Impact Statements Research Articles

Application of AIS data in service vessel activity description in the Gulf of Mexico

Offshore exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is supported by a large number of service vessels characterized by complex logistical patterns, a large number of shorebases and demand points across an expansive geographic area, and dynamic time-varying activities. No quantitative data is available on the spatial and temporal distributions of service vessel activity in the GOM, and therefore environmental impacts from offshore leasing plans cannot be distinguished. It is this ‘information gap’ in support of Environmental Impact Statements that is the motivation for this analysis. Automatic Identification System data is used in a proof-of-concept to evaluate offshore service vessel activity in the GOM during June 2009. Vessel events are identified and aggregated by port, area block, vessel type and event class. In total, 46 276 arrivals and departures between onshore and offshore locations in the GOM were recorded. Vessel movements between ports were the most active and a large portion of these events are attributed to towing vessels and tug boats. Offshore support vessels and crewboats recorded the most vessel events in offshore areas. A summary of the empirical results are presented along with the key aspects of data processing, evaluation challenges and limitations of analysis.

Statistics of Extremes in Oil Spill Risk Analysis

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DWH) in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico is the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. After DWH, key questions were asked: What is the likelihood that a similar catastrophic oil spill (with a volume over 1 million barrels) will happen again? Is DWH an extreme event or will it happen frequently in the future? The extreme value theory (EVT) has been widely used in studying rare events, including damage from hurricanes, stock market crashes, insurance claims, flooding, and earthquakes. In this paper, the EVT is applied to analyze oil spills in the U.S. outer continental shelf (OCS). Incorporating the 49 years (1964-2012) of OCS oil spill data, the EVT is capable of describing the oil spills reasonably well. The return period of a catastrophic oil spill in OCS areas is estimated to be 165 years, with a 95% confidence interval between 41 years and more than 500 years. Sensitivity tests indicate that the EVT results are relatively stable. The results of this study are very useful for oil spill risk assessment, contingency planning, and environmental impact statements on oil exploration, development, and production.

Acting with No Regret: A Twenty-Five Year Retrospective of Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Defense Council

In Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Defense Council, 490 U.S. 360, 371 (1989), the Supreme Court held that the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) requires agencies to supplement environmental impact statements (EIS) upon discovering “new and significant” information. In the 25 years since Marsh, courts have often considered whether an agency should be enjoined from acting because its EIS does not adequately consider new and significant information. But, because “new and significant” information is not precisely defined, and because the circuit courts of appeals are split on how to review supplementation claims, NEPA practitioners face considerable uncertainty about when supplementation is required. This article provides NEPA practitioners with a roadmap for supplementation by (1) reviewing cases to determine what information is actually “new and significant” in practice and (2) examining what procedural steps an agency should take to evaluate new information. Generally, this article concludes that new information showing a previously-unconsidered but severe environmental impact will be significant but information that is similar to that previously considered, is vague or speculative, does not undermine important assumptions in the EIS, challenges common sense, or will be considered in future environmental reviews is not significant. And when considering new information, agencies should document their review, consult with established experts, directly respond to the new information, seek public input, and hire outside experts, when necessary. Armed with this roadmap, NEPA practitioners can better define, examine, and address information and its significance. With a better understanding of what information is significant, NEPA practitioners can comply with NEPA and Marsh and act with no regret.

Road ecology in environmental impact assessment

Transport infrastructure has a wide array of effects on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and road and railway networks are increasingly being associated with a loss of biodiversity worldwide. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) are two legal frameworks that concern physical planning, with the potential to identify, predict, mitigate and/or compensate transport infrastructure effects with negative impacts on biodiversity. The aim of this study was to review the treatment of ecological impacts in environmental assessment of transport infrastructure plans and projects. A literature review on the topic of EIA, SEA, biodiversity and transport infrastructure was conducted, and 17 problem categories on the treatment of biodiversity were formulated by means of a content analysis. A review of environmental impact statements and environmental reports (EIS/ER) produced between 2005 and 2013 in Sweden and the UK was then conducted using the list of problems as a checklist. The results show that the treatment of ecological impacts has improved substantially over the years, but that some impacts remain problematic; the treatment of fragmentation, the absence of quantitative analysis and that the impact assessment study area was in general delimited without consideration for the scales of ecological processes. Actions to improve the treatment of ecological impacts could include improved guidelines for spatial and temporal delimitation, and the establishment of a quantitative framework including tools, methods and threshold values. Additionally, capacity building and further method development of EIA and SEA friendly spatial ecological models can aid in clarifying the costs as well as the benefits in development/biodiversity tradeoffs.

