Residential exposure to air toxics is linked to lower grade point averages among school children in El Paso,Texas, USA

Children in low-income neighborhoods tend to be disproportionately exposed to environmental toxicants. This is cause for concern because exposure to environmental toxicants negatively affects health, which can impair academic success. To date, it is unknown if associations between air toxics and academic performance found in previous school-level studies persist when studying individual children. In pairing the National Air Toxics Assessment risk estimates for respiratory and diesel particulate matter risk disaggregated by source, with individual-level data collected through a mail survey, this paper examines the effects of exposure to residential environmental toxics on academic performance for individual children for the first time and adjusts for school-level effects using generalized estimating equations. We find that higher levels of residential air toxics, especially those from non-road mobile sources, are statistically significantly associated with lower grade point averages among fourth- and fifth-grade school children in El Paso (Texas, USA).     

Why are residential and school moves associated with poor school performance?

Most research on residential mobility has documented a clear pattern: Residential and school moves are associated with poor academic performance. Explanations for this relationship, however, remain speculative. Some researchers argue that moving affects social relationships that are important to academic achievement. But the association between moving and school performance may be spurious; the negative correlation may be a function of other characteristics of people who move often. We offer several conceptual and analytical refinements to these ideas, allowing us to produce more precise tests than past researchers. Using longitudinal data, we find that differences in achievement between movers and nonmovers are partially a result of declines in social relationships experienced by students who move. Most of the negative effect of moving, however, is due to preexisting differences between the two groups.     

Impacts of Homeownership and Residential Stability on Children’s Academic Performance in Hong Kong

While purchasing a home is usually made by the parents, the impact of homeownership on children, especially younger children who spend much more time in the home environment than other members of the family, should not be overlooked. In this paper, we assess the impact of both homeownership and residential stability by measuring how these factors affect children’s academic performance at school. Based on a three-stage six-model analytical framework, the analysis shows that homeownership has a positive impact on school performance of children. More interestingly, frequent moving is detrimental to school performance while parents’ higher educational background may compensate for the lack of homeownership in renter families. This paper presents a number of issues for consideration of long term land and housing policies including the importance of promoting homeownership through steady supply of residential land, as well as targeting public housing welfare to different household groups with different measures.     

Gender Gaps in Educational Attainment in Less Developed Countries

Conventional wisdom holds that gender gaps in schooling favoring males in developing countries generally are large, though probably declining. In this article we re‐examine recent gender gaps in schooling in the developing world and come to a more nuanced characterization of their nature, which suggests that the developing countries are becoming more like the developed countries, with gender gaps that increasingly favor, rather than discriminate against, females. Using data from 38 countries with multiple Demographic and Health Surveys, we examine how the gender gaps in current school enrollment and grade completion emerge across the educational life course from age 6 to 18. We also examine how these age‐specific measures have changed over time, comparing the periods 1990–99 and 2000–06. Our analyses indicate that among children who have ever attended school, girls younger than 16 years of age have equal or greater schooling progress than boys of the same age in all regions of the developing world.     

Same-Sex Sexuality and Educational Attainment: The Pathway to College

Research finds lower levels of academic performance among sexual minority high school students, but some studies suggest sexual minorities have higher levels of educational attainment in adulthood. To further our understanding of how and why sexual orientation is associated with educational success, this study turns attention to the pathways to college completion, examining points along educational trajectories in which sexual minorities fall behind or surpass their heterosexual peers. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we find that sexual minority women are less likely than women with no same-sex sexuality to complete college, in part due to their high school performance and transition into college. Men who experience same-sex sexuality only in adolescence struggle in high school, but men who experience same-sex sexuality for the first time in adulthood are more likely to earn a college degree than men who do not experience same-sex sexuality.     

Marriage and childbirth as factors in dropping out from school: an analysis of DHS data from sub-Saharan Africa

Leaving school prematurely is often claimed to be among the most negative consequences of early marriage and pregnancy for girls in less developed countries. However, an analysis of the relative frequency with which these events actually occur or are named as reasons for leaving school reveals that, at least in the case of francophone Africa, they explain no more than 20 per cent of dropouts. To the extent that demographic events trump school or family factors as determinants of school-leaving, our data indicate that it is union formation--defined by the DHS as first marriage or cohabitation--rather than childbirth that is more likely to have this effect. 'Schoolgirl pregnancy' typically accounts for only between 5 and 10 per cent of girls' departures from school. Furthermore, the risks of leaving school because of pregnancy or marriage have declined over time with the decline in rates of early marriage and childbearing.     

