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"Social scientists have repeatedly uncovered a disturbing feature of economic inequality: people with larger incomes and better education tend to lead longer, healthier lives. This pattern holds across all ages and for virtually all measures of health, apparently indicating a biological dimension of inequality. But scholars have only begun to understand the complex mechanisms that drive this disparity. How exactly do financial well-being and human physiology interact? The Biological Consequences of Socioeconomic Inequalities incorporates insights from the social and biological sciences to quantify the biology of disadvantage and to assess how poverty gets under the skin to impact health. Drawing from unusually rich datasets of biomarkers, brain scans, and socioeconomic measures, Biological Consequences of Socioeconomic Inequalities illustrates exciting new paths to understanding social inequalities in health. Barbara Wolfe, William N. Evans and Nancy Adler begin the volume with a critical evaluation of the literature on income and health, providing a lucid review of the difficulties of establishing clear causal pathways between the two variables. In their chapter, Arun S. Karlamangla, Tara L. Gruenewald, and Teresa E. Seeman outline the potential of biomarkers--such as cholesterol, heart pressure, and C-reactive protein--to assess and indicate the factors underlying health. Edith Chen, Hannah M.C. Schreier, and Meanne Chan reveal the empirical power of biomarkers by examining asthma, a condition steeply correlated with socioeconomic status. Their analysis shows how stress at the individual, family, and neighborhood levels can increase the incidence of asthma. The volume then turns to cognitive neuroscience, using biomarkers in a new way to examine the impact of poverty on brain development. Jamie Hanson, Nicole Hair, Amitabh Chandra, Ed Moss, Jay Bhattacharya, Seth D. Pollack, and Barbara Wolfe use a longitudinal Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) study of children between the ages of four and eighteen to study the link between poverty and limited cognition among children. Michelle C. Carlson, Christopher L. Seplaki, and Teresa E. Seeman also focus on brain development to examine the role of socioeconomic status in cognitive decline among older adults. Featuring insights from the biological and social sciences, Biological Consequences of Socioeconomic Inequalities will be an essential resource for scholars interested in socioeconomic disparities and the biological imprint that material deprivation leaves on the human body."--Publisher's website

AbstractThis paper compares the incentives inherent in TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), the
U.S. welfare system in place after the 1996 reforms, with those of TANF's predecessor, AFDC (Aid to
Families with Dependent Children), using the experience in one state, Wisconsin, as an example. Is the new
program successful in avoiding the "poverty trap" of the old welfare system, in which the marginal tax
rates imposed on earnings and benefits were so high that they discouraged work effort outside a narrow earnings
range?As women receiving assistance begin working more hours and earning more, income‐conditioned benefits
(Food Stamps, EITC, Medicaid, and subsidies for child care) are reduced and withdrawn, in effect
constituting a "tax" on earnings. Under TANF, there is more support for these families, at least in
Wisconsin, and so economic well‐being should be higher for most women with earning in this range than it
was under AFDC. But marginal tax rates under TANF remain high, and in some income ranges they are higher than
under AFDC.Once in the work force, former TANF recipients have earnings over the long run that expose them to very high
marginal tax rates, which decrease the benefits of working harder and make it very difficult to gain full eonomic
independence. Evidence from other sources suggest that most low‐skilled women have earnings in the same
range and so are likely to face similar reductions in benefits such as child care subsidies or the EITC as their
earnings increase, even if they are not receiving welfare‐related benefits. © 2002 by the Association
for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

The large growth in disability transfer program beneficiaries and expenditures from 1965-1978 and the sizable decrease in older male labor force participation has led to public concern about both the incentive effects of and the budgetary expenditures for these programs. The Reagan administration has discussed two paths toward reducing disability benefit expenditures: removing individuals from the rolls via administrative review and reducing the generosity of benefits. These two alternative retrenchment strategies are explored in terms of both the number of beneficiaries expected to voluntarily remove themselves from the rolls if benefits are reduced and the expected economic hardships if individuals are administratively removed. Existing econometric choice modeling underlies the estimates.

Contents -- Contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: Trends and International Comparisons -- Chapter 1. Historical and Life Course Trajectories of Nonmarital Childbearing / Lawrence L. Wu, Larry L. Bumpass, and Kelly Musick -- Chapter 2. Differences in Nonmarital Childbearing Across States / Kelleen Kaye -- Chapter 3. European Perspectives on Nonmarital Childbearing / Kathleen Kiernan -- Chapter 4. Cohabitiation and Childbearing Outside Marriage in Britain / John Ermisch -- Part II: Welfare, Child Support, and Public Policy