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The aim of this study is to characterise the determinants of the development of the silver economy in the field of care services provided in a residential form for dependent elderly persons in Poland. The analysis was carried out on the basis of statistical and financial background data, including those from the Ministry of Family and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Health, OECD, etc. Although the demand for care services will continue to grow in the coming years, the following barriers to the development of this segment of the silver economy can be identified: lack of employees, unattractiveness of monetary gratification, inefficient financing mechanisms, lack of public investment in the development of care facilities, and increasing costs of providing services in all forms.

Background: The Affordable Care Act (ACA), enacted in 2010, aimed to improve healthcare coverage for American citizens. This study investigates the impact of Medicaid expansion (ME) under the ACA on the racial and ethnic composition of nursing home admissions in the U.S., focusing on whether ME has led to increased representation of racial/ethnic minorities in nursing homes. Methods: A difference-in-differences estimation methodology was employed, using U.S. county-level aggregate data from 2000 to 2019. This approach accounted for multiple time periods and variations in treatment timing to analyze changes in the racial and ethnic composition of nursing home admissions post-ME. Additionally, two-way fixed effects (TWFE) regression was utilized to enhance robustness and validate the findings. Results: The analysis revealed that the racial and ethnic composition of nursing home admissions has become more homogeneous following Medicaid expansion. Specifically, there was a decline in Black residents and an increase in White residents in nursing homes. Additionally, significant differences were found when categorizing states by income inequality, and poverty rate levels. These findings remain statistically significant even after controlling for additional variables, indicating that ME influences the racial makeup of nursing home admissions. Conclusions: Medicaid expansion has not diversified nursing home demographics as hypothesized; instead, it has led to a more uniform racial composition, favoring White residents. This trend may be driven by nursing home preferences and financial incentives, which could favor residents with private insurance or higher personal funds. Mechanisms such as payment preferences and local cost variations likely contribute to these shifts, potentially disadvantaging Medicaid-reliant minority residents. These findings highlight the complex interplay between healthcare policy implementation and racial disparities in access to long-term care, suggesting a need for further research on the underlying mechanisms and implications for policy refinement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses the impact of a voucher project that targeted vulnerable and poor pregnant women in Uganda. Highly subsidised vouchers gave access to a package of safe delivery services consisting of four antenatal visits, safe delivery, one postnatal visit, the treatment and management of selected pregnancy-related medical conditions and complications, and emergency transport. Vouchers were sold during the project's operational period from 2016 to 2019. This study covers 8 out of 25 project-benefiting districts in Uganda and a total of 1,881 pregnancies, including both beneficiary and non-beneficiary mothers. Using a matching design, the results show a positive effect on the survival of new-born babies. The difference in the survival rate between the control group and the treatment group is 5.4% points, indicating that the voucher project reduced infant mortality by more than 65 per cent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the U.S., means-tested cash, in-kind assistance, and social insurance are part of a patchwork safety net, often run with substantial involvement of state and local governments. Take-up-participation among eligible persons in this system is incomplete. A large literature points to both neo-classical and behavioral science explanations for low take-up. In this paper, we explore the response of the safety net to COVID-19 using newly-collected survey data from one U.S. state-Utah. The rich Utah data ask about income and demographics as well as use of three social safety net programs which collectively provided a large share of relief spending: the Unemployment Insurance program, a social insurance program providing workers who lose their jobs with payments; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides benefit cards for purchasing unprepared food at retailers; and Economic Impact Payments, which provided relatively universal relief payments to individuals. The data do not suffice to determine eligibility for all of the programs, so we focus on participation per capita. These data also collect information on several measures of hardship and why individuals did not receive any of the 3 programs. We test for explanations that differentiate need, lack of information, transaction costs/administrative burden, stigma, and lack of eligibility. We use measures of hardship to assess targeting. We find that lack of knowledge as well as difficulty applying, and stigma in the UI program each play a role as reasons for not participating in the programs.

