The Labor Market Consequences of Childhood Maladjustment*

Objective. This article uses data from the National Child Development Survey on a cohort of individuals born in Great Britain during the first week of March 1958 to investigate whether educational attainment and labor force behavior 33 years later are affected by childhood behavioral problems that are exhibited at both age 7 and age 16. Method. Regression methods are used to test hypotheses concerning these effects. Results. Our results indicate that maladjusted children suffer economically when they reach adulthood. Maladjusted children perform worse on aptitude tests and have lower educational attainment. Maladjusted children also are less likely to be employed at age 33 and to have lower wages when employed. Part of the reduced employment and wages is the result of lower education, but part is also due to other factors. Conclusion. Future research should investigate whether adult labor market outcomes vary with the type of behavioral problems exhibited at younger ages.     

American Roulette: The Effect of Reminders of Death on Support for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election

An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of a subtle reminder of death on voting intentions for the 2004 U.S. presidential election. On the basis of terror management theory and previous research, we hypothesized that a mortality salience induction would increase support for President George W. Bush and decrease support for Senator John Kerry. In late September 2004, following a mortality salience or control induction, registered voters were asked which candidate they intended to vote for. In accord with predictions, Senator John Kerry received substantially more votes than George Bush in the control condition, but Bush was favored over Kerry following a reminder of death, suggesting that President Bush's re-election may have been facilitated by nonconscious concerns about mortality in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.     

The application of future technologies to medical informatics

Physician: "Condyloma, Toxoplasmosis, Blepharoplasty, and Fibroadenoma." Technoguru: "Pardon?" Physician (referring to "PCDR, Physician's Computer Desk Reference): "Carrier Sense Multiple Access, Spread Spectrum, Application Programming Interface, and Clustered Indexes." Technoguru: "Oh, now you're talking! How many do you want?" Until such time as computer scientists holding degrees in medicine become de rigueur, there will inevitably be conversations such as these. A pediatrician friend once told me that he could teach me in 30 days what I would need to know to handle 95 percent of the cases he sees. To handle the other 5 percent would still require 8 years of postgraduate medical education. The corollary for the application of technology is that I can teach you how to use a personal computer, and even to do a little programming, but to build a robust, mission-critical system for a production health care environment, well, back to school you go.