Convergence of Health Care Expenditures Across the US States: A Reconsideration

Current evidence on the convergence of health care expenditures across the US states into a single convergence club is non-existent. Against this backdrop, we use a modified panel unit root test that accounts for smooth structural changes, spanning the period of 1966–2009. The results illustrate that the ratio of the individual health care expenditures relative to the cross-sectional average is broken trend-stationary, not only in the aggregate panel, but also across all 50 US states. The findings also document that the evidence of convergence is possibly due to the convergence of personal disposable income across the US states.     

The EKC Hypothesis Does Not Hold for Direct Material Flows: Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis Tests for Direct Material Flows in Five Industrial Countries

This study analyses the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis (EKC) with direct material flow data from the USA, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and Finland in the years 1975 to 1994. Recently, there has been a discussion concerning the relevance of the EKC hypothesis suggesting that also the intensity of material use should decline with income growth. The EKC hypothesis has not been widely tested with direct material flow data, and this paper presents one of the first attempts to do such tests. The results of the empirical hypothesis tests indicate that the EKC hypothesis does not hold in the case of aggregated direct material flows among industrialised countries like Germany, Japan, the USA, the Netherlands and Finland.     

Goode's World Revolution and Family Patterns: A Reconsideration at Fifty Years

Fifty years ago, William J. Goode published World Revolution and Family Patterns, a highly influential study of international family change. Goode's main thesis, that, owing to industrialization, family patterns around the world would come to resemble the mid‐twentieth‐century Western conjugal family, was incorrect. For one thing, that model collapsed in the West soon afterward. But Goode's secondary hypotheses have proven to be correct in at least some regions of the world: that parents' control over their children's family lives would decline; and that the spread of the ideology of the conjugal family would occur even in countries where extensive industrialization had not taken place. Moreover, it is worth understanding why Goode was sometimes incorrect and what forces (such as globalization) he did not foresee. It is also worth examining more recent writings on world family change by leading scholars. This article provides a reconsideration of the book's impact a half‐century after it appeared.     

Measuring Health Inequality in US: A Composite Index Approach

Social Indicators Research - In this paper, we use the standardized mortality rates for 21 mutual exclusive causes of death to propose a composite index of US county-level health performances in...     

Measuring Material Hardship among the US Population of Women with Disabilities Using Latent Class Analysis

We use data from the 2002 wave of the National Survey of America’s Families to develop and validate discrete measures of material hardship that can be used to examine the difficulties that vulnerable populations such as people with disabilities have in making ends meet. Using latent class analysis, we estimate two measurement models: multidimensional and omnibus. The multidimensional model provides separate estimates for food, medical, and housing and utilities hardship. The omnibus model is a single model of 11 hardship indicators. Results show three distinct classes of food hardship, three classes of medical hardship, and two classes of housing/utilities hardship. The omnibus model reveals eight classes. Both the multidimensional and omnibus models are largely invariant between women with disabilities and women without disabilities, indicating that valid comparisons can be made between these populations using these classes of hardship. These classes can be utilized in further research on the hardship of women with disabilities to inform the development of policies targeted to alleviate the specific forms of hardship experienced by disabled women.     

对人力资本定义及涵义的再思考

本文将通过分析比较前人对人力资本概念的定义和解释,重新给出人力资本的定义,并对人力资本的涵义及特性作进一步的思考。     

有关我国流动人口问题的理论再思考

本文对我国人口流动问题的成因、变动趋势以及对社会经济发展的影响从理论上作了新的探讨,论证了农村经济改革、农村土地制度、户籍制度等社会经济宏观环境对人口流动的作用,提出了我国流动人口流动过程中的阶段性特征,分析了流动人口的权益保障问题。论文认为目前有关流动人口的政策和研究中存在重管理轻服务、重义务轻权益、重城市而轻农村的现象。应当按照社会经济发展的宏观计划和发展规律,将人口流动作为一种有效地推动社会转变的工具而加以利用。     

TOWARD A SUSTAINABLE US HEALTH POLICY: LOCAL CONGRUITIES AND GLOBAL INCONGRUITIES

The United States health care system is congruous with the US economy and with prevailing local values: it is resource intensive, technology-focused, consumer-oriented, individualistic, and unequally available. However, the US health system is incongruous not only with other health care systems around the world, but also with the increasingly global nature of health care concerns. Indeed the US system, according to the World Bank, stands out as strikingly expensive and ineffective in its public health impact. The article first identifies several significant incongruities, and then argues that there is an increasing obligation for the US health system to become more ethically responsive in light of global concerns. Sustainable health should be sought as a significant goal of US health services. Health services need to be fully and accurately assessed for their environmental costs, which need to be made explicit. Actual, universal access to basic health care services needs to take priority over scarce high-tech therapies when resource allocations are made. Traditional health values such as individualism, autonomy and privacy must be placed within a context of global interdependence and responsibilities to community. Public health fundamentals such as adequate nutrition, clear water, and a biologically intact ecosystem must be emphasized. Innovations in health technology need to be made with attention to their potential international use and impact. Finally, a longer time horizon for planning is needed, taking into account environmentally caused health problems arising fifty years or more in the future.     