Rising reports of suicidal behaviors in children and adolescents have led to the recognition of a youth mental health crisis. However, reported rates can be influenced by access to screening and changes in reporting conventions, as well as by changes in social stigma. Using data on all hospital visits in New Jersey for 2008–2019, we investigate two inflection points in adolescent suicide-related visits and show that a rise in 2012 followed changes in screening recommendations, while a sharp rise in 2016–2017 followed changes in the coding of suicidal ideation. Rates of other suicidal behaviors, including self-harm, attempted suicides, and completed suicides were essentially flat over this period. These results suggest that underlying suicide-related behaviors among children, while alarmingly high, may not have risen as sharply as reported rates suggest. Hence, researchers should approach reported trends cautiously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use data from a long-running experiment in which American Indian households received income transfers from a casino, while other households did not. Using a difference-in-difference analysis, we find that the treated children had fewer depression and anxiety symptoms at age 30. In adulthood, individuals with more years of treatment exposure also had greater economic well-being around age 30. The untreated children, in adulthood, showed strong persistence in measures of mental health from adolescence through age 30, while in the treated group, children persistence was greatly attenuated. The estimated effects are slightly stronger for treated children who experienced fewer mental health symptoms before the transfers began at ages 16 and 21, but by age 30, all affected children showed reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression and improved economic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into the diverse conceptualizations of the “common good” within the economic discourse and scrutinizes their implications for European integration during the pressing COVID-19 pandemic. Employing a comprehensive literature review, policy analysis, and case study examination, it explores the manifestations of the common good in the context of European Union policies. Two key interpretations emerge from our investigation: the first presents the common good as an ultimate objective, seeking a balance between individual and collective interests achieved via adept economic governance; the second considers it a continuous process underpinned by the principles that direct the journey toward such a balance. Our findings reveal that the EU’s response to the COVID-19 crisis led to shifts in fiscal policies and innovation strategies. The research outcomes demonstrate a marked transition in the EU’s approach, with a stronger focus on social welfare, environmental sustainability, and collective well-being.

Changes in administrative structures in post-communist countries after the change of the political system resulted in the division of tasks performed by public administration. Local self-governments were established and the tasks of meeting the needs of local communities, including the housing needs, became their responsibility. The aim of this research paper is to examine whether these tasks are actually being implemented and to analyze the measures taken by municipalities in this respect. Real estate management was analyzed in terms of selling residential premises by way of tender and without a tender procedure, as well as purchasing residential premises for the implementation of the municipal tasks. The research was carried out on the example of the Municipality of Krakow in the years 2015-2022. The results of the analyses were compared with the results of the research carried out in the Municipality of Oradea in Romania. The data collected in these two municipalities in two different countries revealed completely different approaches of the local authorities to the analyzed issue. In Krakow, the local authorities have developed a long-term programme for managing the municipal housing resources, which is consistently being implemented. The local authorities in Oradea do not take any action to increase the number of available residential premises, or even to renovate them. Instead, they expect action to be taken by the National Housing Agency or private companies.

Nowadays, there is great pressure in cities on the demand and supply of food as well as environmental needs, and where Urban Agriculture emerges in various forms to confront this situation. Indeed, Urban Agriculture is a form of agriculture, highlighting its multiple functions in ensuring food security, maintaining urban ecosystem services, and improve the quality of life. Moreover, the use and transformation of abandoned areas is proving to be an appropriate way of creating new green spaces. This research article focuses on analysing the alignment between governance mechanisms, the distribution of the value created, together with the benefits derived. The comparison is based on four case studies in France, two in Paris ("La Caverne" and "Veni-Verdi") and two in Rouen ("Le Champ des Possibles" and "Le Jardin de l'Astéroïde") with different vocations (social vs economic), and which will serve as a basis for investigations into the theme of Food Governance Structures. This research work consisted of carrying out interviews with the stakeholders involved in Urban Agricultural Projects, as well as on-site visits for analysis and evaluation. An empirical analysis through the NVivo Software is used, which allowed the qualitative analysis of the data. The results show that there are similarities between the different initiatives, such as having a well-structured administrative office headed by a president, treasurer and employees. At the same time, there are a few differences in terms of the type of structure, key priorities and management structure. Indeed, three of the four initiatives evaluated aim to reach out to local residents and to understand the benefits of having agricultural spaces in our cities and to recreate this link with nature, unlike the economic initiative, which focuses more on business and commerce and less on social and educational inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the long-run effects of Head Start using large-scale, restricted administrative data. Using the county rollout of Head Start between 1965 and 1980 and age-eligibility cutoffs for school entry, we find that Head Start generated large increases in adult human capital and economic self-sufficiency, including a 0.65-year increase in schooling, a 2.7 percent increase in high school completion, an 8.5 percent increase in college enrollment, and a 39 percent increase in college completion. These estimates imply sizable, long-term returns to investments in means-tested, public preschool programs.

