Research from behavioral economics suggests that relatively small burdens can have unexpectedly large effects. For example, the state of Wisconsin put in place a requirement that employed Medicaid recipients document a lack of affordable employer-based insurance. Officials expected this change to affect between 2-3 percent of applicants. It resulted instead in an enrollment drop of 20 percent for children and 17.6 percent for adults. Subsequent investigations found that the majority of those affected by the policy change were eligible.
Over the past several decades, the achievement gap between high- and low-income students has increased by about forty percent, with the economic achievement gap now larger than the black-white achievement gap. School success predicts many adult outcomes, so the economic achievement and attainment gap between high- and low-income students could lead to increasing inequalities in future outcomes like criminality, employment, income, neighborhood residence, and health. Identifying explanations for the economic gap in educational outcomes is thus important.
While the international offshoring of work in global supply chains has been the focus of much research over the last decade, its domestic counterpart has received relatively little scholarly attention. Despite evidence that substantial growth in domestic outsourcing has accompanied growth in offshore outsourcing, little is known about the extent of domestic contracting out and its implications for workers.
Books
Universal Coverage of Long-Term Care in the United States
Can We Get There from Here?
About This Book
1
Introduction
In this overview of the volume, Wolf outlines recent developments in long-term care policy and how research can help lead to a truly universal long-term care system in America.
2
Long-Term Care and Long-Term Family Caregivers: Outdated Assumptions, Future Opportunities
Blending insights from her personal life and policy analysis, Carol Levine asks: How can public policy best support long-term family care?
3
The Rise and Fall of the Class Act: What Lessons Can We Learn?
In an engaging history of the CLASS Act, Howard Gleckman examines why the landmark legislation failed and if it can be improved.
4
The CLASS Promise in the Context of American Long-Term Care Policy
Robert Hudson looks at the history of long-term care policy in America and why the issue has remained only marginally acknowledged or addressed.
5
Free Personal Care in Scotland, (Almost) 10 Years On
After reviewing recent policy shifts in the United Kingdom, David Bell and Alison Bowes describe the costs and benefits of the provision of free personal care in Scotland.
6
Population Aging and Long-Term Care: The Scandinavian Case
Svein Olav Daatland analyzes the Scandinavian approach to long-term care, with a particular emphasis on the Norwegian model.
7
Lessons on Long-Term Care from Germany and Japan
Germany and Japan have both implemented mandatory social insurance programs to help provide long-term care. Mary Jo Gibson provides an in-depth analysis, along with possible lessons for American policymakers.
8
The Long-Term Care Workforce: From Accidental to Valued Profession
In her overview of the formal, paid long-term care workforce, Robyn I. Stone discusses current challenges and potential solutions to increase supply and quality.
9
The Perverse Public and Private Finances of Long-Term Care
How do Americans pay for long-term care? Leonard Burman explains the long-term care financing system, which he calls "dysfunctional."
10
It Takes Two to Tango: A Perspective on Public and Private Coverage for Long-Term Care
David Stevenson, Marc A. Cohen, Brian Burwell and Eileen J. Tell look at the private long-term care insurance market and ask: Why don’t more Americans purchase such insurance?
11
Long-Term Care Coverage for All: Getting There from Here
Editors Nancy Folbre and Douglas Wolf conclude the volume by discussing potential pathways to more comprehensive long-term care insurance.
As millions of baby boomers retire and age in the coming years, more American families will confront difficult choices about the long-term care of their loved ones. The swelling ranks of the disabled and elderly who need such support—including home care, adult day care, or a nursing home stay—must often interact with a strained, inequitable and expensive system. How will American society and policy adapt to this demographic transition?
In Universal Coverage of Long-Term Care in the United States, editors Nancy Folbre and Douglas Wolf and an acclaimed group of care researchers offers a much-needed assessment of current U.S. long-term care policies, the problems facing more comprehensive reform, and what can be learned from other countries facing similar care demands. After the high-profile suspension of the Obama Administration’s public long-term insurance program in 2011, this volume, the Foundation’s first free e-book, includes concrete suggestions for moving policy toward a more affordable and universal long-term care coverage in America.
