Federal Formula Research Articles

Effectiveness of federal incentives in shaping child support enforcement outcomes

The federal government has historically employed both incentives and threats to engage the states in partnership to advance public policy in directions that Congress, reflecting its perception of the public good, has deemed worthy. The means by which the federal government has pursued its aims have included incentives, often financial, and threats of sanctions, also frequently of an economic nature. Nowhere in the domain of social policy has the systematic application of these “carrots” and “sticks” been used to affect the dramatic changes that have been necessary to convert a heretofore private matter of family law, formerly falling indisputably within the purview of state authority, to a function whose wide-ranging parameters fall under the authority of the federal government. That this has occurred within the space of three decades stands as a remarkable achievement in the history of federal social policy-making. We have chosen to examine here the effectiveness of two important incentive strategies employed under federal direction that may have served to bring the process of child support enforcement largely under the authority of the federal government. Prior to the enactment of welfare reform legislation in 1996, federal law required that states' practices involving AFDC program benefit calculations exclude the first US$50 in parental support collected for any given recipient’s household, in any given month. These “disregards” were designed to serve as incentives to AFDC recipients to cooperate with the identification and location of the fathers of their children. During much of the history of the federal Child Support Enforcement Program, provisions have also been in place that established federal financial incentive schedules designed to encourage states to operate increasingly more efficient and effective programs. These incentive payments to states were based on federal formulas that included measures of states' cost-effectiveness in securing support payments from non-resident parents for welfare-dependent children. In a state with large AFDC populations, these federal incentive payments could amount to several million dollars a year. This study employs federal administrative data derived from states' Child Support Enforcement programs to explore the effectiveness of these two kinds of incentives in shaping program outcomes. Controlling for other substantive administrative practices, and some key state features, the authors find that these two types of incentives do appear to have had significant effects upon program achievements and outcomes, outcomes that are consistent with theory and policy intent.

The Effects of Policy on Enrollment in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children

This study’s aim is to determine effects of policy variables on enrollment in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) using a framework for the study of access. Secondary analysis of 1994 data from public documents and agencies for the 50 states was conducted. Independent variables were ratio of the federal WIC grant to the eligible population, state supplementation of WIC, administrative and food dollars per person, WIC population per clinic, and WIC priority categories served. The dependent variable was the eligible WIC population enrolled. State supplementation of the WIC budget, administrative and food dollars per person, cost of living, population density, population distribution, and ratio of the federal WIC grant to the eligible population accounted for 85% of variance in WIC enrollment. Policy recommendations include reorienting the federal funding formula toward incentives for enrollment, state supplementation of WIC, and examination of administrative and food costs.

Disproportionate Minority Confinement (DMC) of Youth: An Analysis of State and Federal Efforts to Address the Issue

Since the mid-1990s, states participating in the Federal Formula Grants Program have been required to determine whether disproportionate minority confinement (DMC) exists in secure facilities, identify the causes, and develop and implement corrective strategies. DMC, a core requirement of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, as amended, consists of four interrelated stages: identification, assessment, intervention, andmonitoring. The objective of the present research is to examine compliance with the identification and assessment stages of the DMC mandate. More specifically, the inquiry focuses on the extent of minority overrepresentation in states' juvenile justice systems and assessments of its causes. The discussion concludes with an examination of the politics and practical limitations that affect implementation of the DMC requirement.

The Revenue Consequences of Using Formula Apportionment to Calculate U.S. and Foreign-Source Income: A Firm-Level Analysis

This paper examines the 1989–1993 publicly available financial reports of 46 U.S.-based multinationals to estimate the revenue implications of implementing a U.S. federal formula apportionment system. Ignoring behavioral responses, we estimate shifting to an equal-weighted, three-factor formula would have increased their U.S. tax liabilities by 38 percent, with an 81 percent increase for oil and gas firms. We find the firms report a lower percentage of their worldwide profits as American profits than their American share of assets, sales, or payroll. The results may be attributed to more profitable foreign operations, tax-motivated income shifting, or measurement error.

