Police use of force has been heavily scrutinized for more than a year after fatal police encounters with unarmed black men in New York City, Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and other parts of the U.S. The increased attention has renewed calls for law-enforcement officers to wear video cameras while on duty. Supporters say the devices are needed to provide transparency, build public trust and provide evidence against false complaints. But as more law-enforcement agencies begin using them, questions emerge as to when they should be turned on and off and how much footage should be made available to the public.

In May 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it was providing $20 million in grants to help local and tribal agencies purchase and learn to use body cameras. The grants are part of President Obama’s plan to spend $75 million over three years to buy 50,000 “bod cams” for police organizations. Despite the national push, local law enforcement remains divided over the use of such technology, with some agencies blatantly resisting. Some of the agencies that have tried using them, however, are reporting decreased use of force and fewer complaints from residents. In San Diego, for example, a 2015 report based on preliminary statistics showed that body cameras helped reduce “personal body” force by officers by 46.5%.

A September 2015 study published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology used a controlled experiment with the Mesa Police Department in Arizona to determine how body cameras influence police-citizen interactions. For the report, entitled “The Impact of On-officer Video Cameras on Police-Citizen Contacts: Findings from a Controlled Experiment in Mesa, AZ,” Justin Ready and Jacob Young of Arizona State University analyzed 3,698 field reports completed by 100 sworn patrol officers. The officers — half were assigned to wear body cameras — filled out the reports after having contact with members of the public between Nov. 1, 2012 and Oct. 1, 2013.

Key findings:

• Officers who did not wear body cameras conducted more “stop-and-frisks” and made more arrests than officers who wore the video cameras. Officers who did not wear cameras performed 9.8% more stop-and-frisks and made 6.9% more arrests.
• Officers assigned to wear cameras issued 23.1% more citations for ordinance violations than those who did not wear cameras.
• Officers with body cameras initiated 13.5% more interactions with citizens than those who did not wear them.
• Officers wearing cameras were 25.2% more likely to perceive the devices as being helpful during their interactions with the public.
• The cameras did not have a significant impact on whether or not officers gave verbal warnings to citizens.

The study indicates that police officers were more cautious and risk averse when wearing body cameras. The authors suggest that the reason that camera-wearing officers may have made fewer arrests and conducted fewer stop-and-frisks was because they thought more carefully about criminal policy and procedures. With video evidence, there is the potential for greater scrutiny by supervisors or members of the public. The researchers note that a possible reason why officers with cameras wrote more citations was because they were worried they might be reprimanded for not issuing tickets when video evidence showed that a citizen had violated an ordinance or traffic law. Ready and Young’s work offers insights that they think will be useful to law enforcement agencies as they decide whether to use this technology. “Police executives may support new technology that brings greater accountability and less civil liability, but line officers focus on how it may limit their use of discretion in the field,” the authors state. “Empirical support showing that OVCs [On-officer Video Cameras] can help departments achieve their goals will reduce the time needed for this technology to gain legitimacy. Our findings represent a preliminary step in that direction.”

Related research: A 2014 study from the U.S. Department of Justice, “Police Officer Body-Worn Cameras: Assessing the Evidence,” offers a review of research on the costs and benefits of body cameras. A 2010 study conducted by some of the nation’s leading criminal justice scholars, “A Multi-method Evaluation of Police Use of Force Outcomes: Final Report to the National Institute of Justice,” provides an overall summary of police use-of-force issues. A 2014 report in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, “The Law and Social Science of Stop and Frisk,” surveys recent scholarship on the effectiveness of police stop-and-frisk tactics.

Keywords: police brutality, excessive force, body cameras, body cams, body-worn cameras, technology, policing, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Freedom of Information, public records

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Though immigration is credited — or blamed — for many changes in American society, research into the accuracy of these assertions oftentimes finds a different story. For example, neighborhoods with growing immigrant populations are more likely to have falling, not increasing, crime rates. Most immigrants, not few, place a high value on learning English. Immigration policy affects immigrants’ interactions with society. After President Obama enacted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for some undocumented immigrants, many became more likely to open bank accounts and get new jobs.

Untangling the overall economic impacts of immigration to the United States also has prompted significant research. Studies suggest that immigrants are highly represented in skilled fields, thanks in part to special visa programs. Researchers also have found that reductions in immigrant arrivals can cause labor shortages in agriculture, resulting in higher fruit and vegetable prices.

