"Homelessness is a transient condition for most of those afflicted, but is a continuing frustration for urban policy. This provocative volume engages public health scholars as well as planners, policy makers, and economists in linking interventions to outcomes. We are reminded again of the importance of risk, uncertainty, and savings incentives on economic outcomes-in this case, the transitions in and out of homelessness. Detailed studies of mental health treatments offered to vulnerable populations confirm their overall importance, but suggest that their effects on homelessness per se are small. Reviews of policies designed to address populations at greater risk of homelessness illustrate the tradeoff policy makers face between programs highly targeted to vulnerable populations and the moral hazard these programs encourage. How to House the Homeless offers concrete ideas to reduce the incidence of homelessness and to help in the design of more effective long-run policies."
-JOHN M. QUIGLEY, I. Donald Terner Distinguished Professor and professor of economics, University of California, Berkeley

"This is the most rigorous treatment I know of the problem of homelessness. The chapters have excellent empirical analysis leading naturally to policy implications. How to House the Homeless is particularly successful at characterizing the extent that homelessness is, per se, a housing problem."
-RICHARD GREEN, director and chair of the Lusk Center for Real Estate and professor in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development and the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California

"How to House the Homeless sharpens our thinking about how housing policy can end homelessness as we know it. Its top-flight interdisciplinary group of authors offers a fresh review of key programs and policies including Housing First, subsidized housing, and land-use regulations. It is a must read for anyone who wants to understand fundamental debates in the field, challenging us to consider why assisted housing is the answer-and why it can never be the answer."
-SANDRA NEWMAN, professor of policy studies, Johns Hopkins University

How to House the Homeless, editors Ingrid Gould Ellen and Brendan O’Flaherty propose that the answers entail rethinking how housing markets operate and developing more efficient interventions in existing service programs. The book critically reassesses where we are now, analyzes the most promising policies and programs going forward, and offers a new agenda for future research.

How to House the Homeless makes clear the inextricable link between homelessness and housing policy. Contributor Jill Khadduri reviews the current residential services system and housing subsidy programs. For the chronically homeless, she argues, a combination of assisted housing approaches can reach the greatest number of people and, specifically, an expanded Housing Choice Voucher system structured by location, income, and housing type can more efficiently reach people at-risk of becoming homeless and reduce time spent homeless. Robert Rosenheck examines the options available to homeless people with mental health problems and reviews the cost-effectiveness of five service models: system integration, supported housing, clinical case management, benefits outreach, and supported employment. He finds that only programs that subsidize housing make a noticeable dent in homelessness, and that no one program shows significant benefits in multiple domains of life.

Contributor Sam Tsemberis assesses the development and cost-effectiveness of the Housing First program, which serves mentally ill homeless people in more than four hundred cities. He asserts that the program’s high housing retention rate and general effectiveness make it a viable candidate for replication across the country. Steven Raphael makes the case for a strong link between homelessness and local housing market regulations—which affect housing affordability—and shows that the problem is more prevalent in markets with stricter zoning laws. Finally, Brendan O’Flaherty bridges the theoretical gap between the worlds of public health and housing research, evaluating the pros and cons of subsidized housing programs and the economics at work in the rental housing market and home ownership. Ultimately, he suggests, the most viable strategies will serve as safety nets—“social insurance”—to reach people who are homeless now and to prevent homelessness in the future.

It is crucial that the links between effective policy and the whole cycle of homelessness—life conditions, service systems, and housing markets—be made clear now. With a keen eye on the big picture of housing policy, How to House the Homeless shows what works and what doesn’t in reducing the numbers of homeless and reaching those most at risk.

INGRID GOULD ELLEN is professor of public policy and urban planning at the New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. 

