Schools, Skills, and Synapses
James J. Heckman
Abstract; PDF
Education and the Age Profile of Literacy into Adulthood
Elizabeth Cascio, Damon Clark, Nora Gordon
Abstract; PDF
Welfare Payments and Crime
C. Fritz Foley
Abstract; PDF
Trends in Men's Earnings Volatility: What Does the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Show?
Donggyun Shin, Gary Solon
Abstract; PDF
Abstract
Background: Catastrophic disasters often are associated with massive structural, economic, and population devastation; less understood are the long-term mental health consequences. This study measures the prevalence and predictors of mental health distress and disability of hurricane survivors over an extended period of recovery in a postdisaster setting.
Methods: A representative sample of 1077 displaced or greatly affected households was drawn in 2006 using a stratified cluster sampling of federally subsidized emergency housing settings in Louisiana and Mississippi, and of Mississippi census tracts designated as having experienced major damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Two rounds of data collection were conducted: a baseline face-to-face interview at 6 to 12 months post-Katrina, and a telephone follow-up at 20 to 23 months after the disaster. Mental health disability was measured using the Medical Outcome Study Short Form 12, version 2 mental component summary score. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were conducted examining socioeconomic, demographic, situational, and attitudinal factors associated with mental health distress and disability.
Results: More than half of the cohort at both baseline and follow-up reported significant mental health distress. Self-reported poor health and safety concerns were persistently associated with poorer mental health. Nearly 2 years after the disaster, the greatest predictors of poor mental health included situational characteristics such as greater numbers of children in a household and attitudinal characteristics such as fatalistic sentiments and poor self-efficacy. Informal social support networks were associated significantly with better mental health status. Housing and economic circumstances were not independently associated with poorer mental health.
Conclusions: Mental health distress and disability are pervasive issues among the US Gulf Coast adults and children who experienced long-term displacement or other serious effects as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. As time progresses postdisaster, social and psychological factors may play greater roles in accelerating or impeding recovery among affected populations. Efforts to expand disaster recovery and preparedness policies to include long-term social re-engagement efforts postdisaster should be considered as a means of reducing mental health sequelae.
]]>In 2007, the share of families with an unemployed member was 6.3 per-
cent, little changed from the prior year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. The proportion of families with an unemployed member remained lower than the recent peak of 8.1 percent in 2003. Of the nation’s 77.9 million families, the proportion that had at least one employed member was little changed in 2007 at 82.6 percent.
These data on employment, unemployment, and family relationships are collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of approximately 60,000 households. Families include married-couple families, as well as families maintained by a man or woman with no spouse present.
]]>Illegal sales of tobacco products to underage youth have reached an all-time low under the Synar Amendment program, a federal-state partnership program aimed at ending illegal tobacco sales to minors, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration announced today.
The national average of illegal tobacco sales to minors has dropped since the program’s inception from 40.1 percent in fiscal year 1997 to 10.5 percent in fiscal year 2007, the report said.
Nearly all states and the District of Columbia have achieved a major Synar program goal – having 20 percent or less of their state’s tobacco product retailers engaging in illegal sales of tobacco to minors. These levels stand in sharp contrast with the situation 11 years ago at the Synar program’s inception, when only four states met this goal.
More than half of the states were able to drive down levels of illegal retail sales of tobacco to minors to 10 percent or less in fiscal year 2007. Mississippi reported the nation’s lowest level of illegal sales of tobacco products to minors (3.2 percent), while Massachusetts reported the highest (22.7 percent).
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The SAMHSA report notes that the successful implementation of the Synar Amendment program (named for the late U.S. Rep. Mike Synar of Oklahoma) relied on vigorous enforcement, supportive public policies and development of social climates discouraging youth tobacco use.
