TY - JOUR
T1 - Revisiting mothers' pensions
T2 - A critique of a social science classic and a new analysis
AU - Olasky, Sheera Joy
AU - Greenberg, David F.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - We identify methodological weaknesses in a paper by Skocpol, AbendWein, Howard, and Lehmann (1993) on the origins of mothers' pensions in the American states in the early twentieth century. These include a sub-optimal and potentially biased strategy for assessing the impact of state characteristics on the time to adoption of pensions, as well as the use of a backward stepwise regression procedure for selecting independent variables. To determine whether Skocpol et al.'s conclusions remain valid, we recreated most of their dataset and used methods that are more appropriate for the analysis of duration data, including the Cox and complementary cloglog event history procedures. While we find support for several of their claims, our findings allow for a more straightforward interpretation of the role of explanatory variables, and the temporal dependence of the adoption process.
AB - We identify methodological weaknesses in a paper by Skocpol, AbendWein, Howard, and Lehmann (1993) on the origins of mothers' pensions in the American states in the early twentieth century. These include a sub-optimal and potentially biased strategy for assessing the impact of state characteristics on the time to adoption of pensions, as well as the use of a backward stepwise regression procedure for selecting independent variables. To determine whether Skocpol et al.'s conclusions remain valid, we recreated most of their dataset and used methods that are more appropriate for the analysis of duration data, including the Cox and complementary cloglog event history procedures. While we find support for several of their claims, our findings allow for a more straightforward interpretation of the role of explanatory variables, and the temporal dependence of the adoption process.
KW - Event history analysis
KW - Mothers' pensions
KW - Skocpol
KW - Stepwise regression
KW - Welfare state
KW - Women's associations
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U2 - 10.1108/S0895-993520160000024010
DO - 10.1108/S0895-993520160000024010
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85006253049
SN - 0895-9935
VL - 24
SP - 93
EP - 119
JO - Research in Political Sociology
JF - Research in Political Sociology
ER -