A December 2015 study published in Demography examines immigration’s impact on a narrow slice of the U.S. economy – the childcare industry. The study, “Fertility Responses of High-Skilled Native Women to Immigrant Inflows,” considers how an influx of immigrants affects the price of childcare and U.S. women’s decision to have children. Delia Furtado, an economics professor at the University of Connecticut, used U.S. Census data from 1980 to 2000 to compare immigrant inflows with American women’s likelihood of having a baby. She focused specifically on how well-educated women react to the change.

The study’s findings include:

• The immigration of low-skilled immigrants into the U.S. between 1980 and 2000 led to “substantial” reductions in the cost of childcare.
• White, non-Hispanic women who were native to the U.S. and between the ages of 22 and 42 were more likely to grow their families when more immigrants moved into the community. They were 0.065 percentage points more likely to give birth for each 1 percentage-point increase in the share of low-skilled immigrants in the same urban area.
• Women older than 35 were most likely to base decisions about whether to have another child on changes in childcare costs. Women in this age group showed a 0.27 percentage-point increase in birth likelihood for each 1 percentage-point increase in the population share of low-skilled immigrants.
• The fertility rates of women with graduate degrees were more closely linked to increased immigration than those of women who had only undergraduate degrees. For every 1 percentage point increase in immigrant share, there was a 0.46 percentage-point increase in the likelihood that women with graduate degrees would have a child but only a 0.21 percentage-point increase for women with just a college degree.

The author states that her findings have important implications for countries with low fertility rates, including Japan and those in southern Europe. “My analysis suggesting that immigrant inflows also increase fertility rates of natives [of the U.S.], particularly native women with graduate degrees, provides an additional avenue through which immigration policy can remedy below-replacement fertility rates,” Furtado states.

Related research: A 2014 study in the Journal of Human Resources, “Low-Skilled Immigration and Parenting Investments of College-Educated Mothers in the United States,” looks at the impact of low-skilled immigration on how parents spend their time.

Keywords: immigration, motherhood, childcare, daycare, preschool, economics, labor

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Americans’ political opinions have become increasingly polarized over the past 50 years, with voters’ views more often being determined by party ideology. One cause of that polarization is the public’s changing relationship with the media.  A fragmented media environment allows people to choose the news coverage that supports their views. Meanwhile, social media lets them view news stories chosen by like-minded friends and connections.

Though the Internet may be contributing to the problem, it also has given voters access to more information than ever before. The deluge of data may not, however, change voter preferences. A 2015 study published in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science suggests that partisanship affects factual beliefs about politics. The study notes that people’s opinions about the condition of the economy sometimes depends more on the political party of the sitting president than on concrete economic data. Voters can seize on any factor in forming their opinions about an issue or person. For example, less-informed citizens tend put more weight on how attractive a political candidate looks on TV, according to a 2011 study by political scientists at MIT.

But if voters are personally presented with objective information on a subject, will it cause them to reevaluate their mistaken beliefs about that issue? A December 2015 study published in the Journal of Public Policy, “Public Information, Public Learning and Public Opinion: Democratic Accountability in Education Policy,” examines the reactions of residents who learned that their beliefs about the performance of their public education system were wrong. Researchers Joshua Clinton and Jason Grissom of Vanderbilt University surveyed 1,500 people in Tennessee to determine how presenting people with student testing data affects their evaluations of the state public school system as well as their evaluations of local school boards and education policy reforms. Survey participants were asked questions related to student achievement on Tennessee’s end-of-year math tests. They also were asked about gaps in achievement for black students and white students who took the tests.

The study’s findings include:

• Before being presented with data, survey participants generally knew little about Tennessee students’ math test performance. Only 20 percent of the Tennessee residents surveyed gave the correct answer when asked to identify the approximate percentage of students who scored at grade level or better on math exams. Only 8 percent were able to correctly identify the true amount of the achievement gap separating black students and white students.
• Tennesseans tended to overestimate student performance. More than half (54 percent) thought student performance was higher than it actually was.
• Many participants tended to overestimate that size of the achievement gap between black and white students. More than one-third of respondents (36 percent) thought the racial performance gap was larger than it actually was.
• Respondents who overestimated student testing achievement tended to assign high letter grades to Tennessee schools and the state Department of Education but not necessarily to their local school boards.
• After receiving testing data, residents’ opinions changed. The authors wrote that “the average effect of receiving the informational update containing the true student performance level is negative” with regard to opinions about Tennessee schools, the state Department of Education and local school boards.
• Tennesseans who thought there was no achievement difference between black students and white students and Tennesseans who estimated the performance gap to be larger than 35 percent gave the same letter grade to educational institutions.
• Receiving information about student test scores had no impact on the probability that residents would support any of the six policies designed to improve student performance with which the residents were presented.

