Suchergebnisse

AbstractIn 1996, Congress expanded the federal Gun Control Act (GCA) to prohibit defendants convicted of a qualifying domestic violence misdemeanor from possessing or purchasing a firearm. Using the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports along with homicide data collected from selected state law enforcement agencies, I investigate if this expansion was successful in reducing homicides among the target groups. I use variation from a legal loophole and a series of circuit court decisions to generate difference‐in‐differences estimates. I find evidence that the GCA expansion led to 17 percent fewer gun‐related homicides among female intimate partner victims and 31 percent fewer gun homicides among male domestic child victims. The law also has protective benefits for those that were not targeted by the legislation. "Other" family members (parents and siblings) also experience a 24 percent reduction in gun homicides. I find no evidence that reductions in gun homicides were offset by an increase in nongun homicides. While most falsification and robustness tests support the above conclusions, some tests suggest caution when interpreting the results and a need for further research.

The United States has a number of social policies that were designed explicitly to provide options and supports for individuals related to their family formation decisions, such as the Title X National Family Planning Program and the Healthy Marriage Initiative. At the same time, because social policies can have considerable implications for the populations they target, we have long known that government policy can impact family structure and individuals' fertility decisions even when such an impact was not the policy's stated objective. This article reviews both theoretical and empirical literature asking to what extent United States' social policy affects the complexity of families. Specifically, we review the literature on divorce and custody laws, means-tested transfer programs, and policies designed to provide information and services related to family formation. We report findings, and discuss common themes across the literature and identify important gaps in knowledge.

America has both the highest gun death rate (12 per 100,000 persons) and the highest gun circulation rate (about 121 firearms in circulation for every 100 persons) of any developed country. Taken together, these statistics might lead one to assume that high gun death rates in America are all but a certain outcome. However, gun death rates vary substantially across America suggesting that a range of solutions to reduce gun death and injury exist. This transdisciplinary volume contains a novel collection of articles that overview the evolution of American gun policy, presents evidence on the efficacy of both policy and non-policy interventions, and provides insight on where we go from here given American culture, norms, and legal structures.

Contemporary child welfare policies in the United States are well-suited for prevention of child abuse but fail to account for the relationship between family financial hardship and neglect, that is, the lack of safe and consistent care. We argue that rates of child neglect have been stagnant because of two failures: (1) lack of recognition of financial hardship as a causal mechanism of neglect and (2) federal policy that purposefully omits alleviation of financial hardship as a solution to the occurrence of neglect. Because U.S. antipoverty programs operate independently of one another, our siloed policy structure misses opportunities for the alleviation of child maltreatment and, worse, creates negative and unintended consequences in child welfare. We present a model for change: systems synergy for the promotion of safe and consistent care that makes reduction of child maltreatment the responsibility of every social service program in the United States.

Adolescents, and especially male adolescents, make up a disproportionately smaller portion of maltreatment reports compared to younger children. This study used the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System to better understand the characteristics of adolescents reported to Child Protective Services (CPS), to examine whether these characteristics changed over time, and to determine whether certain child or CPS report characteristics predicted CPS involvement. Although adolescents were the focal group, younger children were also analyzed for comparison. Between 2005 and 2010, reports of neglect and the proportion of children of Hispanic and unknown racial/ethnic origins increased. Concurrently, the proportion of cases resulting in CPS involvement declined. Although race/ethnicity predicted CPS involvement, this pattern was not consistent across all age groups or races/ethnicities. The type of alleged maltreatment did not typically predict CPS involvement; however, allegations of sexual abuse among school-aged children and adolescents, particularly among girls, were more likely to result in CPS involvement. These findings can assist child welfare professionals in determining appropriate services tailored to families and developing prevention programs targeting adolescents.