Since the late 1990s accelerated growth in health care spending coupled with a cost shift of health insurance from employers to employees has created an increased financial burden for many families. Past research suggests that financial burden due to out-of-pocket (OOP) health care costs limits access to health care and may reduce spending on other basic needs, such as food. The primary objective of this study was to assess the relationship between out-of-pocket health care expenditures and food insecurity among families with children. Secondarily, this study examined the relationship between the health status of children and household food security. This study used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID, 2003) to test whether higher out of pocket health care expenditures increase household food insecurity for families with children. Respondents reported out of pocket expenditures for both medical services and insurance premiums in 2001 and 2002. Food insecurity was measured for the previous 12 months using the 18-item USDA Food Security Survey Module. Multivariate weighted logit analysis was conducted to model the relationship between OOP health care costs and household food security status; and child health status and household food security. There was no evidence that higher OOP health care costs were associated with household food insecurity. However, among families earning less than 300 percent of the federal poverty threshold, having private insurance did increase the likelihood of experiencing food insecurity (OR =4.77, 95% CI = 0.05 - 1.02). Households with a child in poor health were not more likely to experience food insecurity; however having a wife in poor health was associated with food insecurity (OR = 4.00, 95% CI =1.67-9.52). The findings from this study suggest that programs designed to limit OOP health care spending among moderate and low income families should evaluate the impact on household food security. / Graduation date: 2013 / Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from July 23, 2012 - July 23, 2013

Zina ray Peirce (1336-1923), the first wife of Cnarles S. Peirce, America’s great philosopher, was a woman who devoted her life to cause of improving the position of women in America. This study examines her specific accomplishments as a reformer; attitudes about women in nineteenth-century America and the effect such attitudes had on a woman of strong intellect and character; and the influence that she and her husband had on each other.Her early and conditioned interest was to promote the idea of freeing women from domestic drudgery so that they could pursue their own talents and make themselves economically and politically independent. Although not a suffragist or a believer in the equality of the sexes, she believed that women had their own spheres of abilities and interests, as men did. Therefore, she promoted the concepts of cooperative housekeeping and of women voting for other women to represent them in a separate legislative body. The first of these ideas led to the establishment of a cooperative laundry in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1870; the second, to her participation in a Woman’s Parliament which met in New York City in 1869. Both of these endeavors are examined at length, as are her views on abolition, marriage, immigration, education, and sexual mores.The sources of information include numerous letters which she wrote; letters written by others about her; and her published works, which include a novel, pamphlets, and journal and newspaper articles.

This thesis investigates if and how poor, mostly minority citizens can be mobilized by a campaign whose principal policy objective would materially enhance their lives by including them in a major public program. The question is put to the test through a multi-dimensional study of voter mobilization in Alabama during the 2014 election for Governor. At stake in the election was whether Alabama would expand Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act in Alabama, an issue emblematic of "submergedness" (Mettler, 2011). In order to understand the extent to which the policy was submerged - measured by knowledge and awareness of the policy, along with its key provisions - I distributed a survey to 868 Alabamians weeks before the election. The survey used the experimental design of conjoint analysis to test which aspects of the policy were most persuasive among the target population. Additionally, I performed a randomized field experiment across the four major metropolitan areas of Alabama, micro-targeting 6,021 registered voters living in the "Coverage Gap," citizens who could gain health insurance if Medicaid were expanded. The campaign yielded negligible effects on voter turnout among subjects in the Coverage Gap, even though the interventions shifted voter knowledge, 'surfacing' the policy. In addition to the survey and field experiments, this research benefits from qualitative insights gathered in 22 semi-structured interviews conducted among poor Alabamians, many of whom were uninsured. From these interviews, it became clear that the political disengagement of the poor is deeply entrenched, prohibitive of policy-based mobilization. Disengagement is driven by a complex mix of barriers to registration and perceptions of political inefficacy based on interpretations of extant policy designs. These results have important implications for our understanding of the limitations of policy-based mobilization, suggesting that more attention must be paid to how current policies shape predispositions for mobilization.

The relationship between work status (working and retired) and the degree of formal and informal social participation among elderly respondents sixty to sixty-nine years of age was studied and analyzed. A national probability sample of 735 elderly Americans provided the major data source. Elaboration model was used to further understand and explain the relationship between work status and the degree of formal and informal social participation. Ten control variables were introduced: work status of spouse, marital status, occupational status, family income, satisfaction with health, size of kinship network, race, gender, and size of community of residence. Indices of formal and informal social participation were constructed.