Contributors
David Bell is a Professor of Economics in the Stirling Management School at the University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland.
Alison Bowes is a Professor in the School of Applied Social Science at the University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland.
Leonard Burman is the Daniel P. Moynihan Professor of Public Affairs in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.
Brian Burwell is Vice President for Community Living Systems at Thomson Reuters, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Marc A. Cohen is Chief Research and Development Officer of LifePlans, Inc., in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Svein Olav Daatland is Senior Researcher at NOVA/Norwegian Social Research, in Oslo, Norway.
Nancy Folbre is a Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Mary Jo Gibson, formerly a Strategic Policy Adviser at AARP's Public Policy Institute, is a long-term care consultant.
Howard Gleckman is a Resident Fellow at The Urban Institute, where he is affiliated with both the Tax Policy Center and the Program on Retirement Policy.
Robert Hudson is Professor and Chair of Social Welfare Policy in Boston University’s School of Social Work.
Carol Levine is Director of the Families and Health Project at the United Hospital Fund, New York City.
David Stevenson is an Associate Professor of Health Policy in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.
Robyn Stone is Executive Director of the Center for Applied Research and Senior Vice President of LeadingAge in Washington, D.C.
Eileen J. Tell is Senior Vice President of Univita (formerly the Long Term Care Group, Inc.), in Natick, Massachusetts.
Douglas Wolf is the Gerald B. Cramer Professor of Aging Studies and Director of the Center for Aging and Policy Studies at Syracuse
Universal Long Term Care Fact Sheet
Author Interviews
Robyn I. Stone discusses the long-term care workforce in America, its challenges and potential reforms for improvement. Read the Interview
Carol Levine discusses her personal experience as a family caregiver, and how policy must change to better support friends and family who offer unpaid care. Read the Interview
Douglas Wolf offers an overview of Universal Coverage and outlines possible reforms to improve the provision of long-term care in America. Read the Interview
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Books
Redefining Race
Asian American Panethnicity and Shifting Ethnic Boundaries
About This Book
Winner of the 2016 American Sociological Association’s Asia and Asian America Section Book Award
“In this well written and wide ranging book, Dina Okamoto puts forward a new theory describing the relationship between race, ethnicity, and assimilation among Asian Americans. This provocative racial boundary approach to understanding the identities and the incorporation of Asian Americans is a sophisticated and welcome contribution to the field. Using the case of Asian Americans it contributes to our understanding of the concepts and changing nature of race and ethnicity in general.”
—MARY C. WATERS, M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
“Redefining Race redefines our understanding of the making of Asian America. By carefully articulating a theory of panethnicity as a process of shaping and shifting group boundaries, collecting data apposite to that theory, and designing demanding empirical tests, Okamoto expertly shows that Americans of diverse Asian backgrounds did not become panethnic overnight and ex nihilo as a passive response to state- constructed racial categories. Rather, Okamoto presents a vivid account of the accidents, opportunities, and contexts that fire up panethnic moments of collective action and douse them back into quiescence. Redefining Race is a major advancement and original contribution to the fields of immigrant incorporation, racial and ethnic formation, and Asian American studies.”
—TAEKU LEE, professor of political science and professor of law, University of California, Berkeley
“Through a sophisticated marshaling of theory and evidence from historical archives, interviews and social surveys, Dina Okamoto demonstrates how Americans of Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, and other origins created an Asian American identity and Asian American institutions in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Despite disparate languages and conflicting histories, leaders of ethnic organizations defined by their nation of origin and others would strategically organize along panethnic lines when they found common interests rather than simply respond to the wider American society’s imposition of race. Okamoto’s Redefining Race is a new benchmark for understanding the social construction of ethnicity and ethnic identity.”
—EDWARD TELLES, professor of sociology, Princeton University
In 2012, the Pew Research Center issued a report that named Asian Americans as the “highest-income, best-educated, and fastest-growing racial group in the United States.” Despite this optimistic conclusion, over thirty Asian American advocacy groups challenged the findings, noting that the term “Asian American” is complicated. It includes a wide range of ethnicities, national origins, and languages, and encompasses groups that differ greatly in their economic and social status. In Redefining Race, sociologist Dina G. Okamoto traces the complex evolution of “Asian American” as a panethnic label and identity, emphasizing how it is a deliberate social achievement negotiated by group members, rather than an organic and inevitable process.
