Faith-based environmentalism involves caring for the earth through a reflection of one's morals, values, and faith. In this study, religious leaders that are actively involved in faith-based environmental groups were interviewed and congregational members surveyed to explore belief systems and attitudes with the goal of understanding how to increase program participation and make faith-based environmental groups more effective. Twenty environmental religious action leaders were interviewed. Survey questions were also administered to 10 church/synagogue congregations within the study region. Interview results showed that action leaders were interested in secular and religious partnerships, although they felt that some partnerships may be more appropriate than others. Leaders felt that clergy support was essential to program success. The extent to which faith contributes to one's identity could be a factor for participation for some congregants. Leaders thought that a combination of hands-on, scripture-based, and sermon-based approaches, as well as integration throughout church or synagogue practices and activities would increase efficacy. Political perceptions were cited as a reason for non-participation. Congregational survey results showed that environmental commitment positively predicted program participation, whereas political conservatism was an inverse predictor. Faith identity, secular and faith partnership attitudes, religiosity, church attendance, and attitudes about support from church leadership did not impact whether or not congregational members participated in faith-based environmental programs. Program preferences and environmental views were analyzed to determine any differences. Preferred learning methods included hands-on activities and expert guest speakers. Congregants most viewed environmental problems as being a moral, social justice, and economic issue. / Master of Science

Thesis advisor: Paul Cichello / The COVID-19 pandemic impacted nearly every aspect of societies around the world when it struck in 2020. Food insecurity increased in almost all countries, even those with well-developed economies and safety nets, and education for all ages was drastically affected by social distancing guidelines and a concern for the safety of students and faculty alike. Using data from the 2019 and 2020 cross-sections of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I evaluated the impact of an automatic increase in food assistance benefits in the United States during March 2020 on grade progression rates for students who were affected by the benefit increase. I find statistically insignificant results regarding the effect of this increase on grade progression rates, but a significant positive effect of being in the post-Covid period on these rates. These results could reflect the fact that school districts around the country broadly loosened the academic requirements for grade progression. Future research could evaluate the effect of food stamp benefits on the quality of education, and seek to overcome the limitations of the model used for this analysis. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Economics.

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the role of transfer-program interactions for families and households who participate in the social safety net. The safety net is comprised of many different programs, run by different agencies, governed by different rules, and often administered by disparate and secluded entities. However, many households participate in multiple programs, subjecting them to the milieu of administrative hurdles. In this dissertation, I try to untangle some of the intended and unintended effects of program participation that may be experienced by these households. In Essay 1, I examine the effect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) on food hardship in US households, utilizing food security information from the Food Security Supplement of the Current Population Survey. Because states adopted the Medicaid expansions provided under the ACA at different times beginning in 2014, the cross-state, over time variation allows me to separate the impact of the ACA on food hardship using triple difference specifications. The richness of questions in the Food Security Supplement allows me to examine the effect of the ACA across different measures of food hardship, and also examine differential response for households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Examining the mechanisms through which the ACA could affect food insecurity, I find the ACA not only increased average weekly food expenditure, but also the probability a household participates in SNAP. I employ a two-stage, control function approach to address reverse causality between SNAP and food insecurity. I find that the ACA reduced the probability that a household participating in SNAP falls into the two lowest food security categories by 6.5 percentage points and reduced the probability of being food insecure by 14.2 percentage points. Across specifications, I find strong evidence for increasing returns to program participation, and evidence of a differential impact of the ACA across the distribution of food hardship. In Essay 2, I examine how grant funding and fiscal structure affect program response over the business cycle. I compare child enrollment in Medicaid, a matching grant funding program, with enrollment the State Children's Health Insurance Program, a block grant funded program, utilizing the similarities in beneficiaries, program benefits, and administration to isolate the impact of fiscal structure. I utilize administrative enrollment records, along with individual level participation data, and find a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate leads to a 7.6% decrease in the number of beneficiaries per person enrolled in block grant funded programs, and a 10% decrease in state expenditure per person decreases the probability of enrollment in a block grant program by 0.58 percentage points. I also find that enrollment is much more persistent among matching grant funded programs, and being enrolled in a block grant funded program the previous period increases the probability of enrolling in a matching grant program this period 75% more than remaining enrolled in the block grant funded program. Finally, in Essay 3 I explore the effect of the minimum wage on the self-reported value of public assistance program benefits, and the joint effect of the minimum wage and public assistance programs on the income to poverty ratio using data from the 1995-2016 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. In the first stage, I estimate a Tobit model controlling for the censoring of received benefits from below at zero, and examine the effect of changes in the minimum wage on the self-reported dollar value of benefits received for food stamps/the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)/Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), as well as the total sum of benefits. I find that the minimum wage reduces the value of means-tested benefits, but that this effect is strongest for programs with strong work requirements. Utilizing the residuals from the first stage, I employ a control function approach to estimate the joint effect of the minimum wage and program benefits on the income to poverty ratio. I find the own-effect of the minimum wage provides a small increase in the income to poverty ratio, but that the total effect, accounting for changes in benefits, attenuates by approximately 30%.