Acomparison between Northern and Southern blacks residing in the North

Differences between Southern and non-Southern blacks living in the North and West are considered for a wide variety of attributes such as employment, occupation, income, marital stability, and offspring's performance in school. Migrant blacks have generally more favorable rates than their Northern- and Western-born compatriots after standard domographic controls are applied to an unusually detailed set of cross-tabulations based on the One-Percent Sample Tapes for 1960. Perhaps the sharpest gap exists with respect to marital conditions; Southern blacks of both sexes are more likely to marry and, among those ever married, live more frequently with their spouses. Some of the results reported by earlier investigators require considerable modification; For example, the fact that Northern black men are less often at work than migrants has led to speculations about regional differences in work orientation among blacks, but a detailed analysis of labor force activity indicates this pattern does not hold for women. Likewise, the migrant income advantage is found to vary by education such that it is confined to those with low educational attainment. The use of sample tapes permits a novel analysis of differences between Northern-born blacks classified by whether they are second or at least third generation residents of the North (children of Southern- or Northern-born parents, respectively). For the attribute measured, school performance, the gap is essentially nil. Finally, an alternative is suggested to the existing causal interpretations of North-South gaps among black residents of the North. Reconsidered in particular are the higher labor force rates of migrant men and their more frequent employment in blue collar jobs;     

Schools,Neighborhoods and Selection: Outcomes Across Metropolitan Los Angeles

What is the relationship between school segregation and neighborhood segregation across school districts in Los Angeles County, and are school district outcomes on reading and mathematics scores related to levels of school segregation across these districts? We compute segregation scores using US tract level data for 2000 and use reading and mathematics scores from California State tests. Data from the Los Angeles family and neighborhood survey are used to track individual residential changes and differences in the associated Woodcock Johnson scores. We show that there is a close link between levels of school segregation and neighborhood segregation and that many suburban school districts are relatively integrated across both neighborhoods and schools. When we examine average school district outcomes on reading and mathematics scores we do not find any relationship with levels of segregation. At the same time there is clear evidence of spatial sorting with poorer and lower scoring children moving into school districts (or zones with poorer achieving schools). The multi-level models of segregation and achievement show that the variance in achievement levels across districts is significantly greater than across schools within districts.     

Exploring environmental perceptions,behaviors and awareness: water and water pollution in South Africa

Understanding the relationships among perceptions, behaviors and awareness of environmental initiatives is important for both policy makers and social scientists. There is, however, limited consensus among scholars as to the reasons for differences and similarities among ethnic and socio-economic groups in their environmentally related attitudes and behaviors. South Africa, which has established a constitutional right to a safe environment, together with the presence of parallel first and third world populations, offers an unusual setting in which to examine these issues. Using the 2004 South African General Household Survey, the similarities and differences between African and non-African households with respect to the perceptions, behaviors and awareness of programs related to water and water pollution are examined. Africans and those with lower socio-economic status are more likely to perceive water pollution as a community problem; educational attainment is unrelated to this perception. In combination with perception of water pollution as a problem, education is positively related to taking action to treat water for drinking and food preparation. Awareness of a highly touted program to clear waterways of alien vegetation is strongly positively related to socio-economic status, and is much more common among non-Africans than Africans.     

Nonmarital childbearing: Influences of education,marriage, and fertility

We examined the determinants of nonmarital fertility, focusing on the effects of other life-course events: education, marriage, marital dissolution, and marital fertility. Since these determinants are potentially endogenous, we modeled the processes that generate them jointly with nonmarital fertility and accounted for the sequencing of events and the unobserved correlations across processes. The results showed that the risk of nonmarital conception increases immediately after leaving school and that the educational effects are less pronounced for black women than for other women. The risk is lower for previously married women than for never-married women, even controlling for age, but this reduction is significant only for black women. The more children a woman already has, the lower her risk of nonmarital childbearing, particularly if the earlier children were born during a previous marriage. Ignoring endogeneity issues seriously biases the estimates of several substantively important effects.     

Effects of Cooking Smoke and Environmental Tobacco Smoke on Acute Respiratory Infections in Young Indian Children