BRENDAN O’FLAHERTY is professor of economics at Columbia University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Ingrid Gould Ellen, Jill Khadduri, Brendan O’Flaherty, Edgar O. Olsen, Stephen Raphael, Robert Rosenheck, Sam Tsemberis

"From varieties of low-wage labor market experience-far more nuanced than one might expect-to their impact on workers' children, to the publicly available and/or privately arranged support sys tems, Making It Work sews together a rich tapestry of market work, child development, and family support, concluding that low-wage employment need not be inimical to quality child development."
-CHOICE MAGAZINE

"Making It Work combines the precision of scientific experiments with the breadth of ethnographic methods to yield a penetrating picture of low-income mothers working at low-wage jobs while struggling to raise their children. Here we find the specific job-related factors, including work schedules and wage levels and changes that have impacts on both the mother's and children's well-being. The implications for public policy are enormous."
-RON HASKINS, senior fellow, Economic Studies, and codirector, Center on Children and Families, Brookings Institution

"Making It Work provides a much needed examination of the role that parents' employment plays in the developmental pathways of children in working poor households. It shows us that the working poor are a diverse group that experiences many different trajectories through the labor market, each of which imposes different pressures (and positive impacts) on kids .... This volume is an eye-open ing examination of the nexus of work and child-rearing. The careful research design, the combina tion of survey data and ethnographic observation, and the judicious treatment of the research results combine to make it required reading for anyone who is serious about the long-term prospects for the children of the poor."
-KATHERINE S. NEWMAN, Forbes '41 Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University

"In the wake of welfare reform, many low-income mothers have gone to work. Making It Work provides numerous insights, based on both quantitative and qualitative evidence, into the circumstances under which work does or does not benefit low-income mothers and their children. It suggests that with the right supports-wage supplements, child care, and reliable transportation in particular-many of these mothers can be successful with positive benefits for their children as well. What is needed is a national commitment to provide the kind of supports that these mothers had as voluntary participants in a carefully evaluated demonstration program in Milwaukee during the 1990s."
-ISABEL V. SAWHILL, senior fellow, Economic Studies, and codirector, Center on Children and Families, Brookings Institution

Low-skilled women in the 1990s took widely different paths in trying to support their children. Some held good jobs with growth potential, some cycled in and out of low-paying jobs, some worked part time, and others stayed out of the labor force entirely. Scholars have closely analyzed the economic consequences of these varied trajectories, but little research has focused on the consequences of a mother’s career path on her children’s development. Making It Work, edited by Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Thomas Weisner, and Edward Lowe, looks past the economic statistics to illustrate how different employment trajectories affect the social and emotional lives of poor women and their children.

Making It Work examines Milwaukee’s New Hope program, an experiment testing the effectiveness of an anti-poverty initiative that provided health and child care subsidies, wage supplements, and other services to full-time low-wage workers. Employing parent surveys, teacher reports, child assessment measures, ethnographic studies, and state administrative records, Making It Work provides a detailed picture of how a mother’s work trajectory affects her, her family, and her children’s school performance, social behavior, and expectations for the future. Rashmita Mistry and Edward D. Lowe find that increases in a mother’s income were linked to higher school performance in her children. Without large financial worries, mothers gained extra confidence in their ability to parent, which translated into better test scores and higher teacher appraisals for their children. JoAnn Hsueh finds that the children of women with erratic work schedules and non-standard hours—conditions endemic to the low-skilled labor market—exhibited higher levels of anxiety and depression. Conversely, Noemi Enchautegui-de-Jesus, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, and Vonnie McLoyd discover that better job quality predicted lower levels of acting-out and withdrawal among children. Perhaps most surprisingly, Anna Gassman-Pines, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, and Sandra Nay note that as wages for these workers rose, so did their marriage rates, suggesting that those worried about family values should also be concerned with alleviating poverty in America.

It is too simplistic to say that parental work is either “good” or “bad” for children. Making It Work gives a nuanced view of how job quality, flexibility, and wages are of the utmost importance for the well-being of low-income parents and children.

HIROKAZU YOSHIKAWA is professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

THOMAS S. WEISNER is professor of anthropology in the Semel Institute of the Department of Psychiatry, and in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

EDWARD D. LOWE is associate professor of Anthropology at Soka University of America.

