Objectives: This article provides the first estimates of educational differences in age-specific prevalence, and changes in prevalence over time, of dementia by education levels in the United States. It also provides information on life expectancy, and changes in life expectancy, with dementia and cognitively healthy life for educational groups. Method: Data on cognition from the 2000 and 2010 Health and Retirement Study are used to classify respondents as having dementia, cognitive impairment without dementia (CIND), or being cognitively intact. Vital statistics data are used to estimate life tables for education groups and the Sullivan method is used to estimate life expectancy by cognitive state. Results: People with more education have lower prevalence of dementia, more years of cognitively healthy life, and fewer years with dementia. Years spent in good cognition increased for most sex-education groups and, conversely, years spent with dementia decreased for some. Mortality reduction was the most important factor in increasing cognitively healthy life. Change in the distribution of educational attainment has played a major role in the reduction of life with dementia in the overall population. Discussion: Differences in the burden of cognitive loss by education point to the significant cost of low social status both to individuals and to society

The New Deal was a response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Roosevelt administration built an incredible array of public works and established a series of regulations, government insurance, and poverty programs that are still in place today. This chapter examines the research in the last two decades on the monetary and fiscal policies of the New Deal; the public choice aspects of the distribution of New Deal funds to states, cities, and counties; the state income multiplier; and the impact of specific New Deal programs on a wide range of other socioeconomic outcomes. In the process it describes anticipated directions for future research.

Recent research addresses over-time changes in the macro-partisanship of state electorates. A fundamental question related to this research is whether changes in the political preferences of state electorates are primarily driven by compositional changes or voter conversion. In this paper, I argue partisan conversion is likely the predominant driver of shifts in states' political landscape. As to the causes of this conversion, I further argue that larger relative state income growth has been an unappreciated factor in shifting state macropolitics to the right. To test determinants of state political change, I construct regression models of shifts in presidential voting and self-identified ideology from 1990-2010. Results are generally mixed but do provide evidence that compositional changes were insufficient to explain state electorate change over this time period. Findings also indicate state median income growth is a strong predictor of shifts towards both Republican-candidate vote-share and conservative self-identification. Together, these findings support further integration of research concerning the dynamics of state-macro politics with individual-level studies . . .

Brick and mortar retailers spent $484 billion providing “free” shopping experiences in 2016. For example, vehicle dealerships provide “free” test drives, book stores provide “free” book signings and grocery stores provide “free” food samples. To capture the value of “free” shopping experiences, the paper models them as an implicit barter transaction of shopping experiences for sales attention. The paper then modifies previously created productivity accounts for the wholesale and retail sector (Jorgenson, Ho and Samuels 2016) to include shopping experiences as a new industry output and sales attention as a new industry input. Despite the rise of e-commerce, “free” brick and mortar shopping experiences grew faster than overall retail margins after 2002. Furthermore, brick and mortar stores have dramatically increased service speed since 2002. Between 2002 and 2014, better shopping experiences contributed $110 billion to real industry output growth and faster service speed subtracted $78 billion from real industry input growth. Furthermore, slower service speed between 1947 and 2002 increases real industry input growth and decreases productivity growth for that time period. Combining all these modifications together, the post-2002 wholesale and retail productivity slowdown shrinks from 0.98 percentage points per year to only 0.08 percentage points per year.

Using the IPUMS-USA data for the years 1960–2015, this study examines trends in the effect of occupational feminization on occupational pay in the U.S. labor market and explores some of the mechanisms underlying these trends. The findings show that the (negative) association between occupational feminization and occupa- tional pay level has declined, becoming insignificent in 2015. This trend, however, is reversed after education is controlled for at the individual as well as the occupational level. The two opposite trends are discussed in light of the twofold effect of education: (1) the entry of women into occupations requiring high education, and (2) the growing returns to education and to occupations with higher educational requirements. These two processes have concealed the deterioration in occupational pay following femini- zation. The findings underscore the significance of structural forms of gender inequality in general, and occupational devaluation in particular.

