efficiency but rarely investigate the distribution of benefits and costs as experienced by low-income households. In order to fill this gap, this article assembles the available evidence to determine how regulations of the automobile industry may impact the well-being of low-income Americans. The scope of the investigation includes air pollution, safety and fuel-economy regulations. We find that performing benefit-cost analyses for low-income households is more challenging than commonly understood. Given the difficulties in completing distributional analysis with available information, the authors offer practical suggestions on how to change the federal data systems and the rulemaking process to ensure that information is collected about how future automobile regulations impact the well-being of the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work on US policymaking argues that responsiveness to public opinion is distorted by money, in that the preferences of the rich matter much more than those of lower-income Americans. A second distortion—partisan biases in responsiveness—has been less well studied and is often ignored or downplayed in the literature on affluent influence. We are the first to evaluate, in tandem, these two potential distortions in representation. We do so using 49 Senate roll-call votes from 2001 to 2015. We find that affluent influence is overstated and itself contingent on partisanship—party trumps the purse when senators have to take sides. The poor get what they want more often from Democrats. The rich get what they want more often from Republicans, but only if Republican constituents side with the rich. Thus, partisanship induces, shapes, and constrains affluent influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did personal wealth and slaveownership affect the likelihood Southerners fought for the Confederate Army in the American Civil War? On the one hand, wealthy Southerners had incentives to free-ride on poorer Southerners and avoid fighting; on the other hand, wealthy Southerners were disproportionately slaveowners, and thus had more at stake in the outcome of the war. We assemble a dataset on roughly 3.9 million free citizens in the Confederacy and show that slaveowners were more likely to fight than non-slaveowners. We then exploit a randomized land lottery held in 1832 in Georgia. Households of lottery winners owned more slaves in 1850 and were more likely to have sons who fought in the Confederate Army. We conclude that slaveownership, in contrast to some other kinds of wealth, compelled Southerners to fight despite free-rider incentives because it raised their stakes in the war's outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of the business ethics of the African-American church during and after Reconstruction reveals that it is a conflicted ethic, oscillating between two poles. The first is the sacralization of the business ethic of Booker T. Washington, in which self-help endeavors which valorize American capitalism but are preferentially oriented to the African-American community are advanced as the best and only options for economic uplift. The second is the "Blackwater" tradition, which rejects any racial discrimination and insists upon social justice. The inability of the Washingtonian business ethic to address the needs of the Black underclass are explored. A new business ethic is called for, which would be committed to meeting the basic needs of the most disadvantaged members of American society and those of the "International poor." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The objective of the present study was to test the effectiveness of financial incentives and traffic-light labels to reduce purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages in a community supermarket. Design: In this randomized controlled trial, after a 2-month baseline period (February–March 2014), in-store traffic-light labels were posted to indicate healthy (green), less healthy (yellow) or unhealthy (red) beverages. During the subsequent five months (April–August 2014), participants in the intervention arm were eligible to earn a $US 25 in-store gift card each month they refrained from purchasing red-labelled beverages. Setting: Urban supermarket in Chelsea, MA, USA, a low-income Latino community. Subjects: Participants were customers of this supermarket who had at least one child living at home. A total of 148 customers (n 77 in the intervention group and n 71 in the control group) were included in the final analyses. Results: Outcomes were monthly in-store purchases tracked using a store loyalty card and self-reported consumption of red-labelled beverages. Compared with control participants, the proportion of intervention participants who purchased any red-labelled beverages decreased by 9 % more per month (P=0·002). More intervention than control participants reduced their consumption of red-labelled beverages (−23 % v. −2 % for consuming ≥1 red beverage/week, P=0·01). Conclusions: Overall, financial incentives paired with in-store traffic-light labels modestly reduced purchase and consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages by customers of a community supermarket. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses health reform and the status of health care safety net health care providers in the wake of the enactment of the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), and it mentions health care services for low-income, uninsured, and immigrants in America. Health insurance coverage gaps in the U.S. are addressed, along with community health centers, safety net hospitals, Medicaid insurance, and access to quality health care in America.

The article discusses what the authors refer to as the role that Medicaid insurance plays in health reform in America as of 2017, and it mentions the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the efforts to close a health insurance coverage gap in the country. Medicaid eligibility and low-income adults in the U.S. are examined, along with issues involving access to health care, nonelderly uninsured individuals, and poverty in the nation.

An essay is presented about the regulation of the poor individuals in the U.S. The topics discussed include the penalties of vagrancy and beggary, the social program's expenditures, and the changes implemented in the country's labor market. Moreover, it cites the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA).

The article discusses the pending expansion of America's Medicaid medical assistance program for low-income individuals in the U.S. under the nation's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), focusing on analyses of the views of various state Medicaid officials across America regarding the ACA U.S. health insurance law. The U.S. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the opinions of Medicaid directors about primary care physician services and Medicaid cost control are examined.