Is the Obesity Epidemic a Public Health Problem? A Decade of Research on the Economics of Obesity
Tomas Philipson, Richard Posner
Abstract; PDF
Searching for Optimal Inequality/Incentives
Anders Björklund, Richard Freeman
Abstract; PDF
The Narrowing Gap in New York City Teacher Qualifications and its Implications for Student Achievement in High-Poverty Schools
Donald Boyd, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, Jonah Rockoff, James Wyckoff
Abstract; PDF
Who Leaves? Teacher Attrition and Student Achievement
Donald Boyd, Pam Grossman, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, James Wyckoff
Abstract; PDF
Under the Weather: Health, Schooling, and Economic Consequences of Early-Life Rainfall
Sharon L. Maccini, Dean Yang
Abstract; PDF
Who Gentrifies Low-Income Neighborhoods?
Terra McKinnish, Randall Walsh, Kirk White
Abstract; PDF
Health, Human Capital, and African American Migration Before 1910
Trevon D. Logan
Abstract; PDF
The Impact of Earnings Disregards on the Behavior of Low Income Families
Jordan D. Matsudaira, Rebecca M. Blank
Abstract; PDF
Bayesian Learning in Social Networks
Daron Acemoglu, Munther A. Dahleh, Ilan Lobel, Asuman Ozdaglar
Abstract; PDF
Cigarette Taxes and the Transition from Youth to Adult Smoking: Smoking Initiation, Cessation, and Participation
Philip DeCicca, Donald S. Kenkel, Alan D. Mathios
Abstract; PDF
To understand better a possible future constant global population that is demographically heterogeneous, this paper analyzes several models. Classical theory of stationary populations generally fails to apply. However, if constant global population size P(global) is the sum of all country population sizes, and if constant global annual number of births B(global) is the sum of the annual number of births of all countries, and if constant global life expectancy at birth e(global) is the population-weighted mean of the life expectancy at birth of all countries, then B(global) x e(global) always exceeds P(global) unless all countries have the same life expectancy at birth.
]]>I suspect, on the basis of similar logic, that workers demand less efficiency from the health system than they would if they knew the full cost that they pay via forgone wages for coverage or if they knew the actual cost of the services being provided. I similarly suspect that making the underlying costs associated with employment-based insurance more transparent may prove to be quite important in containing health care costs. As transparency increases and workers see how much their income is being reduced for employers’ contributions and what those contributions are paying for, there may be a broader change in cost-consciousness that shifts demand. For workers and dependents with employment-based insurance, deductibles and copayments account for only about a fifth of their health care spending. The remainder comes from insurance premiums, only a quarter of which are paid directly by workers.
]]>This website is an integrated collection of the indicators and analyses published in The Condition of Education 2000–2008. Some indicators may have been updated since they appeared in print.
Includes indicator list, user's guide, highlights from 2008, and special analyses list.
]]>Background: Most models of successful ageing do not allow for the possibility of living "successfully," despite some degree of cognitive or physical impairment. We reviewed the successful ageing and related quality of life literature to identify their potential predictors. We then tested our hypotheses that wellbeing in adversity would be predicted by mental health (anxiety and depression) and social factors rather than physical health and that it would be stable over time.
Method: We interviewed 224 people with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and their family carers, recruited to be representative of those living with AD in the community. We re-interviewed 122 (73.1% of eligible) participants 18 months later. Our main outcome measure was the perception of the person with AD on their life as a whole.
Results: Mean "wellbeing in adversity" scores did not change significantly over time (t = 0.23). Social relationships, subjective mental health, health perception, activities of daily living and baseline wellbeing in adversity were the significant correlates of wellbeing in adversity on univariate analysis. Only baseline wellbeing in adversity and mental health score were significant predictors in our regression analysis. In a well fitting structural equation model, less severe dementia and better health perception predicted fewer mental health problems and social relationships, but were not direct predictors of wellbeing in adversity at 18 months.
Conclusion: Successful ageing was common among a cohort of people with dementia. The most important predictors of this were mental health and social relationships, which fully mediated the relationship we found between health perception and wellbeing 18 months later.
]]>Objective: To examine the role of potential mediating factors in explaining the IQ–mortality relation.