Lifecycle costing sensitivities for zero energy housing in Melbourne, Australia

• Examined assumptions applied to lifecycle costing of zero energy housing scenarios. • Case study of housing in Victoria, Australia. • Changes to key assumptions have a significant impact on lifecycle cost outcomes. • The use of conservative or historical data is problematic for policy development. • Need to review assumptions applied by policy-makers regarding housing performance. Minimum energy efficiency standards for new housing are typically informed by regulatory impact statements, underpinned by lifecycle costing (LCC) analysis. While LCC techniques are empirical and testable, such analysis is informed by considerable assumptions on key parameters. These assumptions are often heavily contested in the literature and by built environment stakeholders, but there is limited exploration of their implications within wider policy developments. This paper addresses this gap by analysing the impact of a number of assumptions and their implications within a LCC analysis of zero energy housing options in Victoria, Australia. The results show that changes to assumptions on key parameters have significant impact on LCC outcomes, with associated policy implications. Analysis shows that there is a requirement for a detailed review and debate of the assumptions applied within LCC analysis which is used to inform the development of minimum energy efficiency standards in Australia and internationally. In particular, as housing is a long-lived infrastructure, the issue regarding the use of assumptions based upon historical data or data based upon future predictions is critical to the development of policy and energy efficiency standards.

Why the Impact? Negative Affective Change as a Mediator of the Effects of Victim Impact Statements

Victim impact statements (VISs) represent a contentious legal and psychological point of debate. Current knowledge concerning the influence of VISs on jurors' emotional states and views of offenders is unclear. Using a sexual assault case, the present study attempted to disentangle these points of debate in the body of existing literature by (a) examining the direct influences of the presence of a VIS and juror Need for Affect (NFA) on sentencing recommendations, (b) assessing overall negative affective change as a mediating mechanism of these predictors, and (c) if mediation was present, identifying specific negative emotions that explain the effects of negative affective change. Results showed that presence of a VIS and a greater proclivity to approach emotions were associated with significantly greater sentencing recommendations. Moreover, change in negative affect mediated the effects of NFA approach and VIS exposure. Examination of changes in specific negative emotions revealed that increases in being upset and nervous mediated the impact of VIS condition; in addition, increases in hostility mediated the effect of NFA approach. Results are discussed with regard to emotion-based decision making of potential jurors, applications to trial process, and future research in the area.

GENII-LIN project: A multipurpose health physics code to estimate radiation dose and risk from environment contamination

GENII-LIN1 is an open source radiation protection environmental code with capabilities for calculating radiation dose and risk to individuals or populations from radionuclides released to the environment and from pre-existing environmental contamination. The code can be used for purposes such as siting facilities, environmental impact statements, and safety analysis reports. The code can handle exposure pathways that include: external exposure from finite or infinite atmospheric plumes; inhalation; external exposure from contaminated soil, sediments, and water; external exposure from special geometries; and internal exposures from consumption of terrestrial foods, aquatic foods, drinking water, animal products, and inadvertent intake of soil. The flexible modular structure and the strictly object oriented software design simplify code improvement and patching: other modules can be added and the present ones updated, with minimal effort.

Environmental Reviews and Case Studies: Reasonably Foreseeable Futures: Climate Change Adaptation and the National Environmental Policy Act

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) clearly has a role to play in how projects with a federal nexus prepare for climate change. To help agencies improve their consideration of climate change, the Council on Environmental Quality in February 2010 released the NEPA draft guidance, which addresses both emissions and the effects of climate change on agency actions and the affected environment. We analyzed every available final environmental impact statement (154 total) released in July 2011–April 2012, and found that very few incorporated the climate adaptation elements of the 2010 draft guidance. Even the environmental impact statements with the most attention to climate change adaptation considered the effect of climate change with respect to only a limited number of the elements of the affected environment, failed to fully compare the various alternatives, or used short,qualitative statements rather than full analysis based on the best available science. We explore the possible reasons for this and present recommendations for overcoming these obstacles.Environmental Practice 16: 52–76 (2014)