CONTRIBUTORS: Johannes M. Bos, Faye Carter, Noemi Enchautegui-de-Jesus, Anna Gassman-Pines, Erin P. Godfrey. Eboni C. Howard, JoAnn Hsueh, Vonnie C. McLoyd, Rashmita S. Mistry, Sandra Nay, Valentina Nikuklina, Amanda L. Roy.

On Record provides descriptive accounts of record keeping in a variety of important organizations: schools, from elementary to graduate school; consumer credit agencies, general business organizations, and life insurance companies; the military and security agencies; the Census Bureau and the Social Security Administration; public welfare agencies, juvenile courts, and mental hospitals. It also examines the legal status of records. The authors pose questions such as the following: Who determines what records are kept? Who has access to the records?

STANTON WHEELER is professor of law and sociology at Yale University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Rodolfo Alvarez, Pierce Baker, Ivar Berg, Nancy Bordier, David Caplovitz, Burton R. Clark, Kai T. Erikson, Daniel E. Gilbertson, Abraham S. Goldstein, David A. Goslin, Adwin M. Lemert, Roger M. Lemert, Roger W. Little, Wilbert E. Moore, Jesse Orlansky, H. Laurence Ross, James Rule, James Salvate, Joseph Steinberg, Stanton Wheeler, Don H. Zimmerman.

Scientific progress often begins with the difficult task of preparing informed, conclusive reviews of existing research. Since the 1970s, the traditional "subjective" approach to research reviewing in the social sciences has been challenged by a statistical alternative known as meta-analysis. Meta-analysis provides a principled method of distilling reliable generalizations from previous studies on a single topic, thereby providing a quantitative and objective background for future research.

The Future of Meta-Analysis brings together expert researchers for an in-depth examination of this new methodology—not to promote a consensus view but rather to explore from several perspectives the theories, tensions, and concerns of meta-analysis, and to illustrate through concrete examples the rationale behind meta-analytic decisions.

In a meta-analysis prepared especially for this volume, a statistician and a psychologist review the existing literature on aphasia treatment. In a second study, experts analyze six still-unpublished meta-analyses sponsored by the National Institute of Education to investigate the effects of school desegregation on the academic achievement of black children. This unique case study approach provides valuable discussion of the process of meta-analysis and of the current implications of meta-analysis for policy assessment.

Prepared under the auspices of the National Research Council, The Future of Meta-Analysis presents a forum for leaders in this rapidly evolving field to discuss salient conceptual and technical issues and to offer a new theoretical framework, further methodological guidance, and statistical innovations that anticipate a future in which meta-analysis will play an even more effective and valuable role in social science research.

KENNETH W. WACHTER is professor of demography and statistics at the University of California, Berkeley.

MIRON L. STRAF is director of the Committee on National Statistics for the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.

CONTRIBUTORS: Kenneth W. Wachter, Miron L. Straf, Ingram Olkin, Larry V. Hedges, Joel B. Greenhouse, Davida Fromm, Satish Iyengar, Mary Amanda Dew, Audrey L. Holland, Robert E. Kass, Nan M. Laird, Jeffrey M. Schneider, Linda Ingram, S. James Press, Harris M. Cooper, David S. Cordray, Robert Rosenthal, Norman M. Bradburn, Fredric M. Wolf, Donald B. Rubin, and Frederick Mosteller.

"Emotions have always seemed important in decision making, but no one quite knew how. This volume now provides new explanations based on new discoveries by a new generation of affective and decision scientists. Their contributions address a key question about the role of emotion in human behavior: Do emotions help and hurt decisions? Their clear, sometimes surprising, answers greatly expand what we thought we knew about how emotions direct decisions. I recommend reading this book!"
GERALD L. CLORE, Commonwealth Professor of Psychology, University of Virginia

"The pace of research on emotion and decision making is accelerating. The editors and authors of this book have designed a new creature, the hedgefox, to provide nuanced answers to important questions about the dance of emotion and reason in decision making. Researchers in this field should definitely read Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decision Making? to see what the hedgefox has to offer."
-PAUL SLOVIC, president, Decision Research

Philosophers have long tussled over whether moral judgments are the products of logical reasoning or simply emotional reactions. From Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility to the debates of modern psychologists, the question of whether feeling or sober rationality is the better guide to decision making has been a source of controversy. In Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decision Making? Kathleen Vohs, Roy Baumeister, and George Loewenstein lead a group of prominent psychologists and economists in exploring the empirical evidence on how emotions shape judgments and choices.

