This study examines the spending patterns of parents, indentifying differences in the amount of money that parents spend on select items for sons compared to daughters. Using secondary data from the "Consumer Expenditure Survey: Diary Survey" dataset from 2008 through 2010, this study tests the hypothesis that parents with adolescent girls spend more money on apparel, beauty and hygiene products, health care, and education compared to parents with adolescent boys. An interaction effect for gender and socioeconomic status by parental expenditures was also included in order to test the long-debated Trivers-Willard hypothesis that high status parents will spend more money on sons while low status parents will spend more on daughters. In determining whether an association exists between parents\' expenditures and the gender of their children, multiple regressions were used to test the hypotheses, allowing the results to be generalizable to single-child and two-child families of adolescents across the United States. The regressions show that within one-child households, parents with daughters do in fact spend more money when making purchases for apparel, education, and medical expenses. However, these findings do not apply to two-child families, as no significant differences were found within these households. Following these results, limitations to the study are discussed, as well as the study\'s implications for familial relationships, consumer socialization, and gender inequality among children. / Master of Science

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Medicaid covers 21% of Americans which includes over 65 million children and adults, making it the largest single source of health insurance for Americans. As a public program jointly administered between the federal and state governments, states exhibit substantial control over the structure of their programs, with the intention of modifying programs to fit the needs of the state and population. Medicaid has experienced numerous changes at both the state and federal levels in recent years which have created novel ways of modifying their structures, many of which may have implications for administrative expenditures. As publicly funded programs and given the state autonomy over such, it is important to consider the relationships and effects of such decisions on the performance of these programs. The purpose of this dissertation is to consider numerous variations in state Medicaid programs and the state contexts in which they operate, and the relationship to administrative spending. This dissertation focuses on three studies including 1) a panel analysis of the trends and correlates of state Medicaid administrative expenditures, 2) a quasi-experimental study of the effects of Medicaid expansion on administrative expenditures, and finally 3) a quasi-experimental study of the effects of the use of Express Lane Eligibility on administrative expenditures. Overall, this dissertation provides a better understanding of the variations, correlates, and drivers of Medicaid administrative expenditures.

The plight of the poor has played a role in America’s politics for decades. In the 1930’s, Franklin Roosevelt’s Democratic Party vowed to fight the Great Depression, and by implementing countless anti-poverty initiatives and agencies it won enormous favor with the public and ushered in a period of Democratic dominance. In modern politics, narratives surrounding the poor and programs designed to help them are utilized by Republicans and Democrats to further their party’s agenda. I examine the influence of various demographic factors on the attitudes of Mississippi residents towards spending by the government intended to alleviate poverty, using the Mississippi Poll’s results from the years 2004-2014 as my dataset and using cross-tabulation analyses to draw conclusions. I find that gender and religiosity are relatively weak predictors of poverty spending attitudes, while income, education, and age are stronger predictors, and race and party identification are very strong predictors.

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In the aftermath of the 2008 economic recession, governments across the globe were forced to confront a difficult reality: growth and spending would need to be revised dramatically downward while central government systems would have to be made more efficient. In the United Kingdom specifically, the 2010 general election became a referendum on how quickly and severely to implement austerity policies the likes of which had not been seen for generations. Why did the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition choose austerity when other alternatives, such as a public sector stimulus package, were also available? To answer this question this research seeks to understand how and why political actors in the United Kingdom respond to economic and political crises through the implementation of specific efficiency reforms. This is accomplished through two specific steps: the establishment of an analytical framework to better understand the dynamics of efficiency reforms and an in-depth study of the historical development of efficiency reforms from the early twentieth century through the present. A historical institutionalist theoretical foundation is employed in order to understand the evolution of ideas throughout this time span. A thorough understanding of institutional effects, including aspects of lock-in effects and process tracing, are essential components of understanding why powerful political actors choose certain efficiency reforms over others. Ultimately, this research is meant as a first step towards a greater understanding of efficiency in government. Previous research has examined specific reforms in relative isolation without the benefit of historical context. By systematically tracing the evolution of efficiency reforms across different eras a more complete understanding of policies and political actors is established. Further research, including comparative studies across political systems and the incorporation of quantitative date, is discussed in the conclusion.

Thesis (M.B.A.)—Boston University.

Property taxes are a significant form of funding for states’ public education. In the West, nearly half of the land is owned by the federal government, making it off limits to tax. This research examines the relationship between federal land and its impact on per-pupil spending.

The debate over the role and the size of state activity in public economics remains controversial despite more than a century of active research. As a result, several explanations have been suggested to explain the expansion of the size of the public economy and a large amount of literature has been produced. In the late 19th century, the German economist Adolph Wagner predicted that economic development would be accompanied by a relative growth in the public sector. This thesis argues that the way the Wagner Hypothesis has been interpreted in the existing literature has been incomplete both on theoretical and empirical grounds. Data shows that the independent variable is an important determinant of the growth of government share in income. This result is generally consistent with the WH and lends support to the logistic and the Gompertz processes of government growth. Following discussion, the principal conclusion is that the rise of the share of government expenditure in income in the cross section sample of 88 countries can be partly explained by the changes in the levels of real GDP per capita for those countries. The thesis concludes with a discussion of some of the implications of these results and suggestions for further research. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)