Regulating Mass Surveillance as Privacy Pollution: Learning from Environmental Impact Statements

US law has remarkably little to say about mass surveillance in public, a failure which has allowed the surveillance to grow at an alarming rate -- a rate that is only set to increase. This article proposes 'Privacy Impact Notices' (PINS) -- modeled on Environmental Impact Statements -- as an initial solution to this problem.Data collection in public (and in the home via public spaces) resembles an externality imposed on the person whose privacy is reduced involuntarily; it can also be seen as a market failure caused by an information asymmetry. Current doctrinal legal tools available to respond to the deployment of mass surveillance technologies are limited and inadequate. The article proposes that -- as a first step towards figuring out how to understand, value, and ultimately regulate this mass-privacy-destroying behavior -- we should borrow from the environmental movement and require anyone planning a large-scale public data collection program to file a Privacy Impact Notice (PIN). The PIN proposal is contrasted to the existing much more limited federal privacy analysis requirement, known as Privacy Impact Assessments. The bulk of the article then explains how PINs would work and defends the idea against three predictable critiques (the claim that there is a First Amendment right to data collection, the claim that EISs are a poor policy tool not worthy of emulation, and the claim that notice-based regimes are in general worthless). It argues that PINs have applications to surveillance and data-collection in online public spaces such as Facebook, Twitter, and other virtual spaces. It also considers what the PINs proposal would have to offer towards addressing the now-notorious problem of the NSA’s drift-net surveillance of telephone conversations, emails, and web-based communications. Modeling mass surveillance disclosure regulations on an updated form of environmental impact statement will help protect everyone’s privacy: Mandating disclosure and impact analysis by those proposing to watch us in and through public spaces will enable an informed conversation about privacy in public. Additionally, the need to build consideration of the consequences of surveillance into project planning, as well as the danger of bad publicity arising from excessive surveillance proposals, will act as a counterweight to the adoption of mass data collection projects, just as it did in the environmental context. In the long run, well-crafted disclosure and analysis rules could pave the way for more systematic protection for privacy -- as it did in the environmental context. Effective US regulation of mass surveillance will require that we know a great deal about who and what is being recorded and about the costs and benefits of personal information acquisition and uses. At present we know relatively little about how to measure these; a privacy equivalent of environmental impact statements will not only provide case studies, but occasions to grow expertise.

The Role of Emotion and Cognition in Juror Perceptions of Victim Impact Statements

Recent legislation has contributed to an increasing number of victims participating in the trial process by way of providing victim impact statements (VISs). The present study evaluated jurors’ perceptions of VISs in a jury-eligible sample. Participants were 402 jury-eligible community members in the southwestern United States. Using a vignette-based method, VIS presence and content (i.e., Victim Harm versus Victim Emotion information) were examined for their influence on sentencing decisions and blame attribution. Individual differences of need for affect (NFA) and need for cognition (NFC) were featured as moderators of these relations. Notable results included significantly lengthier sentencing recommendations and decreased levels of victim blame in the presence of a VIS, regardless of content. In addition, juror NFC was significantly positively associated with perpetrator blame, while NFA moderated the relation between VIS content and sentencing length. The presence of a VIS impacted blame and sentencing, although jury panel member individual differences moderated such effects. Implications for victim rights policy, trial consultation, and social–emotional theory are discussed.

Health Impact Assessment, Physical Activity and Federal Lands Trail Policy.

The objectives of this paper are to describe the application of Health Impact Assessment (HIA) to inform trail decisions affecting a rural, under-resourced community and propose the routine integration of HIAs to enhance NEPA environmental assessments and environmental impact statements for trail decisions on federal lands. Screening, scoping, assessment, recommendations, reporting, monitoring and evaluation are being used to examine the health impact of trail location and design. HIA recommendations are being integrated into the public lands National Environmental Protection Act process for planning access to a new segment of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. Potential users from a nearby rural New Mexico community and a region of almost one million may benefit from this HIA-informed planning. HIA can be integrated into the policy and decision-making process for trails on public lands.