Developmental Learning Disorders: Clues to Their Diagnosis and Management

Introduction The observant physician can make a truly life-enhancing difference with the timely diagnosis of a learning disorder. Approximately 6% to 7% of all school-aged children are identified as "learning disabled" and receive special educational services. In the 1992 to 1993 school year, 4,633,674 students ages 6 to 21 years received services under Federal formula grant programs. In medical settings, roughly twice as many boys as girls are diagnosed formally, a ratio that most likely is biased by the different phenotypes of learning problems among boys and girls. High-profile disorders that cause disruption in classroom and family functioning are the earliest to be identified and often are referred for help as early as the preschool years. More subtle or nearly "invisible" disorders (such as isolated attention deficit without hyperactivity) are masked by unexceptional or even "good" (passive) behavior and can persist undetected into adulthood, becoming symptomatic in college or graduate school. Long-term follow-up studies and evaluations of the parents of children who have learning disorders have taught two lessons: 1) learning disorders are not "outgrown" and 2) they can be extremely subtle and well hidden, especially among adolescents, who are more likely able to compensate (albeit at a price) through most of their formal schooling.

Developmental learning disorders: clues to their diagnosis and management.

Introduction The observant physician can make a truly life-enhancing difference with the timely diagnosis of a disorder. Approximately 6% to 7% of all school-aged children are identified as learning disabled and receive special educational services. In the 1992 to 1993 school year, 4,633,674 students ages 6 to 21 years received services under Federal formula grant programs. In medical settings, roughly twice as many boys as girls are diagnosed formally, a ratio that most likely is biased by the different phenotypes of problems among boys and girls. High-profile disorders that cause disruption in classroom and family functioning are the earliest to be identified and often are referred for help as early as the preschool years. More subtle or nearly invisible disorders (such as isolated attention deficit without hyperactivity) are masked by unexceptional or even good (passive) behavior and can persist undetected into adulthood, becoming symptomatic in college or graduate school. Long-term follow-up studies and evaluations of the parents of children who have disorders have taught two lessons: 1) disorders are not outgrown and 2) they can be extremely subtle and well hidden, especially among adolescents, who are more likely able to compensate (albeit at a price) through most of their formal schooling.

The Intended Relationship Between Federal Operating Subsidy and Cost

There are many studies, including those of J. Pucher et al. and S. C. Anderson, that found higher costs to be associated with transit operating subsidies. However, none of them investigated the effect of state and local federal subsidy formulas on cost efficiency of transit operations. In this article, the subsidy-cost relationship is derived by using the federal operating subsidy formula directly within the transit firm's optimizing framework, and the resulting system of equations is estimated. Our results demonstrate that there exists a positive cost-subsidy relationship that conforms with the previous studies and that the formula results in very little capital bias.

Is College Financial Aid Equitable and Efficient?

Two families with identical earnings paths pay dramatically different amounts for college if one saves more than the other. Because saving leads to receiving less financial aid, a family's return to saving is substantially below the social return. This may lead to families making inefficient intertemporal choices and correspondingly to an inefficient loss of capital formation. This paper first explores the size of the implicit tax on savings, pointing out its potential effects, and its accompanying problems of inefficiency and unfairness. To cure these ills, I will argue that financial aid for dependent students should be based upon the best available measure of parents' permanent income from long streams of wage data. This would require Congress to change the Congressional Methodology, the federal formula for determining a family's financial need.

The Federal Formula and the Collapse of the USSR

The Federal Formula and the Collapse of the USSR

The Federal Formula and the Collapse of the USSR

A plan for the most ambitious political reform in Soviet history was approved by the USSR's parliament in late 198& As the reform unfolded, key component came to be what Mikhail S. Gorbachev called a renewedfederal structure. Reform proponents argued that only renewedfederalism could provide for the continued integrity of the Soviet state while assuring greater responsiveness to local demands. However, the attempt to breathe life into the USSR's pseudo-federal structure unleashed longsuppressed nationalist, territorial, and localist sentiments. Beginning in 1990, refederalization passed from mainly rhetorical discussion to plan for more loosely organized federation under the auspices ofa Union Treaty. Following the attempted coup d'6tat by Kremlin hard-liners in August 1991, pressures for decentralization led, in the closing weeks of 1991, to the complete abandonment of the Great Soviet experiment. With the demise of the USSR, the plan forfederal redesign was superseded by the rapid emergence of independent states.

