A series of web-based studies of the ways in which differences between the intuitive judgment of laymen and the technical rationality of public agencies can create misunderstandings that undermine public confidence in government.

Mark Lubell of Florida State University has conducted previous research demonstrating evidence of a link among trust, cooperation, and policy effectiveness in watershed management. In Lubell’s current investigation, he aims to probe deeper by asking the following questions: Does trust facilitate cooperative behavior? Is social trust between private actors more effective in producing cooperative behavior than institutional trust between private actors and the government? Does the role of trust change in different institutional contexts?

Both in research and in daily life, it is clear that individuals often favor people with whom they share an ethnic identity, and discriminate against those who are different from them. In the United States, ethnic identification is considered fairly easy because classifications generally break down on the fault lines of skin color. But differentiating between Sunnis and Shiites, between Hutus and Tutsis, and other ethnic groups, is more difficult.

Though Asian Americans are among the fastest growing immigrant groups in the United States, their political participation lags behind the community’s population growth. They therefore represent an important demographic for political parties to target in coming years. Yet their political proclivities thus far have been quite distinct from other racial and ethnic groups. In contrast to African Americans and Latinos, Asian Americans are divided on race-based policies, conservative on foreign affairs, and are less likely to hold strong party affiliations.

The 1996 federal welfare reform law left the decision about whether or not to allocate funds for immigrant health care to the individual states. In September 2004, the Massachusetts legislature approved significant cuts in immigrant health care. In response, the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA) and Health Care For All (HCFA), two civic groups, joined together to protest this action, and successfully restored benefits for thousands of state residents.

Michael Fix, Vice President and Director of Studies at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), will lead an effort to disseminate policy-relevant research on second-generation immigrants during the period of January 1, 2006 through December 31, 2006. MPI will commission a total of 14 articles on immigration, immigrant incorporation, and the second generation by RSF grant recipients and other researchers.

Although economic expansion reduced poverty in the 1990s, sustained growth among high earners also led to greater economic inequality. This increasing gap coincided with changes in government programs, increased immigration, and an aging population. To what extent do these factors explain the increasing divergence between rich and poor Americans?

With medical expenditures now totaling 15 percent of the national economy, the United States spends more on health care than any other nation, yet it lags behind other industrialized nations on many standard health indicators, such as life expectancy and infant mortality. James S. House, Robert F. Schoeni, George Kaplan, and Harold Pollack believe that this discrepancy between health spending and health outcomes may be partially explained by the health effects of non-health spending and policy.

In the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Labor conducted employer surveys that revealed shockingly high rates of non-compliance with federal minimum wage and overtime laws in several low-wage industries. In 1999, for example, only 35 percent of apparel plants in New York City were in compliance with wage and hour laws; in Chicago, only 42 percent of restaurants were fully compliant. In Los Angeles, compliant grocery stores numbered 43 percent. The causes of labor standard violations are usually attributed directly to employers’ efforts to reduce labor costs.