10/01/2008

Fording Receives Award For His Work In Poverty Research

A recent study co-authored by Richard Fording, associate director of the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research (UKCPR), was awarded Best Paper on Public Policy for 2007 by the American Political Science Association.

The paper, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the American Sociological Review, focuses on administration of welfare sanctions, such as suspension of benefits, in Florida and how those actions intersect with race and prior disciplinary records of clients. The study finds that welfare case workers are more likely to sanction clients who were African-American or Latino, especially if those recipients had a prior record of benefit sanctions.

"The study used an experimental survey design where hypothetical client vignettes were presented to case workers," said Fording, an associate professor of political science in UK's College of Arts and Sciences.  "As researchers, we varied the names of the hypothetical clients within the survey so that case workers could infer the race of the client as being white, black, or Latino."

Among interesting study results, the researchers found that caseworkers with less than two years of job experience tended to sanction clients for rules violations more than co-workers with over two years of experience. The authors hypothesize that experienced case workers were more likely to have been trained in an era when sanctioning was deemphasized and that these case workers had a better understanding of the ramifications of sanctioning on clients.

To improve the validity of findings, researchers utilized access to actual administrative data from Florida welfare caseloads and compared their hypothetical model findings to actual practices. Their analysis found strong support for the findings from the survey.

Fording and his colleagues conclude that, "The results converge to provide striking evidence of the enduring power of race in American poverty governance.”

Fording is in his second year as associate director of the Center for Poverty Research. His research has concentrated on how politics and race influence policies aimed at poverty alleviation.

This is the second time Fording has received the APSA best public policy paper award with his co-authors. The co-authors of his forthcoming ASR publication include Sanford Schram and Linda Houser of Bryn Mawr College and Joe Soss of the University of Minnesota.

The authors received partial funding for their research from the UKCPR, which provides financial support for researchers -- both at UK and universities across the nation -- with a focus on poverty issues in the 16-state, southern U.S. region. The UKCPR is housed within the Gatton College of Business and Economics. 

--UK Public Relations