The study suggests mixed implications. Survey participants were able to reevaluate their views about Tennessee schools, the state Department of Education and local school boards after receiving objective information about statewide student performance. This indicates that assessments were driven by student achievement rather than an ideological leaning. However, the fact that Tennesseans were not more supportive of education reforms after realizing student performance was lower than they had realized is “potentially sobering for the prospects of citizen-led policy change,” the authors state. Residents’ opinions about education policies, in this case, appear to be driven mostly by ideological and partisan affiliations. It also appears that opinions related to education policy might not be influenced by concerns about achievement gaps between students of different racial groups.

Related research: A 2013 study in the American Journal of Political Science, “Informing the Electorate? How Party Cues and Policy Information Affect Public Opinion about Initiatives,” examines the impact of political endorsements and policy information on voter decisions. A 2014 study in Political Psychology, “Political Parties, Motivated Reasoning, and Public Opinion Formation,” considers the influence of political parties on the public’s political opinions. A 2012 study published in Political Psychology, “Who Deserves Help? Evolutionary Psychology, Social Emotions, and Public Opinion about Welfare,” looks at how culture and perceptions drive public opinions about public welfare programs.

Keywords: education, education reform, school boards, test scores, public opinion, public support, media, accountability

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The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), America’s tax collector, has been under fire in recent years. In 2009 and 2010, the agency used terms like “Tea Party” to scrutinize conservative groups’ applications for tax-exempt status, which lead to resignations and Congressional inquiries. In 2015, the agency announced that hackers had accessed its taxpayer information databases, comprising the returns of more than 300,000 people. Meanwhile, the IRS has also been working to combat corporate inversions — transactions in which American companies merge with smaller companies based abroad to legally avoid tax liability — and improve tax compliance through artificial intelligence.

These stories have all come against the backdrop of budget cuts and personnel reductions at the IRS, which had $1.2 billion less funding in 2015 than in 2010. The cuts came as the IRS’ workload increased due to changes from the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and the Affordable Care Act. As a result, over 8 million phone calls from taxpayers went unanswered during the 2015 tax season, and the Treasury Department has estimated that each dollar cut from IRS funding results in $6 lost from tax collections. The nation’s taxpayer advocate wrote in 2013 that the agency “desperately needs more funding.”

The impact of the political process on IRS funding and operations was the subject of a 2015 study published in the Journal of Public Policy, “The Political Economy of Tax Enforcement: A Look at the Internal Revenue Service from 1978 to 2010,” that looks at the effect of the current President’s political party on the level of resources available to the IRS and their allocation within the IRS. Sutirtha Bagchi, assistant professor of economics at Villanova University, used IRS budget and personnel figures over time to examine whether presidential administrations use executive power to affect IRS resources and priorities and thus influence the effective tax rate to support their larger policy goals.

The study’s findings include:

• Neither the President’s party nor the party in control of the House has a statistically significant effect on the size of the overall IRS budget or the size of its overall workforce.
• Democratic control of the Senate is correlated with an increased IRS budget and workforce.
• The President’s party has a statistically significant impact on the number of IRS enforcement personnel when both houses of Congress are controlled by Democrats.
• The President’s party has a statistically significant impact on the number of corporate income returns audited by the IRS, with 5 percent more on average performed under Democratic administrations. The party in control of the houses of Congress has no such statistically significant impact.
• The President’s party has a statistically significant impact on the number of individual income returns audited by the IRS, with 4 percent more on average performed under Democratic administrations. The party in control of the houses of Congress has a mixed impact of smaller magnitude.

The study’s findings suggest that while the President is unable to control the overall budget of the IRS, he or she can change the agency’s direction within its budget by shifting employees from or toward positions as criminal investigators and revenue officers, Bagchi explains. And, because Democratic presidents are more likely to favor strong tax enforcement, these changes then result in more audits of corporations, individuals and estates under Democratic administrations.

