Global patterns of healthy life expectancy for older women

This paper focuses on patterns of healthy life expectancy for older women around the globe in the year 2000, and on the determinants of differences in disease and injury for older ages. Our study uses data from the World Health Organization for women and men in 191 countries. These data include a summary measure of population health, healthy life expectancy (HALE), which measures the number of years of life expected to be lived in good health, and a complementary measure of the loss of health (disability-adjusted life years or DALYs) due to a comprehensive set of disease and injury causes. We examine two topics in detail: (1) cross-national patterns of female-male differences in healthy life expectancy at age 60; and (2) identification of the major injury and disability causes of disability in women at older ages. Globally, the male-female gap is lower for HALE than for total life expectancy. The sex gap is highest for Russia (10.0 years) and lowest in North Africa and the Middle East, where males and females have similar levels of healthy life expectancy, and in some cases, females have lower levels of healthy life expectancy. We discuss the implications of the findings for international health policy.     

The Elite Illusion: Achievement Effects at Boston and New York Exam Schools

Parents gauge school quality in part by the level of student achievement and a school's racial and socioeconomic mix. The importance of school characteristics in the housing market can be seen in the jump in house prices at school district boundaries where peer characteristics change. The question of whether schools with more attractive peers are really better in a value‐added sense remains open, however. This paper uses a fuzzy regression‐discontinuity design to evaluate the causal effects of peer characteristics. Our design exploits admissions cutoffs at Boston and New York City's heavily over‐subscribed exam schools. Successful applicants near admissions cutoffs for the least selective of these schools move from schools with scores near the bottom of the state SAT score distribution to schools with scores near the median. Successful applicants near admissions cutoffs for the most selective of these schools move from above‐average schools to schools with students whose scores fall in the extreme upper tail. Exam school students can also expect to study with fewer nonwhite classmates than unsuccessful applicants. