Search Results

Source: American Journal of Political Science
Resulting in 3 citations.
1. Crewson, Philip E.
A Comparative Analysis of Public and Private Sector Entrant Quality
American Journal of Political Science 39,3 (August 1995): 628-639.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2111647
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Private Sector; Public Sector

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Public and private sector employees differ in ways that run counter to the prediction that poor monetary incentives or image battering will leave the public sector disadvantaged in hiring quality employees. When controlling for sex, race, economic status, and occupation, entrants into the federal sector are better qualified than private sector entrants. Past research on the issue of employee quality is supplemented with a comparative analysis of public and private sector entrants during the 1980s. In the comparative analysis, AFQT scores are used as an indicator of quality. Contrary to predictions of a crisis in public employee competence, the federal government was able to attract higher quality entrants during the 1980s than the private sector.
Bibliography Citation
Crewson, Philip E. "A Comparative Analysis of Public and Private Sector Entrant Quality." American Journal of Political Science 39,3 (August 1995): 628-639.
2. Crewson, Philip E.
Guyot, James F.
Sartor Resartus: A Comparative Analysis of Public and Private Sector Entrant Quality Reanalyzed
American Journal of Political Science 41,3 (July 1997): 1057-1065.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2111687
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Family Background and Culture; Gender Differences; Private Sector; Public Sector; Racial Differences

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

In "A Comparative Analysis of Public and Private Sector Entrant Quality" (Crewson 1995), one of us challenged, with systematic empirical evidence, a major proposition from the professional folklore. This proposition is that government in the United States faces a quality crisis because the best minds choose not to go into the public but instead into the private sector. The proposition was tested and found false by means of a cross sectional comparison of a representative national sample of entrants into comparable occupations in the federal sector, the state sector, and the private sector. When Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores are taken as the indicator of quality, and the regression equation controls for occupation, family background, race, and sex, then the state sector is found to employ persons with scores no lower than the scores of those in the private sector, and the federal sector employs those with significantly higher scores. The ancillary proposition from the folklore is causal rather than descriptive. It suggests that any lower level of public sector quality or any decline over time in that quality may be, in part, a result of increased diversity in the federal workforce. That such diversity does make a difference was denied with the conclusion that, "[a]lthough there has been an influx of women and minorities during the 1980s, the federal government does not appear to have imperiled quality in its effort to increase diversity." In this replication we strengthen the disconfirmation of the first proposition and empirically test the second proposition. The further undermining of the quality crisis myth proceeds by both defining more firmly the validity of the AFQT as an indicator of "quality" and testing the effects of diversity on the original regression equation. Copyright 1997 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
Bibliography Citation
Crewson, Philip E. and James F. Guyot. "Sartor Resartus: A Comparative Analysis of Public and Private Sector Entrant Quality Reanalyzed." American Journal of Political Science 41,3 (July 1997): 1057-1065.
3. Ojeda, Christopher
The Two Income‐Participation Gaps
American Journal of Political Science 62,4 (October 2018): 813-829.
Also: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12375
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult, NLSY97
Publisher: Wiley Online
Keyword(s): General Social Survey (GSS); Income; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Political Attitudes/Behaviors/Efficacy; Socioeconomic Background; Socioeconomic Status (SES); Voting Behavior

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Scholars have long attributed the income‐participation gap--which is the observation that the rich participate in politics more than the poor--to income‐based differences in the resources, recruitment, mobilization, and psychology underpinning political behavior. I argue that these explanations require a longer time horizon than the empirical evidence permits. Education, for example, typically ends in young adulthood and so cannot logically mediate the effect of income on participation in late adulthood. To resolve this temporal problem, I propose that there are two income‐participation gaps: one based on current economic status and another on childhood economic history. I situate this argument in a developmental framework and present evidence for it using six studies. The results, while mixed at times, indicate that there are two gaps, that the size of each gap changes over the life course, and that their joint effect creates a larger income‐participation gap than estimated by prior research.
Bibliography Citation
Ojeda, Christopher. "The Two Income‐Participation Gaps." American Journal of Political Science 62,4 (October 2018): 813-829.