Related research: A 2014 study in the Journal of the American Taxation Association, “The Effect of Tax Authority Monitoring and Enforcement on Financial Reporting Quality,” looks at the relationship between tax enforcement and the accuracy of businesses’ financial reporting. A 2014 study in Contemporary Accounting Research, “The Reputational Costs of Tax Avoidance,” examines whether firms whose executives engage in aggressive tax avoidance strategies face reputational impacts.

Keywords: politics, IRS, taxes, partisanship

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Household surveys — most notably the U.S. Census as well as the American Community Survey and the Current Population Survey — are important sources of information in the United States. They provide policymakers with data to help them make decisions essential to nearly every government program, including those involving housing, law enforcement and public education. At the most basic level, the U.S. Constitution requires that a count be taken of every American resident once per decade — data that is used to draw federal, state and local legislative districts as well as school district boundaries. Government agencies as well as private organizations and research groups conduct household surveys, some of which have been criticized because they ask for detailed personal information such as how many toilets a home has and whether someone in the family suffers from mental illness. The Republican National Committee has demanded that the U.S. Census Bureau stop being so “nosy.”

Regardless of how U.S. residents feel about these surveys, large and nationally-representative surveys are a relatively fast and inexpensive way to collect this sort of data. When surveys are changed or administered in a different way, researchers and policymakers oftentimes react with concern or frustration. For example, statisticians and demographers have spoken out against attempts to make optional the American Community Survey — a mandatory survey sent to about 3.5 million randomly-selected addresses each year that covers a wide range of topics, including the race and gender of household members as well as their income, educational attainment and disability status. In 2014, the U.S. Census Bureau caused a “mild firestorm” after proposing changes in the way it measures health insurance coverage.

As important as some surveys are, it is more important that the responses given are accurate and thorough. In recent years, decreasing response rates and data errors — for instance, some respondents give inaccurate information about their personal finances — have challenged the usefulness of some surveys and resulted in lower quality data. A 2015 study published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, “Household Surveys in Crisis,” examines these problems. Bruce D. Meyer of the University of Chicago, Wallace K. C. Mok of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and James X. Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame worked together to better understand these problems and why they occur.

Their study’s findings include:

• U.S. households are increasingly less likely to answer surveys. The nonresponse rate of the National Health Interview Survey, for example, rose from 8 percent in 1997 to 24 percent in 2013.
• More people are leaving some survey questions unanswered, especially questions about income. For most of the years since 2000, more than 20 percent of the people who have taken the federal government’s Current Population Survey or the Survey of Income and Program Participation did not answer whether they receive financial assistance through assistance programs known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
• Survey respondents are underreporting the amount of financial assistance they receive through government programs. “In recent years, more than half of welfare dollars and nearly half of food stamp dollars have been missed in several major surveys,” the authors state.
• Some of the biggest reasons why people are less likely to answer surveys are disinterest, a lack of time and privacy concerns. Poor health and language problems also have prevented individuals from participating.
• The rise in gated communities and decline in land-line phones have made door-to-door and phone surveys more difficult.

The authors suggest that one way to reduce errors in survey data is by linking this information to existing administrative data sets — for instance, data on federal program expenditures. This would allow for an external validation of survey responses. New methods of surveying residents via the Internet as well as through traditional mail, telephone and in-person interviews may reduce costs and have the potential to improve data quality.

Related research: A 2015 study in the Journal of Official Statistics, “Models for Combining Aggregate-Level Administrative Data in the Absence of a Traditional Census,” looks at the limitations of using administrative data sets to estimate population counts by age, gender and geographical area. A 2014 study in the International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, “Automatic Record Linkage of Individuals and Households in Historical Census Data,” examines a new method for linking individuals and households across historical census datasets.

Keywords: surveys, census, polls, inequality, welfare, population, household, statistics

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Over the last few decades, China’s huge growth has made it the world’s second-largest economy. In November 2015, the International Monetary Fund designated its currency, the renminbi, as one of the world’s main currencies, recognizing the country’s newfound global status.

But its growth has been accompanied by some challenges, as economic maturity has slowly required some political and social changes at home. China has dealt with protests in its liberalized cities, such as Hong Kong, over the future of democracy. And, its financial prosperity has not necessarily translated into a happier population. In October 2015, the country ended its famous one-child policy, stating that married couples could have a second child. The one-child policy drew criticism around the world, in particular because parents often selected to have male children, resulting in a population-wide gender imbalance which is expected to persist for decades.