Researchers on emotion and cognition have staked out many extreme positions: viewing emotions as either the driving force behind cognition or its side effect, either an impediment to sound judgment or a guide to wise decisions. The contributors to Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decision Making? provide a richer perspective, exploring the circumstances that shape whether emotions play a harmful or helpful role in decisions. Roy Baumeister, C. Nathan DeWall, and Liqing Zhang show that while an individual’s current emotional state can lead to hasty decisions and self-destructive behavior, anticipating future emotional outcomes can be a helpful guide to making sensible decisions. Eduardo Andrade and Joel Cohen find that a positive mood can negatively affect people’s willingness to act altruistically. Happy people, when made aware of risks associated with altruistic acts, become wary of jeopardizing their own well-being. Benoît Monin, David Pizarro, and Jennifer Beer find that whether emotion or reason matters more in moral evaluation depends on the specific issue in question. Individual characteristics often mediate the effect of emotions on decisions. Catherine Rawn, Nicole Mead, Peter Kerkhof, and Kathleen Vohs find that whether an individual makes a decision based on emotion depends both on the type of decision in question and the individual’s level of self-esteem. And Quinn Kennedy and Mara Mather show that the elderly are better able to regulate their emotions, having learned from experience to anticipate the emotional consequences of their behavior.

Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decision Making? represents a significant advance toward a comprehensive theory of emotions and cognition that accounts for the nuances of the mental processes involved. This landmark book will be a stimulus to scholarly debates as well as an informative guide to everyday decisions.

KATHLEEN D. VOHS is the McKnight Land-Grant Professor and assistant professor in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.

ROY F. BAUMEISTER is the Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar and professor of psychology at Florida State University.

GEORGE LOEWENSTEIN is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Christopher J. Anderson, Eduardo B. Andrade, Roy F. Baumeister, Jennifer S. Beer, Joel B. Cohen, C. Nathan DeWall, Matthew T. Gailliot, Karen Gasper, Lorenz Goette, David Huffman, Linda M. Isbell, Quinn Kennedy, Peter Kerkhof, Jonathan Levav, Debra Lieberman, George Loewenstein, Mara Mather, Nicole L. Mead, Benoît Monin, Robert Oum, David A. Pizarro, Catherine D. Rawn, Dianne M. Tice, Jennifer L. Trujillo, Kathleen D. Vohs, Piotr Winkielman, John M. Zelenski, and Liqing Zhang
 

"Trust in the Law is one of the most creative policy-relevant studies I have read. This book is replete with insightful arguments about variations in citizen responses to the criminal justice system, arguments that are theoretically derived and empirically based. Anyone concerned about effective law enforcement in the United States must read this book."
-William Julius Wilson, Harvard University

"Trust in the Law reports keystone findings in one of the most important research programs in social science in the past few decades. A landmark contribution; one that gives us genuine guidance on how to maintain the legitimacy of our institutions of social control. The societal importance of these findings is absolutely central, and surprisingly optimistic."
-John M. Darley, Princeton University

"Trust in the Law is a significant contribution to understanding why, when, and which citizens are most likely to comply with the police and the courts. The key is 'street-level bureaucrats' who are perceived as fair and trustworthy, and as treating citizens well. Tom Tyler and Yuen Huo make their case with detailed analysis of interviews that capture personal experiences among diverse ethnic groups in several cities. The result is a book that persuasively and refreshingly contradicts the rationale for current government practice. It is an important advance on Tyler's own path-breaking work on procedural justice and offers a major building block for a system of legal regulation built on an accurate human psychology."
-Margaret Levi, University of Washington