Time Poverty Thresholds and Rates for the US Population

Time constraints, like money constraints, affect Americans’ well-being. This paper defines what it means to be time poor based on the concepts of necessary and committed time and presents time poverty thresholds and rates for the US population and certain subgroups. Multivariate regression techniques are used to identify the key variables associated with discretionary time and time poverty. The data confirm the idea that individuals in households with children have less discretionary time and are thus more likely to be time poor than those in households without children. Controlling for other household characteristics, an additional child reduces a household adult’s daily discretionary time by 35 min. Surprisingly, while one might expect the necessary and committed activities required of an individual to be less in a two-adult household with children than in a one-adult household with children because child care can be shared, the data show that the presence of such a second adult only marginally reduces the necessary and committed time burden of an individual household member. Perhaps even more surprisingly, household income is not a statistically significant correlate of discretionary time or time poverty.     

Beyond IPAT and Kuznets Curves: Globalization as a Vital Factor in Analysing the Environmental Impact of Socio-Economic Metabolism

We bring the rapidly developing tools for analyzing society's metabolism to the attention of a scientific audience concerned with matters of population and, in a complementary fashion, we draw the attention of material and energy flow analysts to the role of population and population dynamics within their own paradigm. As an analytic framework, we use the classic IPAT-model that relates environmental impact (I), population (P), affluence (A), and technology (T). We relate the IPAT model to the tool commonly used in MFA, so-called environmental Kuznets curves, and re-analyze empirical data from various sources, for both affluent industrial and for developing countries, within these frameworks. We conclude that population and technology seem to dominate over affluence as far as environmental impact is concerned, but that both the IPAT and Kuznets models fail to take into account the intricate interdependencies among different socio-economic systems and the increases in their the economic, material and population exchanges. In effect, both models tend to underestimate the environmental impact and create too optimistic an image of dematerialization in affluent industrial countries.     

Using Quali-Quantitative Indicators for Assessing the Quality of Citizen Participation: A Study on Three Citizen Juries

Over the last 3 decades, citizen involvement has become rather common in policymaking processes. Its rationale, as well as its potential benefits and limitations, are manifold. The literature on the evaluation of public participation is copious and it is crucial both to implement effective processes, and to achieve high-quality outcomes. Inspired by deliberative democracy theory, dialogue/fairness and knowledge/competence have been considered the two main criteria to assess the quality of deliberative processes. Based on the analysis of three citizen juries, the paper focuses on the process through which citizen deliberation occurs. Specifically, three properties related to dialogue, i.e., equity, cooperation, and cognitive openness, were treated as quality indicators of the deliberative process. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used, and three sources of data utilized: (a) semi-structured interviews to jurors; (b) post-jury questionnaires; and (c) jurors’ conversational turns. Altogether, the analyses showed that despite the imbalance in participation, the deliberation process was perceived as fair. However, findings also suggested that the participatory setting did not promote the ability of participants to generate new collective knowledge.     

Smoking and Variation in the Hispanic Paradox: A Comparison of Low Birthweight Across 33 US States

The Hispanic Paradox in birth outcomes is well documented for the US as a whole, but little work has considered geographic variation underlying the national pattern. This inquiry is important given the rapid growth of the Hispanic population and its geographic dispersion. Using birth records data from 2014 through 2016, we document state variation in birthweight differentials between US-born white women and the three Hispanic populations with the largest numbers of births: US-born Mexican women, foreign-born Mexican women, and foreign-born Central and South American women. Our analyses reveal substantial geographic variation in Hispanic immigrant–white low-birthweight disparities. For example, Hispanic immigrants in Southeastern states and in some states from other regions have reduced risk of low birthweight relative to whites, consistent with a “Hispanic Paradox.” A significant portion of Hispanic immigrants’ birthweight advantage in these states is explained by lower rates of smoking relative to whites. However, Hispanic immigrants have higher rates of low birthweight in California and several other Western states. The different state patterns are largely driven by geographic variation in smoking among whites, rather than geographic differences in Hispanic immigrants’ birthweights. In contrast, US-born Mexicans generally have similar or slightly higher odds of low birthweight than whites across the US. Overall, we show that the Hispanic Paradox in birthweight varies quite dramatically by state, driven by geographic variation in low birthweight among whites associated with white smoking disparities across states.