In the context of population ageing and low retirement incomes, the UK government is encouraging delayed retirement. However, the OECD has argued that UK means-tested benefits disincentivise employment for the poorest, and Vickerstaff (2006b) has suggested managers have typically controlled opportunities to work beyond 65. In the US, contrastingly, benefits are meagre and difficult to access, and age discrimination legislation protects individuals from forced retirement. Would a US ‘self-reliance’ policy approach increase employment amongst the poorest over 65s in the UK and enhance or diminish their financial position? The evidence suggests that extending UK age discrimination legislation and restricting benefits would increase overall employment past 65, although not necessarily to US levels. Analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and the US Health and Retirement Study finds the poorest over 65s were more likely to work in the USA than in England in 2002. However, within the USA, employment amongst the poorest was still low, especially compared with wealthier groups; logistic regression analysis primarily attributes this to lower levels of health and education. A US policy approach would therefore most likely damage the financial position of the poorest in the UK, as increased employment would not sufficiently compensate for lost benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Throughout their histories, civil rights organizations have chosen to advocate on behalf of the poor, despite disincentives. This paper examines SNCC's and the NAACP's activities concerning the Economic Opportunity Act during the early and mid-1960s. First, I establish the level of attention SNCC and NAACP devoted to the War on Poverty. Based on analysis of the groups' archives, I find that both groups increased their attention to antipoverty policy during a period when other issues were salient to all African Americans. Second, I assess why these shifts in organizational priorities occurred. My findings indicate that competition among civil rights organizations drove the NAACP and SNCC to commit attention to antipoverty issues, and to focus attention on grassroots organizing concerning the War on Poverty. Differences in the organizations' structures mediated what form this attention would take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between welfare benefit levels and the residential choices of the poor raises two issues for federalism in the United States. Do state benefit levels affect the residential choices of the poor? Do residential choices of the poor affect the level at which a state sets its benefit levels? Empirical studies have seldom studied the interconnection between these two issues. This research estimates simultaneously the mutual effects of welfare benefits and poverty rates while controlling for other economic and political variables. When benefit levels become high, the size of the poverty population increases. Conversely, when poverty rates become high, benefit levels are cut. The findings are consistent with the claim that state-determined benefit levels distort policy and residential choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poor pay more than the non-poor for many consumer products, and this disparity seems to be ignored by such consumer protection regulation as disclosure laws. Indeed, several lines of argument suggest that the poor will not benefit from disclosure regulation either because they lack the ability to use information effectively ("market irrationality") or because they are restricted to particularly flawed markets and products ("separate markets/products") This paper examines income stratification in the used car markets in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. We found that the poor did pay more for used cars, got less redress for defects discovered after purchase, and were less satisfied and more likely to believe something was misrepresented. Differences in product quality did not account for these results because the patterns persisted even after the model, age, and price of the purchased vehicles were held constant. Further, no evidence was found for "market irrationality" among the poor. No income-differences were seen in buyers' discovery of defects before or after purchase, and low-income buyers complained at higher rates, albeit with less success, than did higher-income buyers. Furthermore, the adoption of disclosure regulation in Wisconsin did not increase or decrease price discrimination against the poor. These findings point to the need for more research on the causes of price discrimination and more attention to the problems of the poor in the design and implementation of consumer protection regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers news briefs related to social policy in the U.S. in 1989. According to data from the Low Pay Unit and the Child Poverty Action Group, the total number of people living on or below the poverty line has increased by 55% between 1979 and 1985 to 9.4 million. Meanwhile, a report from the U.S. National Audit Office has concluded that there was little evident of any improvement in the quality of service provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Social Services.

Explores the causes and effects of the American New Left's attraction for the oppressed and downtrodden. New Left versus Old Left; C. Wright Mills' derision over `labor metaphysic'; Marxism as language of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Emergence of polarized capitalism as forecasted in `The Communist Manifesto'; Effective social change versus `radical honesty.'

Berkeley, California, is a compact city of 111,268 residents, housed within 9.7 square miles, with a resulting population density of 11,471 per square mile, one of the highest in northern California. The "Flats," encompassing the western two-thirds of the city, is a low-lying area containing the city's major business and industrial areas. Here, too, live the vast majority of Berkeley's minority groups and low-income families. The "Hills," which comprises the eastern one-third, is solidly residential, predominantly Caucasian, and generally expensive. Bisecting the Hills and stretching briefly into the Flats is the University of California, Berkeley's major, landmark. Like its sister-cities of San Francisco and Oakland, Berkeley experienced a population loss in the decade 1950-60, falling 2.2% from 113,805 to 111,268. Much of this diminution was undoubtedly due to the boom of the war years which increased the population, but much can also be attributed to the general flight of Caucasians to the suburbs. By contrast, while the African American population in 1940 was 3,395, in 1950 it was 13,289 and in 1960 it was 21,850. Similarly, Berkeley's Oriental population increased from 1,895 in 1940 to 7,337 in 1960.