Recent studies argue that inequality exerts a negative influence on numerous social indicators. One explanation for this is that inequality reduces group cohesiveness (a component of social capital) and dampens popular support for expenditures on public goods and social programs. In light of...

Democrats and liberals are generally understood to be more caring and kind than Republicans and conservatives; for example, even conservative author and media personality Ben Wattenberg has acknowledged that "the word ‘conservative’ conjures up images of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, while...

Recent empirical studies from across the social and behavioral sciences find that social capital is associated with various measures of well-being, including economic growth (Stephen Knack and Phillip Keefer 1997) and mortality (Ichiro Kawachi, Bruce P. Kennedy and Kimberly Lochner 1997). These...

We explore the relationship between individual health status and three separate measures of state social capital using data from the Current Population Survey, the General Social Survey and Putnam (2000). We find that state social capital is significantly associated with health status, even...

Several recent studies have documented a significant positive effect of minority racial concentration on overall mortality rates. These findings pertain to ecological studies of states, cities, counties and census tracts in the U.S. In this paper, we examine whether this effect persists after...

Objective: To illustrate the potential sensitivity of ecological associations between mortality and certain socioeconomic factors to different methods of age-adjustment. Data Sources: Secondary analysis employing state-level data from several publicly available sources. Crude and age-adjusted...

The decline of political efficacy and political trust in the United States is often linked to the rise of money in politics. Both the courts and reform advocates justify restrictions on campaign donations and spending as necessary to restore faith in government. We conduct the first scientific...

Perhaps the common social choice problem that any of us face in practice is when we find ourselves in a group that must choose one restaurant at which all of us will eat. We propose a method where, similar to the I-choose-you-cut rule for dividing a cake, individuals in the group take turns...

In this preliminary study, we find little evidence that state campaign finance laws influence turnout in the states. These results hold for both aggregate analysis, using turnout in gubernatorial elections from 1950-2000, and individual-level analysis using self-reported voting decisions in the...

Recent studies of the association between inequality, social capital and mortality at the state level rely on idiosyncratic measures of state social capital. We demonstrate that these statistical associations are sensitive to the methods used to calculate state social capital.