Jeffrey Milyo

A Measure of Media Bias

In this paper we estimate ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) scores for major media outlets such as the New York Times, USA Today, Fox News Special Report, and all three network television news shows. Our estimates allow us to answer such questions as Is the average article in the New York Times more liberal than the average speech by Tom Daschle? or Is the average story on Fox News more conservative than the average speech by Bill Frist? To compute our measure, we count the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks and other policy groups. We compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same groups in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate. By comparing the citation patterns we construct an ADA score. As a simplified example, imagine that there were only two think tanks, and suppose that the New York Times cited the first think tank twice as often as the second. Our method asks: What is the typical ADA score of members of Congress who exhibit the same frequency (2:1) in their speeches? This is the score that we would assign to the New York Times. Our results show a strong liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with many conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received a score far left of center. Outlets such as USA Today, NPRs Morning Edition, NBCs Nightly News and ABCs World News Tonight were moderately left. The most centrist outlets (but still left-leaning) by our measure were the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNNs NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABCs Good Morning America. Fox News Special Report, while right of center, was closer to the center than any of the three major networks evening news broadcasts. All of our findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample.

Estimating the Impact of State Policies and Institutions with Mixed-Level Data

Researchers are often interested in the effects of state policies and institutions on individual behavior or other outcomes in sub-state-level observational units, such as election results in state legislative districts. In this article, we examine the issue of clustered data in state and local politics research and the analytical problems it can cause. Standard estimation methods applied in most regression models do not properly account for the clustering of observations within states, leading analysts to overstate the statistical significance of coefficient estimates, especially of state-level factors. We discuss the theory behind two approaches for dealing with clustering—clustered standard errors and multilevel modeling—and argue that calculating clustered standard errors is a more straightforward and practical approach, especially when working with large datasets or many cross-level interactions. We demonstrate the relevance of this topic by replicating a recent study of the effects of state post-registration laws on voter turnout (Wolfinger, Highton, and Mullin 2005).

Reexamining the Evidence of an Ecological Association between Income Inequality and Health

Several recent studies have made the provocative claim that income inequality is an important determinant of population health. The primary evidence for this hypothesis is the repeated finding--across countries and across U.S. states--that there is an association between income inequality and aggregate health outcomes. However, most of these studies examine only a single cross section of data and employ few (or even no) control variables. We examine the relationship between income inequality and aggregate health outcomes across thirty countries over a four-decade span and across forty-eight U.S. states over five decades. In large part, our findings contradict previous claims.

Corporate PAC Campaign Contributions in Perspective

There is a vast empirical literature on the allocation of corporate PAC contributions in Congressional elections and the influence that these contributions have on the policy-making process. The attention given to PAC contributions is far in excess of their actual importance. Corporate PAC contributions account for about 10% of Congressional campaign spending and major corporations allocate far more money to lobbying or philanthropy than their affiliated PACs make in contributions.

Income Inequality and Health Status in the United States: Evidence from the Current Population Survey

Several recent studies have identified an association between income inequality and aggregate health outcomes; this has been taken to be evidence that inequality is detrimental to individual health. We use data from the 1995-99 March Current Population Survey to examine the effect of income inequality on individual health status for both the general population and those individuals in poverty. We find no consistent association between income inequality and individual health status. Our results contradict recent claims that the psychosocial effects of income inequality have dramatic consequences for individual health outcomes.

Is Exposure to Income Inequality a Public Health Concern? Lagged Effects of Income Inequality on Individual and Population Health

OBJECTIVE To examine the health consequences of exposure to income inequality. DATA SOURCES Secondary analysis employing data from several publicly available sources. Measures of individual health status and other individual characteristics are obtained from the March Current Population Survey (CPS). State-level income inequality is measured by the Gini coefficient based on family income, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau and Al-Samarrie and Miller (1967). State-level mortality rates are from the Vital Statistics of the United States, other state-level characteristics are from U.S. census data as reported in the Statistical Abstract of the United States. STUDY DESIGN We examine the effects of state-level income inequality lagged from 5 to 29 years on individual health by estimating probit models of poor/fair health status for samples of adults aged 25-74 in the 1995 through 1999 March CPS. We control for several individual characteristics, including educational attainment and household income, as well as regional fixed effects. We use multivariate regression to estimate the effects of income inequality lagged 10 and 20 years on state-level mortality rates for 1990, 1980, 1970, and 1960. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Lagged income inequality is not significantly associated with individual health status after controlling for regional fixed effects. Lagged income inequality is not associated with all cause mortality, but associated with reduced mortality from cardiovascular disease and malignant neoplasms, after controlling for state fixed-effects. CONCLUSIONS In contrast to previous studies that fail to control for regional variations in health outcomes, we find little support for the contention that exposure to income inequality is detrimental to either individual or population health.

Social Capital and Contributions in a Public-Goods Experiment

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 findings have inspired subsequent studies by economists examining the determinants of individual level measures of social capital (e.g., Alberto Alesina and Elianna La Ferrara 2002). However, experimental evidence from trust games conducted by Edward L. Glaeser, David I. Laibson, Jose A. Scheinkman and Christine L. Soutter (2001) calls into question the efficacy of the most prevalent measures of social capital employed in the literature. In contrast, we show that these same measures are significantly associated with contributions in a public goods experiment and perform as well as the alternative measures of social trust suggested by Glaeser, et al. Because social capital is thought to influence wellbeing through its effect on public good provision, our results bolster previous empirical work on the causes and consequences of social capital.

Did the Devil Make Them Do it? The Effects of Religion in Public Goods and Trust Games

Observational studies frequently support the popular belief that religion is associated with more other-regarding behavior; however, such studies are well known to be susceptible to the confounding effects of unobserved determinants of cooperation and trust. We test whether religious affiliation and participation in religious services are associated with behavior in public goods and trust games. Contrary to popular wisdom, religious affiliation is unrelated to individual behavior. However, we do find some weak evidence that among subjects attending religious services, increased participation is associated with behavior in both public goods and trust games.

State Social Capital and Individual Health Status

Recent studies have found that two state-level measures of social capital, average levels of civic participation and trust, are associated with improvements in individual health status. In this study we employ these measures, together with the Putnam index of state social capital, to examine several key aspects of the relationship between state social capital and individual health. We find that for all three measures, the association with health status persists after carefully adjusting for household income and that for two measures, mistrust and the Putnam index, the size of this association warrants further attention. Using the Putnam index, we find particular support for the hypothesis that social capital has a more pronounced salutary effect for the poor. Our findings generate both support for the social capital and health hypothesis and a number of implications for future research.

Gender Bias and Selection Bias in House Elections

We demonstrate that female incumbents areof higher average candidate quality than maleincumbents. This quality difference is the result ofbarriers to entry faced by potential femalecandidates, although the observed effects of thisquality differential on vote share are partiallymasked by the fact that female incumbents are alsomore likely to be opposed or to be opposed by highquality challengers. Using data from House electionsfor 1984–1992, we estimate that the gender-baseddifferential in candidate quality yields an extra sixpercentage points of vote share for femaleincumbents.