Background Reliance on biomass for cooking and heating exposes many women and young children in developing countries to high levels of air pollution indoors. Environmental tobacco smoke also contributes to this indoor air pollution. This study estimates the effects of these sources of air pollution on acute respiratory infections (ARI) in children below 36 months of age in India.Methods The analysis is based on 29,768 children age 0–35 months included in India’s 1998–1999 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-2). Logistic regression is used to estimate effects.Results In NFHS-2, children living in households using only biomass fuels for cooking or heating are almost twice as likely to have suffered from ARI during the 2 weeks before interview as children in households using cleaner fuels (OR = 1.82; 95% CI: 1.58, 2.09). This effect is somewhat reduced when exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and a number of other factors are statistically controlled (OR = 1.58; 95% CI: 1.28, 1.95). With these other variables controlled, children in households using a mix of biomass and cleaner fuels also have a higher risk of ARI than children in households using only cleaner fuels (OR = 1.41; 95% CI: 1.17, 1.70). With controls, the effect of biomass fuel use on ARI is stronger for boys (OR = 1.68; 95% CI: 1.26, 2.23) than for girls (OR = 1.49; 95% CI: 1.11, 2.01). The effect of ETS on ARI is also positive and significant, but smaller when other variables (including type of cooking fuel) are controlled (OR = 1.12; 95% CI: 1.01, 1.23). No modifying effects of cooking smoke and ETS are observed.Conclusions Findings support previous research showing positive effects of cooking smoke and ETS on ARI in young children. The relationship needs to be further investigated using more direct measures of smoke exposure and measures of outcome that are more specific to acute lower respiratory infections (ALRI), which are the most important component of overall ARI from a public health standpoint.Medical subject headings (MeSH) air pollution; indoor; biomass; smoke; environmental tobacco smoke; respiratory tract infections; child; India.Please address Correspondence to Vinod Mishra, DHR Division, ORC Macro, 11785 Beltsville Drive, Calverton, MD 20705, USA; e-mail: Vinod.Mishra@orcmacro.com     

Circadian Rhythms,Sleep, and Cognitive Skills: Evidence From an Unsleeping Giant

This study analyzes the effects of sleep duration on cognitive skills and depression symptoms of older workers in urban China. Cognitive skills and mental health have been associated with sleep duration and are known to be strongly related to economic behavior and performance. However, causal evidence is lacking, and little is known about sleep deprivation in developing countries. We exploit the relationship between circadian rhythms and bedtime to identify the effects of sleep using sunset time as an instrument. Using the Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we show that a later sunset time significantly reduces sleep duration and that sleep duration increases cognitive skills and eases depression symptoms of workers aged 45 years and older. The results are driven by employed individuals living in urban areas, who are more likely to be constrained by rigid work schedules. We find no evidence of significant effects on the self-employed, non-employed, or farmers.     

Neighborhoods, Ethnicity and School Choice: Developing a Statistical Framework for Geodemographic Analysis

Geodemographics as the “analysis of people by where they live” has origins in urban sociology and social mapping, and is experiencing a renaissance in applied spatial demography. However, some commentators have expressed reservations about the statistical limitations of common geodemographic practices, especially focusing on the potential internal heterogeneity of the geodemographic groupings, as well as the problem of clearly identifying predictor variables that might account for or explain the socioeconomic patterns revealed by geodemographic analyses. In this paper we argue that geodemographic typologies are structured methods for making sense of the spatial and socioeconomic patterns encoded within complex datasets such as national census data. By treating geodemographics as more a framework than a tool for analysis in its own right we are able to integrate it with the flexibility and statistical conventions offered by multilevel modeling. We demonstrate this with a case study of whether pupils from different types of neighborhood in Birmingham, England are more or less likely to attend their nearest state-funded secondary school and how that likelihood varies with the ethnic composition of the neighborhood. In so doing we build on previous research suggesting that ethnic segregation between schools is at least equal to that between neighborhoods in England and speculate in this regard on the consequences of current government plans to extend choice to parents within a schools market.     

Post-high school choices: New evidence from a multinomial logit model

A multinomial logit model is estimated to investigate the destination of students one-year after graduating from high school. The appropriate specification of the choice set available to high school leavers is as follows: private four-year college, public four-year college, private two-year college, public two-year college, employed and unemployed. We test for several possible combinations of these choices and find that these pooled models are all rejected in favour of the full model. The transition from high school to college and to work is more complex than previous studies have recognised. Received: 12 July 2002/Accepted: 2 November 2002 All correspondence to Jim Taylor. The authors are grateful to Steve Bradley and an anonymous referee for valuable comments on a previous draft of this paper. We alone are responsible for the errors and omissions. Anh Nguyen is grateful to the ESRC for providing financial support. Responsible editor: Daniel S. Hamermesh.     

Trends in Education-Specific Life Expectancy,Data Quality,and Shifting Education Distributions: A Note on Recent Research

Several recent articles have reported conflicting conclusions about educational differences in life expectancy, and this is partly due to the use of unreliable data subject to a numerator-denominator bias previously reported as ranging from 20 % to 40 %. This article presents estimates of life expectancy and lifespan variation by education in the United States using more reliable data from the National Health Interview Survey. Contrary to prior conclusions in the literature, I find that life expectancy increased or stagnated since 1990 among all education-race-sex groups except for non-Hispanic white women with less than a high school education; there has been a robust increase in life expectancy among white high school graduates and a smaller increase among black female high school graduates; lifespan variation did not increase appreciably among high school graduates; and lifespan variation plays a very limited role in explaining educational gradients in mortality. I also discuss the key role that educational expansion may play in driving future changes in mortality gradients. Because of shifting education distributions, within an education-specific synthetic cohort, older age groups are less negatively selected than younger age groups. We could thus expect a greater concentration of mortality at younger ages among people with a high school education or less, which would be reflected in increasing lifespan variability for this group. Future studies of educational gradients in mortality should use more reliable data and should be mindful of the effects of shifting education distributions.     

