Urban Institute

About: Urban Institute is a nonprofit organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Medicaid & Population. The organization has 927 authors who have published 2330 publications receiving 86426 citations.

A Spatio-temporal Analysis of Crime at Washington, DC Metro Rail: Stations’ Crime-generating and Crime-attracting Characteristics as Transportation Nodes and Places

Abstract: Transit stations are acknowledged as particularly criminogenic settings. Transit stations may serve as crime “generators,” breeding crime because they bring together large volumes of people at particular geographies and times. They may also serve as crime “attractors,” providing well-known opportunities for crimes. This paper explores the node and place characteristics that can transform Washington DC, Metro stations to generators and attractors of different crimes at different times of the day. The crime-generating and crime-attracting characteristics of stations are modeled with Negative Binomial Regression analysis. To reflect the temporal trends in crime, crime counts are stratified into three temporal groups: peak hours, off-peak day hours, and off-peak night hours. The findings from this study not only suggest that stations assume different nodal and place-based crime-generating and crime-attracting characteristics, but also these roles vary for different crimes and different times. The level of activity and accessibility of a station, the level of crime at a station, and the connectedness of a station to other stations are consistent indicators of high crime rate ratios. Different characteristics of a station—such as being a remote station or belonging to a high or low socioeconomic status block group—are significant correlates for particular crime outcomes such as disorderly conduct, robbery, and larceny.

Coping Strategies and Recovery from Rape

Abstract: A substantial body of research has developed in recent years documenting the immediate and short-term (up to one year) symptomatic reactions to a rape experience.’.’ Much less work has been done on long-term patterns of response, and even less research has directly addressed the coping strategies women use as they struggle to come to terms with the rape experience over the years after acute symptoms wane, or the relationship between coping efforts and the recovery process. Burgess and Holmstrom’s work”‘ is a rare exception; Meyer and Taylor’ have recently published results of a new study that adds to our understanding of coping patterns following rape. In this paper we present a set of coping scales derived from our research data on the coping patterns found in 113 women who are 1 to 14 years postrape; initial reports of these data have previously been presented. The selection of items for our questionnaire, as well as our interpretation of results, are informed by previous theoretical and empirical research, some of which we will review. Our primary interest lies in systematically documenting the real patterns that are observed in women as they cope with rape over time, and specifically as their recovery progresses. Doing so should enable us to identify the most adaptive coping approaches and to utilize this information in counseling rape victims. In addition, this information will add to our understanding of the dynamics of the recovery process. In studying coping efforts, it is important to define what we are talking about. We view “coping” as comprising efforts made in response to stimuli experienced as threatening or stressful-efforts aimed both at reducing the anxiety that those stimuli create and at reducing the interference of the stimuli with one’s capacity to function. Lazarus and Folkman’ divide coping strategies into two large domains-problemfocused and emotion-focused coping. Problem-focused coping is directed at helping the person manage or solve the problem, and can involve strategies directed at the environment (e.g., altering environmental pressures, barriers, resources, procedures) and also strategies directed inward (e.g., learning new skills, developing new standards of behavior, or changing one’s level of aspiration). Women who have been raped may have used problem-focused coping strategies during the rape itself, and may also define the process of recovery in such a way that the future represents a series of tasks to get through or accomplish. Cast in the light of problem-focused coping, recovery is seen largely as a performance to be achieved. Emotion-focused coping strategies are directed at helping the individual accept or

Understanding Local Government Responses to Fiscal Pressure: a Cross National Analysis

Abstract: Fiscally pressured local governments face the same basic choices in both the United States and the United Kingdom: whether to increase locally raised revenues in order to maintain existing services or to reduce local services. The article first posits a model of local government decision-making in response to fiscal pressure drawn primarily from organizational and systems theory. Local governments are viewed as organizations concerned with maintaining their equilibrium relationships with their external environment (public employees and their unions). The model suggests a series of hypotheses about how local government will respond to fiscal pressure. Case studies of fiscally pressured local governments in both the United States and the United Kingdom are then utilized to describe actual local responses and to assess the usefulness of the model. The article concludes by setting forth a rough hierarchy of preferred local responses.

Adolescent Psychopathy and the Five Factor Model: Domain and Facet Analysis

Abstract: Given the consideration of callousness as a specifier for Conduct Disorder in the DSM-V, it seems imperative that researchers continue to investigate this personality style in adolescents to determine both its applicability and utility. The present study examined the Youth Psychopathic traits Inventory (YPI; Andershed et al. 2002) and the Interpersonal Adjective Scale Revised-Big 5 (IASR-B5; Trapnell and Wiggins 1990a, b) psychopathy scales in relation to the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality. Using a sample of adolescent offenders (N = 145), the YPI and IASR-B5 psychopathy scales showed adequate reliability and strong inverse bivariate relations with the FFM domains of Agreeableness (−A) and Conscientiousness (−C). Multivariate analyses, at the facet level, revealed that Tendermindedness (−A) and Assertiveness (+E) explained the association between FFM facets and the YPI, whereas Altruism (−A), Modesty (−A), Straightforwardness (−A), Assertiveness (+E), Warmth (−E), and Deliberation (+C) all uniquely contributed to the IASR-B5 psychopathy scale. Both measures were linked with general and violent recidivism. The authors discuss the implications of these findings in terms of the use of personality to help describe conduct problem youth and the need for future research in this important area.

Uninsured status and out-of-pocket costs at midlife.

Abstract: OBJECTIVE: To investigate how baseline health insurance coverage affects subsequent out-of-pocket costs and utilization of health services over a two-year period. DATA SOURCE: The first two waves of the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative survey of the noninstitutionalized population, ages 51 to 61 at baseline. Interviews were conducted in 1992 and 1994. Our sample consisted of 7,018 respondents who did not report public insurance as their sole source of coverage at baseline. STUDY DESIGN: We compared self-reports of physician visits, hospitalizations, and out-of-pocket health care costs, measured as payments to physicians, hospitals, and nursing homes, by type of insurance coverage at the beginning of the period. We estimated multivariate models of costs and service use to control for individual health, demographic, and economic characteristics and employed instrumental variable techniques to account for the endogeneity of insurance coverage. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Controlling for personal characteristics and accounting for the endogeneity of insurance coverage, persons at midlife with job-related health benefits went on to spend only about $50 per year less in out-of-pocket payments for health services than persons who lacked health insurance at the beginning of the period. However, they spent about $650 more per year in insurance premiums than the uninsured. The uninsured used relatively few health services, except when they were seriously ill, in which case they were likely to acquire public insurance. CONCLUSIONS: The medically uninsured appear to avoid substantial out-of-pocket health care costs by using relatively few health services when they are not seriously ill, and then relying upon health care safety nets when they experience medical problems. These results suggest that the main impact of non-insurance at midlife is not to place the locus of responsibility for costly health care upon individuals. Instead, it discourages routine care and transfers the costs of care for severe health events to other payers. Our findings on the high cost of employment-based coverage are consistent with evidence that the proportion of workers accepting health benefits from employers has been declining in recent years.