This dissertation consists of three essays related to the effects of welfare reform on the intergenerational transmission of welfare participation as well as effects on labor supply and childcare arrangements. States implemented welfare reform at different times from 1992 to 1996, and these policies notably introduced work requirements and other restrictions intended to limit dependency of needy families. One mechanism reforms were intended to address was childhood exposure to a "culture" of ongoing welfare receipt. In Essay 1, I estimate the effect of reform on the transmission of welfare participation for 2961 mother-daughter pairs in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) over the period 1968-2013. I find that a mother's welfare participation increased her daughter's odds of participation as an adult by roughly 30 percentage points, but that welfare reform attenuated this transmission by at least 50 percent, or at least 30 percent over the baseline odds of participation. While I find comparable-sized transmission patterns in daughters' adult use of the broader safety net and other outcomes such as educational attainment and income, there is no diminution of transmission after welfare reform. In Essay 2, I estimate behavioral labor supply responses to reforms using experimental data from Connecticut's Jobs First welfare waiver program in 1996. Recent studies have used a distributional analysis of Jobs First suggesting evidence that some individuals reduce hours in order to opt into welfare, an example of behavioral-induced participation. However, estimates obtained by a semi-parametric panel quantile estimator allowing women to vary arbitrarily in preferences and welfare participation costs indicate no evidence of behavioral-induced participation. These findings show that a welfare program imposes an estimated cost up to 10 percent of quarterly earnings, and these costs can be heterogeneous throughout the conditional earnings distribution. Lastly, in Essay 3, I return to PSID data to examine the relationship between welfare spending on childcare assistance and the care arrangements chosen by low-income families. Experimental evidence has shown that formal child care can result in long-term socioeconomic gains for disadvantaged children, and work requirements after welfare reform have necessitated increased demand for child care among single mothers. I find that an increase of a thousand dollars in state-level childcare assistance per child in poverty increases the probability of formal care among low-earnings single-mother families by about 27 to 30 percentage points. When public assistance makes child care more affordable, families within the target population reveal a higher preference for formal care relative to informal, which may be related to perceived quality improvements for child enrichment and development.

This study examined the relationship between participation in a culturally-based arts program and the self-efficacy, self-expression, and achievement motivation in at-risk youth attending Atlanta public schools. The theoretical base used to examine this relationship was grounded in the social cognitive. Interviews conducted with students and parents provided demographic information as well as data on the participation in a culturally-based arts program and the resulting effect on self-efficacy, self-expression, and achievement motivation. Participants included a sample of 108 students between 10 and 14 years of age (M = 11.6, SD = .90). The results of the ANOVA data analysis revealed significant mean differences in self-efficacy and self-expression between the culturally-based arts program participation intervention group and the control group. The analysis indicated no significant mean differences in achievement motivation. There were no significant mean differences in self-efficacy from the pretest and posttest between ages. However, there were significant mean differences in self-expression and achievement motivation scores from the pretests and posttests between ages. Social implications of the research revealed the impact of program involvement on the acceptance of diversity within adolescent development. Social change can happen as a result of this acceptance of diversity. With this knowledge, curricula developers and program implementers may better identify the negative views associated with free expression that have the potential to drive students toward a rejection of academic success or performance-avoidance in the educational environment.