Acting with No Regret: A Twenty-Five Year Retrospective of <em>Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Defense Council</em>

I. INTRODUCTION II. BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY OF MARSH A. Duty to Prepare an EIS: A Requirement B. Duty to Prepare a Supplemental EIS: The Marsh Legacy C. A Closer at Marsh: A Dam and Two Documents III. APPLICATION OF MARSH IN THE U.S. COURTS OF APPEALS--WHAT KINDS OF NEW INFORMATION DO COURTS FIND (AND NOT FIND) SIGNIFICANT? A. Hold the Phone! Supplementation (or at least more review) is Required B. Nothing to Supplement Here 1. Information Previously Considered 2. Speculative Environmental Impacts 3. Information does not Undermine Assumptions in EIS 4. Common Sense 5. Impacts will Ultimately be Studied Elsewhere 6. Summary IV. THE MARSH TWO-STEP? A. The Basis for the Two-Step Review in Marsh B. Whether the Two-Step Marsh Test Undermines NEPA's Rule of Reason C. Application of the Hard Look Principle Going Forward D. Steps to Minimize Legal Risk 1. Marsh: the Paradigmatic Hard Look 2. Hughes River Watershed--an Incomplete Review 3. The Importance of Public Involvement 4. Pragmatic Approaches to New Information 5. Choreographing the Marsh Two-Step (and One-Step) V. CONCLUSION NEPA ensures that the agency will not act on incomplete information, only to regret its decision after it is too late to correct. *** I. INTRODUCTION We live in a world of information overload. Smartphones, Facebook, Twitter, and email alert us to breaking news instantaneously. Almost before we process new information, another sensational story takes center stage: the latest political scandal, mass shooting, plane crash, superstorm, kidnapping, or act of war or terror. How do we react to this ever-evolving information? Some people cancel travel plans, remove children from public school, or buy security systems or weapons. others move on with their day and barely bat an eye as they process all of this new and seemingly information. For federal agencies preparing environmental impact statements (EIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the answer appears clear. Twenty-five years ago in Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Defense Council, (1) the Supreme Court held that an agency must supplement its EIS before taking federal action if it discovers new and information. (2) But what is significant? One might assume that it would be shocking events, like terrorism, nuclear accidents, and environmental disasters. However, as discussed below, courts rarely consider this type of information significant. Instead, it is the agency's response to new information that frequently proves decisive. Given the prevalence and importance of this issue, Marsh has often been cited over the past twenty-five years. (3) As major federal actions regularly take years to complete--occasionally years more than anticipated--agencies routinely confront the question of whether the analysis in an aged EIS is still legally sufficient, or whether the issuing agency must update or supplement it with new information. (4) Unfortunately, a review of scholarly articles and case law reveals that this question has not been treated with the care it deserves. Few academic articles seriously discuss the problem of supplementation. (5) Worse, most reviewing courts routinely provide a cursory recitation of Marsh boilerplate and then leap to a conclusion of whether an agency acted correctly. (6) In honor of Marshs twenty-fifth anniversary, this article takes a fresh look at this Supreme Court decision and the Federal courts' subsequent reactions to it. First, we examine what actually constitutes new and information under Marsh. While courts do not crisply define significant, (7) a review of the courts' approaches to the problem may help determine what information is actually significant in practice. Second, we examine what procedural steps an agency must take to determine whether new information actually meets the significant standard. …

Engaging Communities for Success: social impact assessment and social licence to operate at Northparkes Mines, NSW

ABSTRACTSocial issues are critical to the mining industry. This study investigates how social issues have been, and are being, assessed and managed within this industry through a case study of Northparkes Mines in central west New South Wales (NSW). The research involved 29 interviews with mining executives, environmental consultants and citizens of Parkes, plus a document analysis of four environmental impact statements prepared between 1990 and 2012. Where appropriate, findings were extrapolated to the wider mining industry. The standard for social impact assessment in NSW and emerging industry guidelines on social responsibility were analysed against internationally accepted good practice. Interviews indicated greater potential to recognise the social impacts of mining in NSW and identified good practice impact assessment as only one component of a successful community engagement strategy. Complementary strategies are essential to extend the benefits of development to local communities and for companies to establish a ‘social licence to operate’. The successful approach taken by Northparkes Mines combined good practice impact assessment with a localised workforce, an integrated management team and context-specific community engagement practices. This study highlights that local communities can be empowered through development, that benefits can extend to both the community and the business and that the ongoing management of social issues will increasingly be critical to the success of the mining industry.