Kindergarten oral language skill: A key variable in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status

In this paper we test whether oral language development during the preschool years helps explain the positive relationship between family socioeconomic status (SES) and children's elementary school performance. In particular, we test for the portion of the SES effect on 2nd to 4th grade reading, 3rd to 4th grade mathematics, and overall teacher-rated performance that is explained by oral language ability measured when kindergarten begins. We analyze a unique data set containing unusually comprehensive measures of kindergarten oral language ability. The data are for white Midwestern children and their families. Estimation via structural equation modeling shows that oral language skill at kindergarten entry explains most of the effect of SES on elementary school performance. Since other studies have shown that elementary school performance strongly determines later educational attainment, much of the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status occurs when the child is very young.     

Women's labor force transitions in connection with childbirth: a panel data comparison between Germany,Sweden and Great Britain

In this paper we make use of the panel aspects of the German GSOEP, the Swedish HUS and the British BHPS data. In these data sets we known month and year of childbirth and the month to month labor force status of the mother also before giving birth. This permits analysis of labor force transitions triggered by child births of different birth orders. From macro data Swedish women are known to have the highest labor force participation. The difference in total labor force participation of women is totally a result of fewer mothers entering the labor force and entering later in Germany and Great Britain than in Sweden. This paper shows that before birth of first child there is no such difference. We find that German and British women have even higher full-time labor force participation than Swedish women 12 months before the birth of the first child. The difference is more pronounced for second and third births than for first births. We suggest that these differences are caused by different family policy regimes where Germany can be characterized as a breadwinner regime and Sweden a regime oriented towards equal role sharing of father and mother. Our results on determinants of being in the labor force both after and before the birth of a child as well as determinants of the tempo of entering the labor force after birth shows that women's own human capital is important both in Germany and Great Britain, whereas in Sweden also less educated women have entered the labor force by the time the child is 2 years old.All correspondence to Cécile Wetzels. We are grateful to Andrew McCulloch from ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change in Britain, who delivered the British BHPS-data. We also want to thank John F. Ermisch, Siv Gustafsson, Diane Sainsbury and two anonymous referees for useful comments. Financial support has been received by the Swedish Council in the Humanities and Social Sciences and the EU Human Capital and Mobility (HCM) network for the Female Labour Force Participation Network within which framework this analysis has been carried out. Responsible editors: S. S. Gustafsson, John R Ermisch.     

Back to School: Racial and Gender Differences in Adults’ Participation in Formal Schooling, 1978–2013

Trends and gaps in educational attainment by race and gender have received much attention in recent years, but reports of these trends have generally focused on traditional-age college students. Little is known about whether and how enrollment in formal schooling among older adults (between 29 and 61 years old) has changed over time. In this article, I draw on Current Population Survey data from 1978 to 2013 to provide the most comprehensive analysis of trends in adults’ formal school enrollment by demographic group to date. Results indicate that adult black women in particular have seen relatively high growth rates in their enrollment. Black women were 85 % more likely to enroll in 2011 and 46 % more likely in 2013 than they were in 1978. Their growing advantage relative to other racial-gender groups owes largely to their increasing educational attainment rates overall, given the relationship between prior schooling and enrollment later in life. Taken together, this article’s findings suggest that adult enrollment is at once equalizing and disequalizing. On the one hand, it has the potential to narrow the gaps between those with some college experience and those with a four-year degree. On the other hand, patterns of adults’ participation in formal education are widening educational gaps between those with and without traditional-age college experience.     

The psychic costs of migration: evidence from Irish return migrants

Within the economics literature, the ‘psychic costs’ of migration have been incorporated into theoretical models since Sjaastad (J Polit Econ 70:80–93, 1962). However, the existence of such costs has rarely been investigated in empirical papers. In this paper, we look at the psychic costs of migration by using alcohol problems as an indicator. Rather than comparing immigrants and natives, we look at the native-born in a single country and compare those who have lived away for a period of their lives and those who have not. We use data from the first wave of the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing which is a large, nationally representative sample of older Irish adults. We find that men who lived away are more likely to have suffered from alcohol problems than men who stayed. For women, we again see a higher incidence of alcohol problems for short-term migrants. However, long-term female migrants are less likely to have suffered from alcohol problems. For these women, it seems that migration provided psychic benefits, and this is consistent with findings from other research which showed how migration provided economic independence to this group. The results remain when we adjust for endogeneity and when we use propensity score matching methods.