But less well-known than parents’ attempts to have a son is the corresponding tradition in some provinces of adopting a “little-daughter-in-law” for an arranged marriage to an existing biological son. The practice, most common in Fujian and Jiangxi provinces, was seen as particularly beneficial to poor families that would not be able to pay a “bride price” to the family of its future daughter-in-law. It also contradicts, in part, the narrative of Chinese families rejecting daughters. A 2015 study published in Population Studies, “Girl Adoption in China—A Less-Known Side of Son Preference,” examined the prevalence of adopting infant girls across China. The researchers — Yuyu Chen at Peking University, Avraham Ebenstein at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Lena Edlund at Columbia University, and Hongbin Li at Tsinghua University — looked at the composition of families that adopted girls and the outcomes for those girls.

The study’s findings include:

• Girls were more likely to be adopted by families that already had sons.
• Even though families adopting girls were more likely to have above-average income, adopted girls were much less likely to attend school, particularly in families that already had sons.
• Adoption of girls was more prevalent in Fujian and Jiangxi, the provinces with a tradition of adopting daughters for arranged marriages with existing sons, where at least 6 percent and as high as 10 percent of girls were adopted in 1994, the peak year of such adoptions.
• Girls adopted in those provinces were even less likely to attend school.

The researchers suggested that the adopted girls’ lower school attendance rates could be due to selection — girls given up for adoption could be less suited to school — or the negative impact of the experience of being adopted, in addition to discrimination by the girls’ new families. They note, however, that school attendance reflects parental priorities in addition to the child’s characteristics. They also noted that the apparent decline in adoptions after the early 1990s may be due to adoptions occurring when children are already older, suggesting analysis of the newer 2010 census data.

Related research: A 2015 study in Public Health looks at the impact of the end of the one-child policy on the Chinese health care system. A 2015 study in the European Sociological Review examined children’s well-being as more Chinese move from rural areas to cities.

Keywords: China, development, gender, adoption, women, girls, Asia

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Researchers, politicians and marketers are keenly interested in the Millennial generation, born between 1980 and the mid-2000s. Also known as Generation Y, this generation is markedly different than earlier ones. For example, its members are less likely to be affiliated with religion and more likely to be politically independent. This group — America’s most diverse and educated generation — also is the largest in the U.S. labor force. Millennials also stand out as the first generation to grow up with the Internet as well as technology such as cell phones, smart phones and tablets.

As “digital natives,” Millennials are heavy users of social media, relying on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to connect them with more than just friends and family. Eighty-eight percent of Millennials who participated in a March 2015 research study said they use Facebook to find news. This reliance on social media has fueled debates about how social media and personalized web searches influence political polarization. At the same time, social media also provides opportunities for people to actively engage in politics, including communicating directly with community leaders and their staff.

Scholars at the University of Hawaii sought to understand how Millennials use social media to educate themselves about political issues and political candidates. Their August 2015 study, “Community Matters: How Young Adults Use Facebook to Evaluate Political Candidates,” compares the opinions formed by college students who received information about two opposing political candidates through social media with the opinions of students who got information about the candidates from more traditional information sources, including news articles. A total of 70 students participated in the study, which was published in the Information Polity journal and funded by the National Science Foundation. The majority of participants were aged 18-20 years old.

Key findings include:

• Millennials tend to stumble upon political information rather than seek it out. They tend to “have serendipitous encounters with political information both on- and offline.”
• Millennials’ political opinions are influenced by online interactions and interactions that do not involve the Internet. Many of the college students in this study said their parents were their strongest influences.
• College students who saw the political candidates’ Facebook pages were much more likely to base their opinions on Facebook community-based cues. These students read comments left on Facebook pages to gauge other people’s opinions of the candidates and also to see how candidates responded to and interacted with citizens.

This study suggests that user-generated comments on social media can influence the reputations of political candidates in the eyes of potential Millennial voters. “As political conversations often emerge spontaneously in non-political spaces … audiences will be affected by candidates’ SM [social media] presence, regardless of whether they sought out the political information,” the authors state. The authors note that study participants’ exposure to social media was limited to 10 minutes per Facebook page and that other behaviors might have emerged with longer exposure times. The authors recommend that future studies investigate how social media affects young adults’ opinions of corporations and brands.