"In Trust in the Law, Yuen Huo and Tom Tyler have taken a major new step in work on psychological jurisprudence. Treating people fairly and convincing them that regulatory motives are honorable paves a path to trust in the law. Reckless resort to deterrence can rupture that path and shatter trust. These findings have profound importance for how we must change the direction of our regulatory policies."
-John Braithwaite, Chair, Regulatory Institutions Network, Australian National University

Public opinion polls suggest that American's trust in the police and courts is declining. The same polls also reveal a disturbing racial divide, with minorities expressing greater levels of distrust than whites. Practices such as racial profiling, zero-tolerance and three-strikes laws, the use of excessive force, and harsh punishments for minor drug crimes all contribute to perceptions of injustice. In Trust in the Law, psychologists Tom R. Tyler and Yuen J. Huo present a compelling argument that effective law enforcement requires the active engagement and participation of the communities it serves, and argue for a cooperative approach to law enforcement that appeals to people's sense of fair play, even if the outcomes are not always those with which they agree.

Based on a wide-ranging survey of citizens who had recent contact with the police or courts in Oakland and Los Angeles, Trust in the Law examines the sources of people's favorable and unfavorable reactions to their encounters with legal authorities. Tyler and Huo address the issue from a variety of angles: the psychology of decision acceptance, the importance of individual personal experiences, and the role of ethnic group identification. They find that people react primarily to whether or not they are treated with dignity and respect, and the degree to which they feel they have been treated fairly helps to shape their acceptance of the legal process. Their findings show significantly less willingness on the part of minority group members who feel they have been treated unfairly to trust the motives to subsequent legal decisions of law enforcement authorities.

Since most people in the study generalize from their personal experiences with individual police officers and judges, Tyler and Huo suggest that gaining maximum cooperation and consent of the public depends upon fair and transparent decision-making and treatment on the part of law enforcement officers. Tyler and Huo conclude that the best way to encourage compliance with the law is for legal authorities to implement programs that foster a sense of personal involvement and responsibility. For example, community policing programs, in which the local population is actively engaged in monitoring its own neighborhood, have been shown to be an effective tool in improving police-community relationships.

Cooperation between legal authorities and community members is a much discussed but often elusive goal. Trust in the Law shows that legal authorities can behave in ways that encourage the voluntary acceptance of their directives, while also building trust and confidence in the overall legitimacy of the police and courts.

TOM R. TYLER is professor of psychology at New York University.

YUEN J. HUO is professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust

In January 1980 a panel of distinguished social scientists and statisticians assembled at the National Academy of Sciences to begin a thorough review of the uses, reliability, and validity of surveys purporting to measure such subjective phenomena as attitudes, opinions, beliefs, and preferences. This review was prompted not only by the widespread use of survey results in both academic and non-academic settings, but also by a proliferation of apparent discrepancies in allegedly equivalent measurements and by growing public concern over the value of such measurements.

This two-volume report of the panel’s findings is certain to become one of the standard works in the field of survey measurement. Volume I summarizes the state of the art of surveying subjective phenomena, evaluates contemporary measurement programs, examines the uses and abuses of such surveys, and candidly assesses the problems affecting them. The panel also offers strategies for improving the quality and usefulness of subjective survey data. In volume II, individual panel members and other experts explore in greater depth particular theoretical and empirical topics relevant to the panel’s conclusions.

For social scientists and policymakers who conduct, analyze, and rely on surveys of the national state of mind, this comprehensive and current review will be an invaluable resource.

CHARLES F. TURNER is professor of Applied Social Research at the City University of New York.

ELIZABETH MARTIN is research associate at the National Research Council.

CONTRIBUTORS: Robert P. Abelson, Barbara A. Bailar, Marian Ballard, Theresa J. Demaio, Otis Dudley Duncan, Baruch Fischhoff, Lester R. Frankel, William H. Kruskal, Michael B. Mackuen, Catherine Marsch, Elizabeth Martin, Sara B. Nerlove, Howard Schuman, Tom W. Smith, Charles F. Turner