We examine how political corruption affects firms’ accounting choices. We hypothesize and find that firms headquartered in corrupt states manipulate earnings downwards, relative to firms headquartered elsewhere. Our findings are robust to alternative corruption measures, restatement-based earnings management measures, the instrumental variable approach and the difference-in-differences analysis. Consistent with the motive to depress earnings, we find that firms headquartered in more corrupt states are more likely to choose the accelerated depreciation method, report higher LIFO reserve and depreciation reserve, and have a lower depreciable life estimate. Finally, we find that the effect of corruption on earnings management is more pronounced for firms whose operations concentrate in their headquarter states and for firms without political connections. In sum, our findings suggest that firms respond to corruption by lowering their accounting earnings.

Amid an extraordinary national election putting candidates carrying the baggage of historically low popularity -- Hillary Clinton, the first female presidential nominee for a major party, against Donald Trump, a populist Republican firebrand and real estate mogul -- the 2016 Presidential election in Colorado resulted in an outcome remarkably consistent with Colorado’s recent role as a blue-leaning swing state. Hillary Clinton held on to win in Colorado with a plurality of 48.2 percent of the state’s popular vote, almost equal to her national popular vote. Her winning margin of 4.9 percentage point margin against Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, but substantially tighter than Obama’s 9 percent margin over Republican nominee John McCain in 2008 when Colorado . . .

Each year, approximately 10,000 individuals die in alcohol-impaired traffic crashes in the United States, while psychoactive drugs are involved in 20% of all fatal traffic crashes. In this study, we investigate whether state-specific parity laws for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment have the added benefit of reducing traffic fatalities. Parity laws compel insurers to generously cover SUD treatment in private markets, thereby reducing the financial costs of and increasing access to treatment for beneficiaries. We employ 23 years of administrative data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) coupled with a differences-in-differences design to investigate the potential spillover effects of parity laws to traffic safety. Our findings indicate that passage of a parity law reduces traffic fatality rates by 5.8 to 8.6%. We also find that passage of parity laws reduces fatal alcohol poisonings and psychoactive drug overdoses. These findings suggest that government regulations requiring insurers to cover SUD treatment can significantly improve traffic safety, possibly by reducing the number of impaired drivers on roadways.

The U.S. Congress initiated policy in 1916 to create what would eventually become a national Farm Credit System (FCS) that continues in operation to this day. The FCS was the first of several “government sponsored entities” (GSEs), as these institutions would later come to be known, created for the purpose of increasing access to credit in targeted economic sectors. Historical and political events leading to creation of each GSE are different in particulars, but all were organized to operate as quasi-private entities. The U.S. government provided seed capital, technical assistance, and an implicit backing to repay creditors to the system in the event of insolvency. However, each GSE was expected to operate in an economically sustainable manner, and to treat initial federal seed capital as debt to be repaid. Unlike other GSEs, the FCS was established under a structure that assigned autonomy, and considerable obligation for equity finance, to local cooperative organizations of farmers.

Occupational licensing laws can allow professionals to extract rents in the marketplace. In the case of vision services, optometrists have the authority to write prescriptions for contact lenses. Optometrists may choose to conceal this information and force patients to purchase lenses from the professional writing the prescription—resulting in vendor lock-in. In this paper, we investigate the possible effect of the 2004 Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act (FCLCA) on the market for vision services by examining state differences in prescription release mandates before 2004. We find that requiring professionals to release prescription information to patients resulted in a 10 to 11 percent reduction in the wages of optometrists. Our results provide some evidence that the FCLCA may have increased consumer welfare by reducing the prices of contact lenses or increasing access to contact lenses.

This book explores how structures of social inequality are linked to the social connections that people hold. The authors focus upon occupational inequalities where they see, for example, that the typical friendship patterns of people from one occupation are often very different to those of people from another. Social Inequalities and Occupational Stratification leverages empirical data about differences in social connections to chart structures of social distance and social inequality. Several of its chapters provide coverage of the long-standing CAMSIS project and its approach to analysing social interaction patterns in terms of a single dimension related to social inequality. Lambert and Griffiths also explore different ways that statistical methods and tools of social network analysis can be used to study the relationship between social distance and social stratification.