Related research: A 2015 meta-study published in Information, Communication & Society, “Social Media Use and Participation: A Meta-analysis of Current Research,” explores the effects of social media on political participation and civic engagement. A 2015 research brief from the Scholars Strategy Network considers the Internet’s role in promoting political activism among underrepresented groups.

Keywords: politics, political engagement, social media, social networking, Facebook, technology, millennials, young adults, voting behavior, digital democracy, e-participation

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While women have made great strides in achieving gender equity in many areas of American society, gender stereotypes remain pervasive. Voters sometimes have different expectations of female political candidates. Business remains dominated by men. Women are vastly underrepresented in the so-called STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math. Women often make less money than men working the same jobs. According to the White House, a woman earns an average of 78 cents for each dollar a man makes.

Sometimes, however, gender stereotypes benefit women, particularly in the area of criminal justice. Scholars have found that women receive shorter sentences for sex crimes than men. A 2014 study suggests that federal courts are more lenient on female defendants in general. They are less likely to incarcerate women and tend to give women shorter sentences than men.

A 2015 study published in the Journal of Criminal Justice, “From Initial Appearance to Sentencing: Do Female Defendants Experience Disparate Treatment?,” takes a broader look at gender disparities within the criminal justice system. The four researchers — Natalie Goulette of the University of West Florida and John Wooldredge, James Frank and Lawrence Travis III of the University of Cincinnati — explored outcomes at two key stages of the criminal justice process. They examined decisions that judges made at a defendant’s first appearance hearing and during sentencing. Previous studies had investigated gender disparities in judicial decisions connected with only one of those two events, potentially neglecting the interaction of the outcomes at each phase. The researchers analyzed 3,593 felony cases that had been referred in 2009 to the County Office of the Prosecutor of a large, urban jurisdiction in the northern United States.

Findings include:

• Women were less likely to be detained before trial. They were 46 percent less likely than men to held in jail prior to a trial.
• Women who were released on bond were given lower bond amounts. Their bonds were set at amounts that were 54 percent lower than what men were required to pay.
• Women were 58 percent less likely to be sentenced to prison.
• For defendants who were sentenced to prison, there generally was no gender disparity in the length of the sentence. There were disparities in sentencing for some individual types of crime, however. For example, female defendants convicted of theft received longer prison sentences than male defendants convicted of theft. Women convicted of “other property offenses” – a category of crimes that includes arson, receiving stolen property and breaking and entering — received shorter prison sentences.
• Black female defendants were, in some ways, treated differently than white female defendants. Black women were assigned higher bond amounts and were more likely to be sent to prison than white women. Women of both races were equally likely to be released prior to trial.

The authors hypothesize that judges might treat female defendants more leniently when they conform to the traditional gender roles of housewife and mother. Goulette and her colleagues found support for the “evil woman” theory, which suggests that this “chivalry” is reserved for certain groups of women who appear to be docile and in need of protection. The authors suggest that future research should explore the idea that, in some cases, some judges may treat female defendants more harshly if they believe it is in the defendants’ best interest or if the tougher sentence will serve to protect the women in the future. The researchers also suggest that policymakers consider ways to standardize the judicial process, which could reduce disparities by constraining judges’ discretion. The authors stress the need to more carefully monitor the decisions that judges make at a defendant’s first-appearance hearing. “Our findings suggest that decisions related to bond amounts impact pretrial detention which, in turn, is one of the strongest predictors of prison sentences,” the authors state.

Related research: A 2014 study in the American Journal of Criminal Justice, “An Examination of Defendant Sex Disparity in Capital Sentencing: A Propensity Score Matching Approach,” looks at the role of gender in capital sentencing. A 2014 study in Criminal Justice and Behavior, “Needs and Pretrial Failure: Additional Risk Factors for Female and Male Pretrial Defendants,” examines whether female defendants have different needs in pretrial screenings.

Keywords: law, gender, gender disparity, civil rights, crime, conviction rates, incarceration rates, sentencing, sex offense, judicial leniency, chivalry, paternalism, single mothers

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Of the top 50 digital news outlets, 39 are receiving more traffic from mobile devices than desktop computers, according to the Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media 2015 report. Sixty-three percent of Facebook users as well as 63 percent of Twitter users say they use these services for news about “events and issues outside the realm of friends and family.” In response to these trends and falling revenue from print products, legacy media outlets have experimented with various ways to generate revenue from their online presence, including The New York Times’ now well-known “metered paywall.” But, as advertising revenue continues to fall and reduces digital income, news organizations have struggled to come up with a sustainable strategy to convince consumers to pay directly for content. In particular, organizations are frequently concerned that these strategies threaten to undercut the outlet’s audience instead of generating significant revenue, especially since consumers appear reluctant to pay for news online.