Design, setting and participants: A total of 4316 male former Vietnam-era US army personnel with IQ test results at entry into the service in late adolescence/early adulthood in the 1960/1970s (mean age at entry 20.4 years) participated in a telephone survey and medical examination in middle age (mean age 38.3 years) in 1985–6. They were then followed up for mortality experience for 15 years.
Main results: In age-adjusted analyses, higher IQ scores were associated with reduced rates of total mortality (hazard ratio (HR)per SD increase in IQ 0.71; 95% CI 0.63 to 0.81). This relation did not appear to be heavily confounded by early socioeconomic position or ethnicity. The impact of adjusting for some potentially mediating risk indices measured in middle age on the IQ–mortality relation (marital status, alcohol consumption, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, pulse rate, blood glucose, body mass index, psychiatric and somatic illness at medical examination) was negligible (<10% attenuation in risk). Controlling for others (cigarette smoking, lung function) had a modest impact (10–17%). Education (0.79; 0.69 to 0.92), occupational prestige (0.77; 0.68 to 0.88) and income (0.86; 0.75 to 0.98) yielded the greatest attenuation in the IQ–mortality gradient (21–52%); after their collective adjustment, the IQ–mortality link was effectively eliminated (0.92; 0.79 to 1.07).
Conclusions: In this cohort, socioeconomic position in middle age might lie on the pathway linking earlier IQ with later mortality risk but might also partly act as a surrogate for cognitive ability.
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Birthrates across the Continent are falling at drastic and, to many, alarming rates. Why are Europeans so hesitant to have children, and what does it mean for their future and for ours?
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AARP commissioned a nationwide survey to determine how people age 45 and older are responding to the current economic slowdown. The survey asked respondents for their assessments of the economy’s condition, whether they have taken actions in response to the changing economy, and if they felt enough was being done to address economic problems. This executive summary of the study reveals that a majority of those 45 or older believe the economy is in bad shape and that many have adapted their behaviors in response to the floundering economy.Survey findings include:
* Eighty-one percent say the economy is in fairly bad or very bad condition. A similar percentage (75%) feel the economy is getting worse.
* Over one-fourth of respondents said they are having trouble paying their mortgage or rent and one-third have stopped putting money into their retirement accounts. More than one-fourth (27%) of all workers 45+ have postponed plans to retire.
* As the economy slows and prices rise, most middle-aged and older respondents report that they are having difficulty paying for food, gas, utilities, and medicine, and are responding to the situation by cutting luxuries and postponing major purchases and travel.
* Respondents age 65 and over were less likely than those ages 45-64 to report having taken steps to cope with a slowing economy or increasing prices as a result of the recent economic slowdown. This does not indicate that the older population is better off financially. Rather, the data suggest that the 65 and over group had, even prior to the economic downturn, been forced to adjust their spending habits because of their work status, fixed income, and rising costs.
Since World War II there has been: (i) a rise in the fraction of time that married households allocate to market work, (ii) an increase in the rate of divorce, and (iii) a decline in the rate of marriage. It is argued here that labor-saving technological progress in the household sector can explain these facts. This makes it more feasible for singles to maintain their own home, and for married women to work. To address this question, a search model of marriage and divorce, which incorporates household production, is developed. An extension looks back at the prewar era.
]]>NCCP’s Family Economic Security Profiles provide state-specific data on low-income children and families and highlight state policy choices to promote work attachment and advancement, income adequacy, and asset development.
Download all 50 states, or individual states (PDFs).
]]>- Youth substance use in the past year was generally higher within one-parent households than within two-parent households for both mother-child and father-child pairs and was generally highest among youth in father-child pairs within one-parent households.
- Parent awareness of youth use of cigarettes and alcohol in the past year increased with the youth's increasing age among both mother-child and father-child pairs.
- Rates of parent awareness of youth substance use in the past year were generally higher among mothers in mother-child pairs than among fathers in father-child pairs and were generally highest among mothers in mother-child pairs within one-parent households.
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