Joint and Several Liability for Generators under Superfund: A Federal Formula for Cost Recovery

Joint and Several Liability for Generators under Superfund: A Federal Formula for Cost Recovery

The effects of grants-in-aid on state and local expenditures: The case of AFDC

This paper develops econometric methods to estimate the effect of the piecewise-linear budget constraints created by grant formulas in which the subsidy rate is not constant over expenditures (e.g. closed-end grants). The methods are applied to the AFDC program. The results show that, because of the kinked nature of the grant formula, (1) the present federal formula actually increases cross-state inequality in AFDC benefits, (2) several subsidy rates in the formula actually reduce benefits, and (3) the so-called ‘flypaper’ effect disappears.

Results of the 1980 US Census Challenged

In the United States, population policymaking has often taken place in the courtroom-viz court decisions on abortion, contraception, immigration. Whatever the outcome, such a process necessarily entails policy formulation on the basis of legal merits as opposed to technological, medical, or other scientific considerations. A current example of such policymaking in process is provided by litigation between the US Bureau of the Census and several state and city governments over the validity of the 1980 US census results as a basis for apportionment of political representation and for federal funding formulas. That the 1980 census produced a nonrandom undercount is undisputed. An extensive evaluation of the size and sources of underenumeration in the decennial census of the United States, undertaken by the Census Bureau in the 1970s, led to the conclusion that the 1970 census undercounted the national population by 2.5 percent. More detailed analysis revealed, not surprisingly, that the undercount varied greatly by social stratum and by race. It was 7.7 percent for blacks and 1.9 percent for whites. Further studies highlighted additional correlates of undercount by age, education, employment status, region of the country, and rural/urban residence. Although the Census Bureau took a number of steps (including a National Academy of Sciences study of the 1970 undercount and a second study of plans for the 1980 census) to minimize the undercount problem, its position with respect to the 1980 census is that no statistically defensible method is available to adjust the reported census count and, thus, the reported count should continue to be used for apportionment and federal disbursement formulas. As has happened in numerous other countries in the past, however, the undercount issue came to take on a life of its own as a political issue. Ethnic groups with a high undercount, most notably blacks and Hispanics, and various states and localities that had high minority concentrations and that were losing population began to call for remedies to the undercount. Even before the 1980 census results were in hand, a number of localities (about 15 by the end of 1980), including the State and City of

Ethnic Conflict and the Federalization of Socialist Yugoslavia: The Serbo-Croat Conflict<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn1">*</xref>

During the course of fighting a guerilla war against foreign occupiers while at the same time waging a social revolution, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia adopted a federal formula for the organization of the state over which they were confident they would rule in the post-war period. Federalization based on the Soviet model was the Party's response to the manifest ethnic problems of the interwar Kingdom, and a reflection of the evolving patterns of relationships within the Partisan/Party organization. The post-war federal union consisted of six Socialist Republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Hercegovina (a single republic), Montenegro, and Macedonia. The Serbian republic was further divided into Serbia proper (a largely ethnically homogeneous area) and two autonomous provincesVojvodina (a polyethnic area with a large Hungarian minority in addition to its Serbian and Croatian population), and KosovoMetohija (an area bordering on Albania, with a large Albanian minority). Serbs also made up a significant portion of the populations of Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and of Macedonia. The creation of a Montenegrin republic separate from the republic of Serbia reflected the historically separate-but not ethnically distinct-development of Serbs and Montenegrins. Thus, the federal formula was applied in such a way as to divide the large Serbian

Konfederale assosiasie van state of federasie as staatkundige toekomsbedeling in Suid(er)‐Afrika: teoretiese perspektiewe vir die Suid‐Afrikaanse party‐politiek

Abstract Although federal forms of government have become particularly popular in the past century and a half, the federal political systems which have developed since the Second World War, particularly in the developing countries, have shown little stability and functionality. In most cases federation has been little more than a transitionary phase to a unitary structure. The constitutional guarantees upon which federal structures were based, have thus often been of only secondary importance. This article attempts to isolate a precis of the theory underlying confederal associations of states and federal forms of government; to elucidate the policy standpoints of the most important South African political parties in this respect, including opinions expressed in reports in the South African press and enunciated by Black Homeland leaders; and finally to make an evaluation of the applicability of a federal formula in the plural South African context. It is argued that federation, calculated to reconcile unit...