Today, we'll cover our remaining topics in elder law, and then begin our final push on policymaking, leading up to presentation of your legislative proposals next week.

Today, we will cover policy issues affecting the elderly. Many areas are encompassed, including health, long-term care, age discrimination, and grandparent visitation rights (see my Texas Tech lecture notes).

We'll probably spend the most time in class discussing Social Security, however, as it's an intergenerational program that affects workers and retirees of all ages. One student has already commented to me about the rules governing divorced spouses of Social Security recipients (described in the Polikoff book). Here are some helpful links:

How much money is coming into the federal government's Social Security Trust Fund each year and how much is going out to pay benefits to retirees
(a key distinction to keep in mind is that between each year's incoming and outgoing money, and the cumulative surplus that has built up at any one time)

How much money is deducted from each of your paychecks under "FICA" (Social Security and Medicare) payroll tax

Article on projected trends regarding Social Security's long-term solvency

Polikoff's book cites a report (p. 206, footnote 37; p. 240) by Favreault and Steuerle on ideas for changes to Social Security; I was able to find a PowerPoint slide show by these authors.

UPDATE: This is the article on long-term care that we discovered during today's class (see also p. 100 of the Bogenschneider book).

For the first half of class today, we'll finish up Welfare Reform. Then, for the second half, we'll cover the Family and Medical Leave Act, a federal law enacted in 1993.

In the Bogenschneider book, she discusses Welfare Reform within the broader context of family poverty. Specifically, on pp. 103-104, she talks about the role of economic mobility. If a family is poor, what are the prospects of the children, through education, hard work, and creativity, moving up the economic ladder? This document (particularly Figure 4) provides some useful information.

Regarding the Family and Medical Leave Act, states are permitted to enact more generous leave policies than available in the FMLA, but not ones that are less generous. Here are a couple of web links for further information:

List of states with FMLA provisions more generous than federal version (this list pre-dates the passage of paid leave by a few states)

Wisconsin version of FMLA

Today's agenda:

1. Our quiz on last week's material.

2. Our guest lecture from Dr. Berger (as described in the previous posting).

3. Beginning the topic of Welfare Reform.

UPDATE AFTER DR. BERGER'S PRESENTATION

I made a graphic of the diagram I wrote on the board during Dr. Berger's presentation, putting his lecture notes into pictorial form.


Again, the key point is that there inevitably will be error in human judgment, and the red areas illustrate the two types of error. The two types of error work in the fashion of a trade-off -- lowering one will raise the other. Policymakers must craft regulations to achieve the trade-off they want, within Constitutional parameters (see Section 15.4, p. 198 of Krause and Meyer's Family Law book).

Today, we'll begin covering various issues under the heading of "Children and the Law." These include parental responsibility/authority, child maltreatment, adoption/foster care, and early cognitive/behavioral enrichment programs (e.g., Head Start). On Monday, Dr. Lawrence (Lonnie) Berger of UW-Madison's School of Social Work will come in to give a guest presentation on child maltreatment, so we'll largely leave that topic until Monday.

Today, we'll be continuing with our topic of divorce. Our focus now, however, will shift to how courts decide issues involving children (e.g., child support, custody).

This June 13, 2008 article on the finalization of Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe's divorce describes how a case can be separated into the divorce itself (i.e., the ending of the marriage) and the often more complex issues involving children and other matters. Quoting from the article:

Back in October, 2007, the pair were divorced (both became legally single again) - but the court reserved all other issues in the case for future ruling. This meant that there was no finalization of child custody, child support, spousal support or division of property. This is a process called bifurcation - used sometimes when financial and other issues are complex.

Today we'll be covering the law of divorce. One of the key issues -- if not the key issue -- is the evolution from the 1960s through the 1980s from a fault-based divorce system to a no-fault one. Some observers argue that we've gone from a system where divorce was too difficult to obtain, to one where it's too easy to obtain. However, attempts to come up with new policies, such as covenant marriage, have not proven very popular.

Family policy students often have interesting ideas for possible new ways to handle divorce. I look forward to hearing them in class or in the online comments!

SOME TUESDAY NIGHT UPDATES ON ISSUES THAT WERE RAISED IN TODAY'S CLASS

Similar to Erin's idea about requiring marital counseling during the divorce waiting period to ensure that the waiting time is actually used to try to repair the relationship, here's a proposal I found on the web.

Another topic of discussion was whether courts could restrict the behavior of parties going through a divorce during any waiting periods that may exist. I found two potentially relevant documents in this area. The first document, from a Wisconsin county's family court, talks about automatic restrictions on conduct such as harassment, and concealing and destroying property. These seem to be consistent with common sense. The second document, from a divorce attorneys' organization, goes over which states have waiting periods to remarry after a divorce (and if so, how long). Relatively few states have remarriage waiting periods.