Governments and NGOs have invested heavily in fighting corruption by designing anti- poverty programs that maximize transparency and accountability. We analyze whether corruption is still widespread in the context of one such program, a massive make-work scheme in India where every job spell is posted publicly online. Linking millions of administrative job records to local election outcomes, we measure how many jobs they self-deal. In the year after the election, winners of close elections receive 3 times as many workdays as losers and typical villagers, a sum equal to two-thirds their official stipend. We find that corruption persists because of a gap between de jure and actual transparency. Only when citizens have tools to access information in a timely manner does corruption eventually vanish.

The gradual increase in the world population has a significant impact on businesses, productivity, and financial development in the context of rural life. As the population continues to grow, there is increasing pressure on farming systems to produce more food to meet the growing demand. In addition, the growing population can lead to an increased demand for natural resources such as water, land, and forests. This can create challenges for rural communities that depend on these resources for their livelihoods. In this study, it was determined as a problem that the financial system deepened in regions where the savings base was not large enough and the level of savings was not at the desired level. In this context, since improving the management of the rural labor structure and increasing investments in science and technology can also increase farmers’ incomes, the study aims to deepen rural financial reform and increase the efficiency of the financial system in business management. In the study, the key provinces of “The Belt and Road” (except Chongqing and Tibet) were considered as research objects and 2000-2015 annual panel data were used to analyze the threshold regression model. According to the research findings, when the threshold of financial development efficiency is variable, the growth of farmers’ incomes in general is prevented, when the scale of financial development is variable, the effect on farmers’ incomes gradually changes from negative to positive. In line with these findings, it is recommended to strengthen the quality of education of rural workers and promote the integration of urban and rural areas, increase investments in agricultural science and technology, and improve the service system of agricultural science and technology.

We identify the causal impact of quarantining welfare payments on Aboriginal children's school attendance by exploiting exogenous variation in its rollout across communities. We find that income quarantining reduced attendance by 4.7 percent on average in the first five months. Attendance eventually returned to its initial level, but never improved. The attendance penalty does not operate through changes in student enrollments, geographic mobility, or other policy initiatives. Instead, we demonstrate that financial disruption may be responsible for the temporary reduction in school attendance. Supplemental analysis suggests that the policy rollout may have increased family discord. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do early childhood investments for low-income children narrow the academic achievement gap in elementary school? I study this question in the context of Head Start by using a new variation in federal funding expansions across counties in the 1990s. Using student-level data from Texas, I find that exposure to more generous Head Start funding during childhood significantly improved test scores, particularly for low-income Hispanic students. Hispanics benefited from funding expansions through increased access to Head Start and improvements in program inputs. These advances enhanced their language proficiency and reduced the likelihood of their special education needs during elementary school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many papers use fixed effects (FE) to identify causal impacts. We document that when treatment status only varies within some FE groups (for example, families, for family fixed effects), FE can induce nonrandom selection of groups into the identifying sample. To address this, we introduce a reweighting-on-observables estimator that can help recover the average treatment effect for policy-relevant populations. We apply these insights to reexamine the long-term effects of Head Start in the PSID and the CNLSY and find that the reweighted estimates are frequently smaller than the FE estimates. This underscores concerns with the external validity of FE estimates. The tools that we propose can strengthen the validity of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to analyze the functioning and coverage of the public distribution system in rural Haryana, India.