This dissertation tracks a particular public health program and examines the economic causes and consequences of the institution of public health. I follow the United States rollout of county-level health departments (CHDs) over 1908 to 1933 and track the short-run benefits, the long-run benefits, and the factors that led to adoption. At the turn of the twentieth century, rural areas lagged behind urban centers in access to public health services, despite the fact that there had been convergence in urban-rural mortality. With 60 percent of the US population living in rural areas, this lack of public health was a population-wide problem. By 1908 the rural health problem drew national attention from the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) and health-interested private organizations. These organizations targeted rural health conditions by opening local public health departments that were operated by the existing county government. This revolutionary approach initiated the first nationwide rural public health program in United States history. The rollout of health infrastructure improved sanitation and provided access to child health services in under-served areas throughout the US. The sanitation improvements included inspections, hygiene training, and installation of toilets, wells, and drainage. Health services appeared in the form of exams, nutritional consults, immunizations, and midwife hygiene training. Local tax dollars provided the majority of funding for this program, although supplemental support arrived from outside organizations including the USPHS, state governments, the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission (RSC), and the Sheppard-Towner Act.

Planning Support Methods offers a practical quantitative guide to the key concepts and methods of urban and regional planning. The authors apply and critically assess the most important underlying forecasting methods for the demographic and economic analysis and projection fields, providing an essential resource for practicing planners and planning students alike.

Political preferences in the US are highly correlated with population density, at national, state, and metropolitan-area scales. Using new data from voter registration records, we assess the extent to which this pattern can be explained by geographic mobility. We find that the revealed preferences of voters who move from one resi- dence to another correlate with partisan affiliation, though voters appear to be sorting on non-political neighborhood attributes that covary with partisan preferences rather than explicitly seeking politically congruent neighbors. But, critically, we demonstrate through a simulation study that the estimated partisan bias in moving choices is on the order of five times too small to sustain the current geographic polarization of pref- erences. We conclude that location must have some influence on political preference, rather than the other way around, and provide evidence in support of this theory.

This article investigates whether homeownership provides psychological benefits, particularly as mediated through the act of working on the dwelling. It examines whether work on the home potentially increases subjective well-being (SWB) for home occupants because such work improves the dwelling or because the work is fulfilling and promotes feelings of mastery and control. It also investigates whether homeowners are more likely to perform such work compared with renters. The article finds that homeownership is associated with somewhat elevated life satisfaction, but that homeowners tend to experience less intense positive affect than renters. Homeowners spend much more time working on the home than renters. Strong links between work on the home and life satisfaction are not found, but certain types of home work activities—such as interior or exterior decoration and repairs and yard work—tend to be experienced as psychologically meaningful. Gender also plays a role in the division of home labor and the psychological costs and benefits of homeownership and work on the home. Women are much more likely than men to clean the interiors of dwellings, an activity associated with poor affect. Men perform more of most of the other types of work on the home; in homeowning households these burdens tend to balance each other out, but in renting households there tends to be a dramatic disparity in terms of work on the home, raising concerns about gender inequity.

Objectives. To compare population-based sterilization rates between Latinas/os and non-Latinas/os sterilized under California’s eugenics law. Methods. We used data from 17 362 forms recommending institutionalized patients for sterilization between 1920 and 1945. We abstracted patient gender, age, and in- stitution of residence into a data set. We extracted data on institution populations from US Census microdata from 1920, 1930, and 1940 and interpolated between census years. We used Spanish surnames to identify Latinas/os in the absence of data on race/ethnicity. We used Poisson regression with a random effect for each patient’s institution of residence to estimate incidence rate ratios (IRRs) and compare sterilization rates be- tween Latinas/os and non-Latinas/os, stratifying on gender and adjusting for differences in age and year of sterilization. Results. Latino men were more likely to be sterilized than were non-Latino men (IRR = 1.23; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.15, 1.31), and Latina women experienced an even more disproportionate risk of sterilization relative to non-Latinas (IRR = 1.59; 95% CI = 1.48, 1.70). Conclusions. Eugenic sterilization laws were disproportionately applied to Latina/o patients, particularly Latina women and girls. Understanding historical injustices in public health can inform contemporary public health practice. (Am J Public Health. 2018;108: 611–613. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2018.304369)