No description available.

Using a combination of public institutional records and private personal records, this thesis explores how a newly emerging America constructed its ideas of physical disability in the era of the War for Independence. In the colonies, physical disability never stood alone as an independent category of difference, but was anchored in discourses of poverty and morality. However, the tumultuous events that occurred during the period 177 5 to 1818 forced this developing nation to confront physical disability to an extent that had not previously been required. The result was a conceptual and legislative shift, which caused the understanding of physical disability to be fundamentally redefined and become something identifiable in its own right. To analyse how, and why, this happened, this thesis looks at the public, cultural discourse of disability through this period, and examines the legal developments and the lived experiences that were occurring alongside it. By considering how disability was used in public commentaries to allegorise the split with Britain, it highlights the complicated environment and conceptual tumult which faced disabled Revolutionary War veterans on their return. Analysis of the trajectory of disability pension legislation suggests an infant nation testing the waters with early welfare programmes, often with limited success. However, these early initiatives were the progenitors of the first. national pension program. These developments created a distinct legal construction of disability that was seemingly at odds with the negative representation of disability in the public arena and, through medical and legal classifications, created a more formal platform for the conceptualisation of disability to emerge. To complement the institutional perspective, this thesis explores the lives of 523 disabled Revolutionary War veterans, using information they gave in their applications for a disability pension. This experiential approach expounds the ways in which disability was managed, how it shaped - and was shaped by - pre-existing expectations of gender roles, and how these experiences were often determined by class. Pertinent topics include family life, work life, and the ways in which veterans understood and employed their identities as disabled pensioners. Unlike the post-Civil War period a Revolutionary War disability never became the symbol of patriotism and bravery that the empty sleeve of the Civil War amputee did. Using the experiences of disabled former Revolutionary servicemen and contrasting this with the public discourse and national memory of the war, this thesis presents the reasons why this was the case.

This study was designed to provide an overall estimate of proprietary schools' contribution to the equality of educational opportunity in the postsecondary educational system. Two compatible databases, the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS) and High School and Beyond (HSB), were used to draw two parallel proprietary samples. Each proprietary sample was compared with its counterparts in the community college and the four-year institution sectors. Gender, race, socioeconomic status, aptitude, and Students' and their mothers' educational aspiration were the factors tested in the study to determine the extent to which they contribute to students' choice of proprietary schools and their educational attainment in a given period of time. Discriminant analysis was utilized to differentiate the characteristics of proprietary school enrollees from the characteristics of those who entered community colleges and four-year institutions. Multiple regression was conducted on each group of students to identify the major factors associated with students' educational attainment by the type of institution of first enrollment. The major findings of this study include: (1) Proprietary schools enrolled a considerable number of "disadvantaged" students: women, minorities, people from low socioeconomic background, and those with low aptitude scores. (2) Students’ and their mothers’ educational aspirations were the most influential factors affecting students’ choice among the three types of postsecondary institutions, and proprietary students’ aspirations were lower than that of community college and four-year institution students. (3) Most proprietary Students did not reach the level of a two-year degree or beyond, and those who eventually attained a two-year degree or beyond were very likely to be students with high aptitude. (4) Study of the delayed entrants into proprietary schools confirmed the major findings derived from the initial entrants, except the aspiration variable played a less significant role in determining the educational attainment of delayed entrants than that for the initial entrants. / Ed. D.

This thesis discusses the results of a survey given to college women focusing on the various roles women must play, with a focus on their economic aspects.

No description available.

In America, the advent of industrial capitalism promised an era of prosperity and progress. For some, however, it had marked a period of hazardous life at home and at work, and social dislocation. Dissenters to this economic arrangement found themselves in opposition to an array of forcessocial, political, economic and intellectual-which buttressed the industrial capitalist order. Their responses in words and in action would substantiate and characterize American social politics. The rise of social politics is a trans-Atlantic phenomenon: a product of the vibrant intellectual exchange of progressive thought during the Progressive era. It sought to restructure the prevailing arrangements of the American political framework to account for social concerns associated with industrial capitalism. During the early twentieth century, a choice was made by many progressives to translate social politics into an explicitly partisan vehicle. The Progressive Party, which emerged in 1912, would be organized and employed by progressives to give a partisan home and a national platform to social politics. The party's role and impact in the progressive movement can be better understood by analyzing and examining how the Progressives acted on the principles of social politics.