At the beginning of this article, it was shown that the indicators of the current so-called social distance determined by decision-makers at various stages of the epidemic development are imprecise, do not sufficiently take into account spatial relations, are unclear in public perception, and do not contain specific practical solutions. Therefore, this study undertakes the task of giving the term “social distancing” precise features, defined on the basis of geometry, and providing solutions in typical cases of the living space of the population. The geometry of the distribution of people in various situations of everyday life was considered: people standing during concerts or religious ceremonies, sitting during meals in collective catering rooms and participating in lectures, cultural, entertainment or sports events. In the latter group of tasks, the concept of building a people-distribution scheme must be adapted to the existing, arbitrary grid of real places of a lecture hall, theater hall, cinema, or stadium. The article contains some practical examples with comments and an evaluation of benefits, both in terms of ensuring safety and in terms of effective use of space.

Most studies on benefit sanctions within the German welfare system rely on established datasets about welfare receipt. This paper analyzes how using a dataset from the operational system of the German Federal Employment Agency for processing welfare claims can contribute to further research on benefit sanctions. For this purpose, I use a random sample of welfare recipients with at least one sanction between 2016 and 2018. First, this allows the detailed analysis of time lags between different steps in the sanction process. Second, linking this dataset with established datasets allows the identification of imposed sanctions for which sanction periods could not be (fully) implemented. This is largely explained by individuals leaving the welfare system between sanction events and sanction periods, e.g., by taking up employment. Third, the paper shows differences in benefit cuts across subgroups. This opens up paths for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the long-run and intergenerational effects of a large-scale school building project (INPRES) that took place in Indonesia between 1974 and 1979. Specifically, we link the geographic rollout of INPRES to longitudinal data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey covering two generations. We find that individuals exposed to the program have better health later in life along multiple measures. We also find that the children of those exposed experience improved health and educational outcomes and that these effects are generally stronger for maternal exposure than paternal exposure. We find some evidence that household resources, neighborhood quality, and assortative mating may explain a portion of our results. Our findings highlight the importance of considering the long-run and multigenerational benefits when evaluating the costs and benefits of social interventions in a middle-income country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past studies consistently document that consumption among low-income households spikes after income receipt and then subsequently declines. Using two approaches to analyze linked survey and administrative data on food purchases, we find that SNAP recipients are most price-conscious and engage in their most successful price-saving efforts soon after benefit receipt. This contrasts with prior literature that posits recipients mistakenly feel "flush" with money after benefit receipt and injects forethought and savviness among SNAP recipients into the prevailing narrative that they lack self-control and capability. The frequency of benefit receipt may act as a savings commitment device that funds price-saving efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluate the impact of a reduction in the child qualifying age for the One-Parent Family Payment in Ireland. From 2012 to 2015, the child qualifying age was reduced from 18 to 7 years. Lone parents who no longer qualified for the payment, based on the age of their child, could avail of Jobseekers Transitional Payment, which involves a labour activation component. The reforms led to an increase in the average hours worked of lone parents of between 2 and 5 h per week. Lone parents impacted by the policy were 13 percentage points more likely to be working. In addition, we find an increase in household income of between 9% and 12%, and an increase of between 23% and 29% in earnings from employment. Finally, the policy was associated with a 10–14 percentage point reduction in the poverty rate of lone parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study analyses the economic and environmental performance of the 353 municipalities in the region of Campania in waste disposal and collection services. The study consists of three steps. Firstly, municipal performance in waste management services from a linear economy point view is assessed. Secondly, a circular economy paradigm is considered, and the economic (costs minimization) and environmental (unsorted waste minimization) performance is measured jointly. For these propose, two different Data Envelopment Analysis models are employed using the information