WELFARE Does Social Spending Deter Economic Growth?Lindert, Peter (University of California - Davis) Challenge, May/june 1996, pp. 17-23

"Through careful statistical techniques, the author finds that those countries that spend the most on social programs do not grow the slowest. Why? The author presents some intriguing answers."

NBER Working Paper No.w8904, April 2002  Xavier Sala-i-Martin http://papers.nber.org/papers/w8904

“The $1/day poverty rate has fallen from 20% to 5% over the last twenty five years. The $2/day rate has fallen from 44% to 18%. There are between 300 and 500 million less poor people in 1998 than there were in the 70s. We estimate global income inequality using seven different popular indexes: the Gini coefficient, the variance of log-income, two of Atkinson's indexes, the Mean Logarithmic Deviation, the Theil index and the coefficient of variation. All indexes show a reduction in global income inequality between 1980 and 1998. We also find that most global disparities can be accounted for by across-country, not within- country, inequalities.”

The Rural Rebound

Johnson, Kenneth M.; Beale, Calvin L. Johnson, Kenneth M.; Beale, Calvin L. Wilson Quarterly, Spring 1998, pp 16-27

"For most of the 20th century, the story of rural America was an epic of decline... Now all of this may be about to change. A variety of powerful social and economic forces appears reversing patterns that have prevailed in the United States for a century or longer. They are pushing and pulling significant numbers of Americans into the areas beyond the metropolitan fringes."

Small Is Beautiful :American Demographics, January 1998, pp 43-49

"One in 20 Americans lives in a micropolitan area. These small cities and their environs offer many of the same job opportunities, cultural activities, and other amenities that big cities do, but on a more human scale and often at a lower cost."

New Perspectives on the Standard of Living.

Steckel, Richard H. (Ohio State University) Challenge, September/October 1995, pp 12-18

"Americans had been the tallest people in the world on average for about two centuries. But in recent decades, the Dutch and people of several other nations have caught up and surpassed us. The author says that the average height has told us a lot about our living and working conditions in the past, and may be telling us something important about our declining standards over the past few decades."

Income Inequality: Are poor Americans Falling Further Behind? CQ Researcher, April 17, 1998, pp 337-359

"Last year, for the first time in almost two decades, low unemployment and increases in the minimum wage helped boost the earnings of Americans at the bottom of the pay scale. But tax policies and the use of stock options as part of corporate executives’ compensation packages are helping to divert a growing portion of the nation’s wealth to the richest Americans and away from the poor and the middle class."

The Tinkering Worked, Maybe

Stanfield, Rochelle L. Stanfield, Rochelle L. National Journal, May 2, 1998, pp 990=993

Nearly 20 months after Capitol Hill’s overhaul of public assistance programs, welfare rolls are down sharply, but uncertainties remain. For instance, though many ex-recipients are working, it’s unclear how long they’ll draw paychecks."

Thriving Locally in The Global Economy.

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, (Harvard Business School) Harvard Business Review, vol. 73, no. 5, September/October 1995, pp. 151-160

"To avoid the clash between global economic interests and local political interests, businesses must learn how to be responsive to the communities in which they operate. And communities must determine how to create a civic culture that will attract and retain footloose companies." Using economic development in the area around Spartanburg and Greenville, South Carolina, toillustrate her point, Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School, explains how the global economy can work locally as regions strive to bring local residents into the world economy.

The Truth About Social Mobility

Rose, Stephen J. (Department of Labor) Challenge, May/June 1996, pp. 4-8

" Several studies have claimed that social mobility has not changed in recent decades and job switching is no worse than it has ever been. However, the author presents hard evidence that times have worsened. By constructing a careful longitudinal study, he looks beneath the averages and finds that one out of three people made less money at the end of the 1980, than at the beginning, even if they gained years of experience at work. That performance is significantly worse than in the 1970s."

HEALTH CARE

Coverage Matters: Insurance and Health Care  Institute of Medicine Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance, report,September 2001 http://books.nap.edu/html/coverage_matters/ Jagadeesh Gokhale and Laurence J. Kotlikoff<<Is War Between Generations Inevitable?National Center for Policy Analysis, policy report, November 2001, 31p  http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st246/st246.pdf D. Mark Wilson: <Removing Social Security's Tax Cap on Wages Would Do More Harm Than Good> The Heritage Foundation, report, October 17, 2001, 17p  http://www.heritage.org/library/cda/pdf/cda_01-07.pdf SOCIAL SECURITY Social Security Reform Helps Small Business Heritage Foundation, October 2001, 11p. http://www.heritage.org/library/backgrounder/pdf/bg_1494.pdf Social Security: The Challenges of an Aging Population Congressional Budget Office, September 2001 http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=3213&sequence=0&from=7 Reinventing Retirement Income in America NCPA Policy Report No. 248, December 2001, 27p. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st248/st248.pdf Is The Stock Market Too Risky For Retirement? NCPA, Brief Analysis No. 382, December 10, 2001, 2p. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba382/ba382.pdf Undermining Social Security With Private Accounts EPI, Issue Brief, December 11, 2001, p. 6 http://www.epinet.org/Issuebriefs/ib172/ib172.pdf Two Cheers for the Commission to Strengthen Social Security Brief Analysis No. 387, December 18, 2001, NCPA. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba387/ Social Security Reform Helps Small Business Heritage Foundation, October 2001, 11p. http://www.heritage.org/library/backgrounder/pdf/bg_1494.pdf Social Security: The Challenges of an Aging Population Congressional Budget Office, September 2001 http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=3213&sequence=0&from=7 Reinventing Retirement Income in America NCPA Policy Report No. 248, December 2001, 27p. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st248/st248.pdf Is The Stock Market Too Risky For Retirement? NCPA, Brief Analysis No. 382, December 10, 2001, 2p. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba382/ba382.pdf Undermining Social Security With Private Accounts EPI, Issue Brief, December 11, 2001, p. 6 http://www.epinet.org/Issuebriefs/ib172/ib172.pdf Two Cheers for the Commission to Strengthen Social Security Brief Analysis No. 387, December 18, 2001, NCPA. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba387/

How Will Social Security Play in the 2002 Elections >The Century Foundationhow the Democrats are pushing the Social Security issue in the run-up to the 2002 elections. http://www.movingideas.org/cgi-bin/rd/epn_letter.pl?id=2137

What Works in Welfare Reform: Evidence and Lessons to Guide TANF Reauthorization

Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation This piece explains how the three key welfare policy approaches have affected poor families and government budgets. http://www.movingideas.org/cgi-bin/rd/epn_letter.pl?id=2135

School Violence : Prevalence, Fears, and PreventionRAND, December 5, 2001

http://www.rand.org/publications/IP/IP219/

The goal of this report is to describe options currently available to schools and to analyze the key components of various approaches to help determine their potential positive and negative effects in improving school safety.

THE DEVIL IN THE DEMOGRAPHICS: THE EFFECT OF YOUTH BULGES ON DOMESTIC ARMED CONFLICT, 1950-2000 Henrik Urdal.World Bank.  July 2004. [pdf format, 31 pages]