Residents' Perceptions of the Inaugural Youth Olympic Games 2010: A Cluster Analysis

The inaugural Youth Olympic Games 2010 was one of the major sporting events held in Singapore. It brought together 3,600 young athletes from 295 countries to compete in 26 sport events. Conducted during the Games, this study sought to evaluate the impact of the Games on local residents by using a total of 34 impact statement items. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to categorize the impact statements under a smaller number of meaningful factors. Specifically, the impact statement items related to the positive impact were categorized under the following three factors: Long-Term Social Benefits to Singapore, Tourism Benefits, and Economic Benefits. The impact statements pertaining to the negative impact were placed under the following three factors: Quality of Life, Social Behavior, and Preparation for the Games. A cluster analysis was also performed: there were three clusters of residents—Enthusiasts, Enthusiasts With Reservations, and Skeptics. In general, residents were supportive of the Games and perceived the Games to have a positive impact on the country. But there are negative perceptions of the Games too, such as its negative impact on the environment, the inconveniences created, and the disruptiveness to their lives.

Victim Impact Statements, New Media Technologies, and the Classical Rhetoric of Sincerity

Long a concern for their interjection of emotional appeals into the sentencing process, victim impact statements (VISs) have recently become even more worrisome to some critics, who see in the growing availability of sophisticated video-editing technology the capacity for even unskilled users to construct testimony in ways that corrupt rather than enable reasoned judgment. Drawing upon a combined analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court case Kelly v. California and classical rhetorical theory, I argue by contrast that, especially in death penalty cases, a jury’s demand for authenticity in performance mitigates the potential impact of such technology precisely because the cultural construction of emotive authenticity requires an outpouring of feeling whose very lack of control testifies to its genuineness. As an artistic and compositional techne, the capacity of new media technologies to evoke, seemingly effortlessly, complex representations of emotional states thus contains within itself a fundamental limitation on its power. Recognizing the importance of authenticity and sincerity also reveals a key element of why the introduction of a VIS remains an attractive option for the prosecution, for in allowing the introduction of a VIS the state secures for itself a rhetoric of sincerity that as an institution it could not otherwise hope to wield.

Victim Lawyers, Victim Advocates, and the Adversarial Criminal Trial

Adversarial proceedings in common law jurisdictions tend to exclude the victim of crime. Although victim impact statements provide some role for victims following conviction but before sentencing, such statements may not influence the actual sentencing outcome, despite allowing for a therapeutic experience that may encourage the restoration of the victim. The introduction of victim lawyers across certain common law jurisdictions, including England and Wales, the United States and Australia, allows victims to retain private counsel to represent their interests alongside those of the state, from pretrial hearings and potentially through to appeal. By comparison, various civil law jurisdictions following an adversarial trial process, including Sweden, have long allowed such representation. This article provides a comparative assessment of the rise of victim lawyers in common law jurisdictions, arguing that access to private counsel is an important development in criminal justice that allows for the expression of the agency of the victim as a significant stakeholder in adversarial systems of justice.

Sectorial variation in the quality of environmental impact statements and factors influencing the quality

This paper assesses the overall quality of the EISs of four major sectors and the variation in quality of the EISs among the four sectors in Bangladesh. While there are ample studies on the overall quality of EISs irrespective of sectors, there is a lack of research focus in Bangladesh or elsewhere on how the quality of EISs varies by sectors. This study reviews 40 EISs of four major sectors in Bangladesh by using the Lee-Colley method. The review findings indicate that, in general, the quality of EISs in Bangladesh is satisfactory. However, there is a variation in the quality of EISs by sectors where EISs for two sectors are found to be below the satisfactory level. The reasons behind the variation in the quality of EISs by sector are analysed. Furthermore, this paper analyses the factors influencing the overall quality of EISs in Bangladesh as 35% of EISs are still poorly prepared. The factors responsible for the poor performance of EISs include inadequate study time, the lack of baseline data, weak EIA teams, the lack of EIA experts, inadequate funds and weak Terms of Reference.