We project the population of United States veterans between 2014 and 2024 using a cohort component population projection method that provides estimates by age, sex, race/ethnicity, service era and geographic location. We also analyze distance of the projected veteran population to medical and health centers. Our research strategy integrates several methodological procedures, which can be applied to other subgroups of the American population in order to estimate future demographic trends at the local level. Baseline data for national projections came from the 2000 Census, which was the last census to collect information about veterans. We factored in estimates of mortality, adjusted for demographic characteristics, and added data from the U.S. Department of Defense on veterans entering the population after 2000. We estimated migration flows of veterans within the country using gravity models. Supplementary data came from American Community Surveys and accounted for a variety of factors, including age, sex, race/ethnicity, service era, population size of sending and receiving areas, and distance between areas. We project that the population of U.S. veterans will decrease by 19 percent over the next 10 years: from 21.6 million in 2014 to 17.5 million in 2024. The population will have a slightly higher proportion of older veterans. There will be modest changes in the demographic mix by sex and race/ethnicity. Between 2014 and 2024, the proportion of female veterans will increase 3 percentage points, from 8 to 11 percent. The share of nonHispanic white males will decrease from 80 to 76 percent over the same period. The service era composition will change in the period. Veterans from the Vietnam conflict will decrease from 31 to 29 percent, while those from the Gulf War and Post-9/11 conflict will increase from 27 to 42 percent between 2014 and 2024. We estimate that, geographically, the veteran population will become more concentrated in urban areas, and the relative proportion of their population in the Ohio River Valley region will diminish.

Corporations are retaining ever-larger corpuses of personal data; the frequency of breaches and corresponding privacy impact have been rising accordingly. One way to mitigate this risk is through use of anonymized data, limiting the exposure of individual data to only where it is absolutely needed. This would seem particularly appropriate for data mining, where the goal is generalizable knowledge rather than data on specific individuals. In practice, corporate data miners often insist on original data, for fear that they might “miss something” with anonymized or differentially private approaches. This paper provides a theoretical justification for the use of anonymized data. Specifically, we show that a support vector classifier trained on anatomized data satisfying ℓ-diversity should be expected to do as well as on the original data. Anatomy preserves all data values, but introduces uncertainty in the mapping between identifying and sensitive values, thus satisfying ℓ-diversity. The theoretical effectiveness of the proposed approach is validated using several publicly available datasets, showing that we outperform the state of the art for support vector classification using training data protected by k-anonymity, and are comparable to learning on the original data.

Much of research in the field of music education has focused on the individual child or on the family as a whole with the parents at the helm. Through this research we have learned that the family has strong influences over the music making of children; however, little research has actually focused on the role that siblings play within this family music-making sphere. It was the purpose of this study to explore how siblings influenced the musical development of each other under the context of deidentification (altering one’s activities and/or identity in order to differentiate from another) and imitation within the family vehicle (Whiteman, McHale & Crouter, 2007a). For this collective-case study I collected data from two families from similar SES/middle-class, backgrounds, and culture with at least two sibling children ages 2 to 10 years old. The study was set in situ within the family vehicle where I used mounted dashboard cameras to collect videos of siblings and their interactions as they naturally occurred within this space. Data was collected over 3 weeks with the assistance of a parent co-researcher and was in the form of video recordings, researcher transcriptions and notes, and a background survey. Research questions asked included: 1) How much time do selected families (at least one parent and two or more of their children) spend in the car on an average week?; 2) What does music making look and sound like when it occurs spontaneously within the family vehicle?; 3) What do sibling musical interactions look like in the presence of spontaneous music making?; 4)How much of the time during a week do siblings engage in sibling musical interactions in the vehicle?; 5) What do the processes of observational learning and deidentification look like in sibling musical interactions within the family vehicle?; and 6) Of observed sibling musical interactions, which ones may promote or hinder observational learning and/or deidentification processes and as a result promote or hinder music making? Data was coded and analyzed for themes and central phenomenon. Parent co-researchers participated in the triangulation of the analyses. Findings revealed both sibling deidentification and observational learning processes at hand during sibling musical interactions. In each family, children were found to be spending over 5 hours a week traveling in the car. Spontaneous music making was observed throughout the week alongside sibling musical interactions. As expected, some . . .

How does public access to criminal records affect crime? Economic theory suggests that expanding access to criminal information may increase the cost of crime to potential criminals by endangering their future work prospects and thus act as a deterrent. However, increased provision of information could also obstruct ex-convicts from finding legal employment and lead to higher recidivism rates. I exploit the state and time variation in the introduction of state-maintained online criminal databases – which represent a sharp drop in the cost and effort of gaining criminal background information on another person – to empirically investigate the trade-off between deterrence and recidivism. I find that online criminal records lead to a small net reduction in property crime rates, but also a marked increase of approximately 11 percent in recidivism among ex-offenders.