A 2015 study published in Electronic News, “Examining the Third-Person Perception on News Consumers’ Intention to Pay,” investigated consumers’ willingness to pay for online news. The authors used a survey to determine whether consumers see others as more willing to pay for news online than they themselves would be. The researchers — Hsiang Iris Chyi, Angela Lee, and Avery Holton, based at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the University of Utah — asked 767 Internet users about their own willingness and their perception of others’ willingness to pay for news in three news platforms: in print, on the Web, and in an app.

The study’s findings include:

• 30.8 percent of those surveyed thought others would be more likely to pay for news in print than they reported they themselves would be.
• 44 percent of those surveyed thought others would be more likely to pay for news on the Web than they reported they themselves would be.
• 47.5 percent of those surveyed thought others would be more likely to pay for news in an app than they reported they themselves would be.
• Further, the gap between self-perception and perception of others’ likeliness widened from print to Web and again from Web to app.

The researchers concluded that paying for news might be regarded as socially undesirable, since the so-called “third-person effect” happens most often due to self-enhancement —people’s desire to feel better about themselves because they perform or avoid a certain activity. If so, they reasoned, paying for news online could be seen as particularly undesirable, since the gap grew for those media. This social undesirability could explain, at least in part, why news organizations have struggled to charge for digital content.

Related research: A 2014 study in Journalism Practice, “An Empirical Study of Factors that Influence the Willingness to Pay for Online News,” provides an overview of what factors make consumers more willing to pay for digital media. A 2013 study in Digital Journalism, “Newspaper Paywalls—the Hype and the Reality,” looks at the impact of paywalls on news organizations’ revenue. A 2012 study in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, “Paying for What Was Free: Lessons from the New York Times Paywall,” examines readers’ attitudes toward The New York Times before and after it implemented its paywall.

Keywords: journalism, paywalls, mobile, online news

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While the percentage of American adults who smoke cigarettes has dropped drastically since 1965, the number still is large – 42.1 million people in 2013, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death nationally, resulting in more than 480,000 deaths and nearly $170 billion in direct medical-care costs each year. High smoking rates are a main reason for America’s  relatively low life expectancy compared to other high-income countries. In recent years, the rise of e-cigarettes has given smoking renewed popularity even though their health effects remain largely unclear.

The health consequences of tobacco use fall disproportionately on the elderly, some of whom have spent much of their lives smoking. While long-term users cannot avoid the damage caused by many years of smoking, there are substantial benefits to quitting even at an advanced age. A 2000 report published in Age and Ageing suggests that smokers who stop after age 60 regain improved pulmonary and lung function. However, many older smokers are less likely to try quitting than younger ones. At the same time, studies indicate that health professionals are less likely to recommend that older smokers try to quit. Cessation programs do not often target older smokers specifically.

A team of researchers sought to determine whether older adults might change their smoking habits if cigarette prices increased. Their 2015 study published in Health Economics, “Cigarette Taxes and Older Adult Smoking: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study,” relied on data collected through a longitudinal survey of older adults between 1992 and 2008. Researchers Johanna Maclean, Asia Kessler and Donald Kenkel — based at Temple University, the University of Nebraska and Cornell University, respectively — tested whether a $1 tax increase would prompt older adults to smoke fewer cigarettes per day. At the time of the study, the additional $1 represented a 131.6% increase in the cigarette tax.

The study’s key findings include:

• The adults in the study sample had been smoking an average of 42.4 years and smoked an average of 16.9 cigarettes a day.
• Smokers over age 50 cut back slightly in response to the $1 tax increase. They reduced the number of cigarettes smoked per day by 3.8%–5.2%.
• Smokers older than 65 years reduced their daily cigarette usage 2.7%–8.5%.
• The researchers found evidence indicating that women curb their smoking more in response to a tax increase than men. White smokers appeared to be more responsive to tax increases than non-white smokers.