Rural wind farm development: Social, environmental and economic features important to local residents

The research problem was to examine residents' perceptions of personal costs and benefits in terms of social, environmental or economic features that influence support of or resistance to wind farm development in four rural communities in eastern Michigan. Data were collected from residents using a mail questionnaire, which included twenty-one Likert-style questions inquiring about perceived impact statements of wind farm development in the community. The analysis indicated that there were both differences and similarities in the perception of wind farm impacts on the rural communities. More specifically, the results of the Akaike information criterion test indicated that there was substantial support for nine of the twenty-one variables in support of wind farm development. The contribution of this study recognizes the importance of noneconomic perspectives of wind farm development where turbine construction had not yet been fully exploited. In particular, the data lend support for the use of Social Exchange Theory and further exploration of its applicability in renewable energy investigations.

Human health frames in EIA – the case of Swedish road planning

How human health is framed provides boundaries for choices in practice and bias for certain actions in health assessments in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). This study examines health frames in legislation and policies of importance for EIA in Swedish road planning and their implications for practice. The emphasis is on different approaches, such as promotion of health and prevention of ill-health. Indicators of the choices in practice for which the health frames exert bias are further analysed through a review of Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) for road planning and comparison with a similar study conducted about 10 years ago. The indicators studied are: health determinants included, health impacts assessed, and aspects of the affected population concerned in the EISs. There are fundamentally different health frames in Swedish legislation and policies, but this range is not yet reflected in EISs, which mainly focus on environmental health rather than on broader health determinants and health equity. The results indicate that this situation becomes a dilemma for EIA practitioners and a challenge for the field.

Regulating the Family: The Impact of Pro-Family Policymaking. Assessments on Women and Nontraditional Families

Beginning in the 1980s, pro-family advocates lobbied the Reagan administration to take a stronger, more direct role in enforcing traditional family norms through agency rulemaking. In 1986 the White House Working Group on the Family published a report entitled, The Family: Preserving America’s Future, detailing what its authors perceived to be the biggest threats to the “American household of persons related by blood, marriage or adoption – the traditional . . . family.” These threats included a lax sexual culture carried over from the 1960s, resulting in rising divorce rates, children born “out of wedlock,” and increased acceptance of “alternative lifestyles.” The report also identified increased dependency on governmental anti-poverty programs, including welfare and public housing, as a key source for decreasing individual family economic power and security. The report was followed by swift executive action that required federal agencies to examine all proposed rulemaking through a “pro-family” lens and determine the impact on “family wellbeing,” specifically “the marital commitment” and the message sent “to young people concerning the relationship between their behavior, their personal responsibility, and the norms of our society.” To satisfy this requirement, agencies were mandated to conduct policy assessments that were analogous to Environmental Impact Statements, but focused on safeguarding “pro-family” values rather than the environment. After being momentarily rescinded under the Clinton administration, the “pro-family” policymaking assessments were reinstated by Congress in 1998 at the height of the “Culture Wars.” Although these “pro-family” requirements remain in effect today, they have gone largely unnoticed by scholars and commentators. This paper explores the development and use of the “pro-family” mandate within federal rulemaking. It details how the definition of family that was enunciated in a 1986 White House Report continues to inform and constrain federal rulemaking concerning women and “nontraditional” families. The “pro-family” lens requires agencies to filter proposed rules through a narrow definition of family and precludes the development of polices that are balanced and forward-looking. By favoring policies that focus on the preservation of traditional different-sex, two-parent families, the “pro-family” policymaking assessments strongly discourage rulemaking and policies that would benefit non-traditional families, including multigenerational, single-parent, or LGBT families. These excluded families, however, are often the most vulnerable and the most in need of assistance. The views expressed in the1986 White House Report were based on discredited social science data and bias. They have no place in contemporary policymaking because they fail to reflect the diversity and evolution of the American family — a reflection acutely necessary if we are to create and implement meaningful social policy that will benefit all families.