provided by the Institute for Environmental Protection and Research for the year 2016. Third, in order to rank the most virtuous municipalities toward a circular economy paradigm, the study defines a measure of the efficiency deviation from environmental sustainability. The results show a cluster of municipalities in the metropolitan area of Naples and Caserta with a worse performance in the environmental dimension but with a good performance in the economic dimension. The succession of national and regional regulations has accentuated the uncertainty in the executive process and in the management of the waste cycle, creating a regulatory vacuum. Local governments should act on citizen motivations, promoting awareness on environmental issues, and should implement time-saving collection methods. Highlights: We analyse the economic and environmental performance of the 353 municipalities of the Campania region in waste disposal and collection services. Two different input-oriented models are used to analyse the input and output information provided by the Institute for Environmental Protection and Research for 2016. The analysis highlights the importance of jointly assessing the economic and environmental dimension of the production process related to the management of municipal solid waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates the impact of introducing the Maternity Capital (MC) program—a child subsidy of 250,000 Rub (7,150 euros or 10,000 USD, in 2007)—provided to mothers giving birth to/adopting a second or subsequent child since January 2007. Eligible Russian families could use this subsidy to improve family housing conditions, fund child’s education/childcare, or invest in the mother’s retirement fund. This study evaluates the impact of MC eligibility on various child health and developmental outcomes, household consumption patterns, and housing quality. Using data from the representative Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey 2010–2017, I tested regression discontinuity models and found that MC eligibility may have led to a small improvement in child health status, which could be explained by improved housing conditions, particularly in rural areas. However, children living in MC-eligible families were also more likely to report reduced socialisation. Heterogeneity analysis by child gender, household poverty status, and urban/rural residence suggests that MC incentives may have had a differential impact on some analysed outcomes. Results are robust to different polynomial and nonparametric RDD specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report results from a large-scale randomized experiment evaluating whether a supported employment rehabilitation intervention strategy can improve labor market opportunities for young adults on disability pension better than regular vocational rehabilitation. The supported employment intervention utilizes a caseworker as backup for the individual during training to reduce employers'risks when hiring an individual with unclear productivity. In total, 1,062 individuals were randomly assigned between interventions. The main results show that 18 months after the start of the project, participants with supported employment have work rates that are approximately ten percentage points higher than participants who received regular rehabilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The government often contracts with private firms to deliver in-kind safety net benefits. These public–private partnerships generate agency problems that could increase costs, but cost containment reforms may discourage firm participation. We study a 2012 reform of California's Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children that reduced the number of small vendors. We show that within-zip-code access to small vendors increases take-up among first-time and foreign-born mothers, suggesting that small vendors are distinctly effective at lowering take-up barriers among women with high program learning costs. Thus, cost containment reforms may have unintended consequences of inequitably reducing program access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of pension schemes is crucial in determining savings behavior. The impact of pension schemes on saving rates across countries remains to be an intriguing empirical question considering the complicated nature of the relationship between saving patterns and pension wealth. This paper investigates the effect of the private pension contributions on savings rates in 25 selected OECD countries between the period 2001–2019 by employing quantile regression analysis which takes the heterogeneity of the data into account and provides information about not only the midpoint but also the extreme points of the distribution. According to the results, the savings rate is negatively associated with private pensions at all quantile levels. The empirical findings indicate that pension contributions tend to be strong substitutes for voluntary savings in countries with low tendencies to save. This result is especially important for its policy design implications as the policy makers tend to provide incentives either in the form of tax reliefs or direct substitutions for private pension contributions with the motivation to raise domestic savings.