The study suggests that older adults reduce their smoking only modestly when the cigarette tax is raised. Many older adult smokers likely would react to a tax increase by simply spending more of their income on cigarettes. The authors note that because older adults often live on fixed incomes, a tax increase could lead to reduced consumption of other goods or other unintended consequences. Offering smoking-cessation products at a reduced cost or offering financial incentives to stop smoking may be more effective ways to encourage older adults to change their smoking habits. The authors say these findings “shed new light on older adult smoker tax responsiveness and highlight the need for careful consideration of the full impacts of public health policy, particularly as the U.S.A. experiences demographic shifts in its population.”

Related research: A 2014 study in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, “Sex-Related and Tissue-Specific Effects of Tobacco Smoking on Brain Atrophy: Assessment in a Large Longitudinal Cohort of Healthy Elderly,” looks at the impact of tobacco use on brain aging. A 2015 study in Clinical Interventions in Aging, “Real-World Comparative Study of Behavioral Group Therapy Program vs. Education Program Implemented for Smoking Cessation in Community-Dwelling Elderly Smokers,” examines the effectiveness of group therapy in reducing smoking among the elderly.

Keywords: tobacco, cigarettes, health, older Americans, elderly, retirement, taxes, cessation, addiction

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Local government financing is a perennially vexing issue for local politicians, who are trying to meet the changing needs of constituents while also balancing the budget of their city, county, school district or other agency. Local governments generally have limited options for generating the money they need to build and expand infrastructure, including roads, parks, drainage systems and educational facilities. While increasing property taxes may be an option for bringing in more revenue, it is one that often prompts aggressive opposition from homeowners and business owners. Voters have been reluctant to increase or create other types of taxes. To help pay for growth, some government agencies charge impact fees on new development. An impact fee is a one-time charge imposed on new construction such as housing developments or office complexes and is designed to offset the financial impact the project will have on local infrastructure.

Cities in states with property-tax limits — in California, Colorado and Florida, for example – were among the first in the country to adopt impact fees decades ago. Today, hundreds of government agencies charge these fees in amounts that vary widely, according to the jurisdiction and the type of infrastructure being affected. School impact fees tend to be highest, according to a 2012 report from the government-consulting firm, Duncan Associates. That report, based on a national survey, identified Arizona, California and Florida as the states with the most impact fees.

While impact fees provide an additional source of revenue, government officials have worried they may discourage development and hurt job growth. In some parts of the U.S., local governments have begun offering impact-fee discounts to companies that construct buildings that will bring certain types of jobs, including high-wage and industrial jobs, to an area. Scholars continue to investigate the issue but their research has sometimes produced conflicting results. However, a 2015 study published in Economic Development Quarterly, “Impact Fees and Employment Growth,” looks at impact fees from a different angle. Adam T. Jones of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington examined the effect that levying fees on commercial development has on three sectors of employment: service jobs, retail jobs and manufacturing jobs. He used 30 years of employment and demographic data from 67 Florida counties to create a natural experiment on the fees’ influence.

The study’s findings include:

• There is a “mixed relationship” between the use of commercial impact fees and changes in employment. Impact fees influence job sectors differently.
• Florida counties with impact fees experienced greater job growth in the service sector.
• Florida counties with impact fees experienced slower job growth in the manufacturing sector.
• Impact fees had a small or insignificant impact on retail employment.

The author notes that Florida’s business patterns might slightly skew employment toward service and retail employment as the state is “more retail- and service-oriented than the rest of the country.” He suggests further research to explore how different industries view impact fees, as some may consider them to be a tax with little or no benefit and some may see the fees as an investment in infrastructure. The results of this study combined with prior research on residential impact fees indicate that impact fees may benefit residential and service sectors but have consequences for industrial development. “Whereas [impact] fees are theoretically an efficient way of financing infrastructure, they cannot be considered in a vacuum …,” Jones states. Policymakers need to understand that some companies may build within neighboring communities to avoid impact fees and still be able to serve the same general market.

Related research: Jones explains other research he did on impact fees in a June 2015 study published in the Atlantic Economic Journal titled “Fees and Firms: An Empirical Examination of the Relationship Between Development Impact Fees and Firms.” A 2014 study from two Korean universities and Florida State University, “A Multilevel Governance and Growth Management: The Use of Impact Fees by Florida Cities,” looks at how local governments decide whether to impose impact fees.

Keywords: taxes, local government, impact fees, tax system, commercial development, residential development, employment, finance

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