Drawing on original research and a series of interviews, Okamoto investigates how different Asian ethnic groups created this collective identity in the wake of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Okamoto documents the social forces that encouraged the development of this panethnic identity. The racial segregation of Asians in similar occupations and industries, for example, produced a shared experience of racial discrimination, which led Asians of different national origins to develop shared interests and identities. By constructing a panethnic label and identity, ethnic group members created their own collective histories, and in the process challenged and redefined current notions of race.
The emergence of a panethnic racial identity also depended, somewhat paradoxically, on different groups organizing along distinct ethnic lines to gain recognition and rights from the larger society. According to Okamoto, ethnic organizations provided the foundation necessary to build solidarity within different Asian-origin communities. Leaders and community members who created inclusive narratives and advocated policies that benefited groups beyond their own moved their discrete ethnic organizations toward a panethnic model. For example, a number of ethnic-specific organizations in San Francisco expanded their services and programs to include other ethnic group members after their original constituencies dwindled in size or assimilated. A Laotian organization included refugees from different parts of Asia, a Japanese organization began to advocate for South Asian populations, and a Chinese organization opened its doors to Filipinos and Vietnamese. As Okamoto shows, the process of building ties between ethnic communities while also recognizing ethnic diversity is the hallmark of panethnicity.
Redefining Race is a groundbreaking analysis of the processes through which group boundaries are drawn and contested. In mapping the genesis of a panethnic Asian American identity, Okamoto illustrates the ways in which concepts of race continue to shape how ethnic and immigrant groups view themselves and organize for representation in the public arena.
DINA G. OKAMOTO is an associate professor of sociology and director of the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society at Indiana University.
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Co-funded with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Incarceration in the U.S. has long been troubling and deeply problematic in both its scope and consequences. One of the many ways this is true is in its implications for social life in poor communities and communities of color. More than 600,000 individuals are released from state or federal prison each year, with most returning to (and originating from) poor urban neighborhoods. Individuals returning to these communities after incarceration lack the human and social capital that enables a trouble-free return to society.
- November 2016: Additional funding of $34,570 awarded
Family income has a powerful effect in shaping child well-being—multiple disciplines have documented significant and positive correlations between family income and child outcomes, including various academic, behavioral, psychological, and health indicators. Despite these associations, it is unclear whether the relationships are causal because family income is endogenous to a host of difficult-to-measure parental characteristics, such as cognitive abilities, habits and values.
There have long been substantial and well-entrenched socioeconomic inequalities in educational achievement and attainment. Recent evidence suggests that class-based gaps emerge early in life and have been increasing over time. Scholars have demonstrated that class-based performance gaps are in place by the time children enter kindergarten, and that those gaps persist as children progress through the school years. Still others have shown that the class-based test score gap has increased substantially over time while the black-white test score gap has declined.
Books
Unequal Time
Gender, Class, and Family in Employment Schedules
About This Book
Winner of the 2015 Max Weber Award from the Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section of the American Sociological Association
Winner of the 2015 William T. Goode Distinguished Book Award from the Family Section of the American Sociological Association
Winner of the 2015 Distinguished Scholarly Book Award from the Labor and Labor Movements Section of the American Sociological Association
“How long is the workday, and how thick the paycheck? To these questions, scholars have offered answers. But the key questions, Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel propose in this fascinating book, are: how shielded are we from unpredictable demands? And how do we control the unpredictability we’re made to face? Comparing doctors, nurses, EMTs and nursing assistants, men and women, the authors explore the lives of the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of such control, as well as the friends, co-workers and family on whom they call to create orderly lives in an increasingly disorderly world. A thought-provoking and very important read.”
—Arlie Hochschild, professor emerita, University of California, Berkeley
“Unequal Time is a meticulously and creatively researched study of how time at home and work is understood and managed. Time is not only an individual possession, but is relational. ‘Normal unpredictability’ rules. Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel explore the gaps between the rhetoric and realities of workplace flexibility. They find that flexibility is not just a matter of choice, but power.”