Using variation in the rollout of the Food Stamp Program (FSP), combined with criminal conviction data from North Carolina, we find that FSP availability in early childhood leads to large reductions in later criminal behavior. Each additional year of FSP availability in early childhood reduces the likelihood of a criminal conviction in young adulthood by 2.5 percent, with stronger effects for violent and felony convictions. These effects are substantially larger for nonwhites, consistent with their higher levels of FSP participation. The discounted social benefits from the FSP's later crime reduction exceed the costs of the program over this time period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Este artículo recorre los principales conceptos e hitos sobre igualdad de género y autonomía de las mujeres en la producción de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) y su vinculación con los debates y los acuerdos alcanzados en la Conferencia Regional sobre la Mujer de América Latina y el Caribe, especialmente, la Estrategia de Montevideo para la Implementación de la Agenda Regional de Género en el marco del Desarrollo Sostenible hacia 2030 (CEPAL, 2017a) y el Compromiso de Santiago (CEPAL, 2020b). Los nudos estructurales de la desigualdad de género son clave para la comprensión de este fenómeno en la región, y su análisis, central para el diseño de las políticas públicas orientadas hacia la igualdad.

We examine the effects of a quasi-experimental unconditional household income transfer on child emotional and behavioral health and personality traits. Using longitudinal data, we find that there are large beneficial effects on children's emotional and behavioral health and personality traits during adolescence. We find evidence that these effects are most pronounced for children who start out with the lowest initial endowments. The income intervention also results in improvements in parental relationships which we interpret as a potential mechanism behind our findings.

We evaluate the effect of an Austrian parental leave extension from the child's first to their second birthday on long-term child outcomes. Exploiting a sharp birthday cutoff-based discontinuity in the eligibility for extended leave, we find that longer parental leave improves on average child health outcomes, but has no effect on the child's labor market outcomes. When accounting for the counterfactual mode of care, we find significant gains in all outcomes for children for whom the reform most likely induced a replacement of informal childcare with maternal care. This highlights the importance of the counterfactual scenario in such evaluations. [End Page 1826] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately measuring government benefit receipt in household surveys is necessary when studying disadvantaged populations and welfare programs. The Food Stamp Program is especially important given its size and recent growth. To validate survey reports, we link administrative data on participation in two states to three key household surveys. We find that between 23 and 50 percent of true food stamp recipient households do not report receipt. A substantial number of true nonrecipients are also recorded as recipients. We examine reasons for these errors, including imputation, an important source of error. Error rates vary with household characteristics, implying complicated biases in multivariate analyses, such as regressions. We directly examine biases in common survey-based estimates of program receipt by comparing them to estimates from our linked data. We find that the survey estimates understate participation among single parents, nonwhites, and low-income households and also lead to errors in multiple program receipt and time and age patterns of receipt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Background & aims: Recent evidences reveal that COVID-19 will have nontrivial results on the global economies. A balanced intervention is expected from policymakers to exploit the favorable effects of strong controlling actions on the health sector versus the possible economic and social impacts of those actions. The main objective of this study is to empirically quantify the household-level impacts of COVID-19 on food security, employment and education in Ethiopia. Methods: The study employed propensity score matching and endogenous switching regression methods relying on data collected by the World Bank using high-frequency phone call between April 22 and May 13, 2020 in Ethiopia. Results: The results of the study showed that COVID-19 reduced food security while at the same time adversely affected employment and schooling. The results also showed that the impact was significantly higher in reducing household's food security more than the other considered indicators. Furthermore, the results indicated that impacts vary disproportionally by different household groups, and each restriction is not equally important in affecting welfare. Conclusion: The pandemic has affected welfares significantly, though the impact disproportionally varies among the different outcomes. It is not, however, clear how these impacts may change over time. As the pandemic is in its early stage, the condition calls for more researches to be conducted with wider datasets that can fully capture the potential and long-term impacts of the pandemic. It is also clear that these findings point the need of immediate and medium-term policy responses to the spread of the pandemic. The results suggest that ongoing and future government responses should focus on structural changes in social security by developing responsive packages to fight poverty possibly caused by the pandemics and building strong financial institutions to support the recovery of businesses in the medium term, and ensuring the resilience of food supply chains. Finally, this study also sheds light on the effects that COVID-19 has on general welfare in the short-run and points some potential areas that need extra supports.

Research purpose. The study is focused on the Covid-19 pandemic crisis in the European Union. This study investigates the current driving trends and trade-offs of the Covid-19 pandemic phenomenon and social inclusion trends in the European countries.

The school meals program is the largest nutritional assistance program for school-aged children. Whereas program eligibility historically was determined by family income, recent reforms allow schools to offer free meals to all students. This work evaluates the effect of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), the largest school-wide free meals program, on academic performance. I leverage within- and across-state variation in the timing of CEP participation and find universal free meals increases breakfast and lunch participation by 38 and 12 percent, respectively. Math performance improves in districts with baseline low free meal eligibility, particularly among racial/ethnic groups with low income-based participation rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]