Lastly, a question came up about whether states that have longer waiting periods have lower divorce rates (perhaps because some couples may reconcile during the waiting period or a waiting period could be a deterrent to divorce). Also as I said in class, lacking a tightly controlled experiment, any correlation (potentially) obtained between states' having long waiting periods and low divorce rates would be open to different possible interpretations. Perhaps waiting periods do affect divorce rates. However, it could be that citizens' highly valuing marriage (which could help keep divorce rates low) could also lead to the legislature passing laws implementing waiting periods (as an aside, I also maintain a blog on correlation and causality). Anyway, the following article (available via the UW-Madison library website) presents a pretty rigorous examination of factors that might lead to divorce.

Sweezy, K. & Tiefenthaler, J. (1996). Do state-level variables affect divorce rates? Review of Social Economy, 44, 47-65.

These authors' conclusion: "Both the state waiting period and the type of state property distribution laws are insignificant in determining the probability of divorce" (p. 63).

Monday, we will first have our quiz. We will then take a few minutes to discuss what's expected in the second part of your legislative proposal papers.

Our substantive topic for Monday (and perhaps Tuesday, depending on our progress) will be the laws of marriage. We will also consider alternative relationships such as common law marriage and civil unions/domestic partnerships.

To bring local relevance to this topic, we'll discuss the state of Wisconsin's ban on same-sex marriage and civil unions (by ballot proposition in 2006), and the questions it raises about partner benefits for UW-Madison employees.

The University of Michigan has been going through a similar situation, due to the state of Michigan's same-sex marriage ban. A ruling from a state court in Michigan, of course, has no legal bearing on Wisconsin. Still, some legal observers seem to want to speculate about whether there are any possible implications of the UM case for UW.

Today is our class visit to the State Capitol building, to meet with Representative Terese Berceau, whose district includes Madison (see the entry below for logistical details). Rep. Berceau's official website is available in the links section to the right.

Of added relevance to our class, Rep. Berceau serves on the Children and Family Law Committee, whose work is detailed here. If you click on the "Items Currently in Committee" heading on the Committee page, you'll see a list of pending matters. One of them pertains to "placement of pets in a divorce."

In setting up the visit, Rep. Berceau's staff asked if there were issues we wanted to discuss when we came in. Here is what I sent them:

Topics/objectives of visit: To make our visit fit most effectively with the content of the class, these are some issues that perhaps could be discussed:

(1) How can family scholars help legislators and their staff members make decisions that reflect the latest research findings on improving the quality of life for families and children -- both at the level of the Children and Family Law Committee and for the legislature as a whole?

(2) How can family scholars help ensure that legislators will examine the potential effect of various policies on families, even if a policy seemingly applies only to individuals? As an example, a law about workplace hours might appear to affect only individual workers, but there could be spillover effects on family life, such as disruption of the worker's existing child care arrangement.

(3) What are some key upcoming issues in child and family policy, in Rep. Berceau's opinion?

To get an idea of some issues considererd important by family-policy interest groups in the state, here are the webpages of Wisconsin Family Action (more to the political right) and the Wisconsin Council on Children & Families (more to the political left).

Today, we will cover the basics of the legal system, including both the federal and state court systems. This is important because many of the rights to establish and engage in intimate conduct in one's relationships have been established through court challenges to legislation that had restricted personal behavior.

***

Here are some updates on our upcoming visit to Representative Berceau's office in the state capitol, Thursday at 2:00. We should go straight to her office, which is Room 208 North (if you stand in the rotunda, under the big dome, you should see signs by one of the sets of staircases that say "North Gallery"). The 200-level offices are two floors above the ground level.

As far as bus travel, we should be able to catch one of the following trips from the corner of Johnson and Charter to the capitol (as taken from the bus system's trip planner):

Route(s) Depart Arrive

19 --- 1:21p --- 1:30p

02 --- 1:26p --- 1:35p

13 --- 1:51p --- 1:57p

Today, we'll review basic principles of government, such as "how a bill becomes a law," and federal vs. state government. We'll then start discussing policymaking from a family perspective.

One of the examples Bogenschneider cites early in her book is Badger Care, a Wisconsin state health insurance program developed in conjunction with federal programs. Over in the Current Events section of this blog (in the right-hand column) is a recent update on some interesting developments with Badger Care. In addition to issues of cost and trying to help the most people, the recent development with Badger Care also reminds us of how things don't always work out according to plan (i.e., the "law of unintended consequences"). I would argue that the unexpected development with Badger Care is good, but it has created some immediate financial issues.

Welcome to HDFS 535, A Family Perspective in Policymaking. In this class, we will apply ideas from human development and family studies to see how governments and other organizations can enact policies to help families.

I have been a professor of HDFS at Texas Tech University for the past 11 years, where I have twice taught a family policy course similar to our current course (although the one at Texas Tech has been at the graduate level). I also taught a summer class at UW-Madison a year ago (Family Stress and Coping).

I received my Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1989, so I'm a Big Ten kind of guy!

UW-Madison is one of the best places, if not the best, to have a family policy course, for two reasons. One is that it's the home of the Policy Institute for Family Impact Seminars, headed by Prof. Karen Bogenschneider (whose book we will be using). The other reason is that Madison is the capital of Wisconsin, so we'll be able to visit the capitol building and meet with a local legislator.

Today will be devoted heavily to introductory matters. Among other things, we'll start discussing the scenarios from the Polikoff book.

I hope you find the course educational and enjoyable!