—Robert Aronowitz, M.D., professor and chair, History and Sociology of Science,
University of Pennsylvania
“Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel provide a powerful account of how inequalities are at the core of many of the vexing problems of work and family. Based on in-depth multi-method research in the health care industry, and this compelling book will change the way you think about work time issues. Essential reading for scholars and practitioners alike.”
—Juliet Schor, professor of sociology, Boston College
“This book's careful research design pays enormous dividends: comparing four critical occupations in the health care sector, Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel generate important new insights into the ways class and gender inequalities interact to shape struggles for control over working time. Unequal Time demonstrates that gender and class advantage and disadvantage are deeply implicated in the dynamics of ‘work-family balance’ and ‘flexibility,’ complicating the conventional wisdom in a provocative and fruitful way. This book is indispensable for scholars, policymakers, and anyone who cares about working families.”
—Ruth Milkman, professor of sociology, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Life is routinely unpredictable. Control over one's time is a critical resource for managing that unpredictability, keeping a job, and raising a family. But the ability to control one's time, much like one's income, is determined to a significant degree by both gender and class. In Unequal Time, sociologists Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel explore the ways in which social inequalities permeate the workplace, reverberating through a web of time in which the schedules of one person shape the schedules of others in ways that exemplify and often exacerbate differences between men and women, the privileged and disadvantaged.
Unequal Time investigates the connected schedules of four health sector occupations: professional doctors and nurses, and working-class EMTs and nursing assistants. While the work-family literature mostly examines the hours people work, Clawson and Gerstel delve into the process through which schedules are set, negotiated, and contested. They show how workers in all four occupations experience the effects of schedule uncertainty but do so in distinct ways, largely shaped by the intersection of gender and class. Doctors, who are largely male and professional, have significant control over their schedules, though they often claim otherwise, and tend to work long hours because they earn respect from their peers for doing so. By contrast, nursing assistants, primarily female and working-class, work demanding hours because they face penalties for taking time off, no matter how valid the reasons. Without institutional support, they often turn to co-workers to help create more orderly lives.
Unequal Time shows that the degree of control that workers hold over their schedules can either reinforce or challenge conventional gender roles. When male doctors work overtime, they often rely on their wives and domestic workers to care for their families. Female nurses are more likely to handle the bulk of their family responsibilities, and use the control they have over their work schedules to dedicate more time to home life. Surprisingly, the authors find that in the working class occupations, workers frequently undermine traditional gender roles. Male EMTs often take significant time off for child care, and female nursing assistants sometimes choose to work more hours to provide extra financial support for their families. Employers often underscore these disparities by allowing their upper-tier workers the flexibility that enables their gender roles at home, while low-wage workers are pressured to put their jobs before any unpredictable events they might face outside of work.
We tend to consider personal and work scheduling an individual affair, but Clawson and Gerstel put forward the provocative hypothesis that time in the workplace is both collective and highly unequal. A valuable resource for workers' advocates and policymakers alike, Unequal Time illustrates how social inequalities in the workplace shape the lives of workers and their families.
DAN CLAWSON is professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
NAOMI GERSTEL is a distinguished university professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
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Books
Sesame Street Revisited
About This Book
In the course of its television lifetime, "Sesame Street" has taught alphabet-related skills to hundreds of thousands of preschool children. But the program may have attracted more of its regular viewers from relatively affluent homes in which the parents were better educated. Analyzing and reevaluating data drawn from several sources, principally the Educational Testing Service's evaluations of "Sesame Street," the authors of this book open fresh lines of inquiry into how much economically disadvantaged children learned from viewing the series for six months and into whether the program is widening the gap that separates the academic achievement of disadvantaged preschoolers from that of their more affluent counterparts. The authors define as acute dilemma currently facing educational policymakers: what positive results are achieved when a large number of children learn some skills at a younger age if this absolute increase in knowledge is associated with an increase in the difference between social groups?
THOMAS D. COOK is Joan and Sarepta Harrison Chair of Ethics and Justice and professor of sociology, psychology, and education and social policy at Northwestern University.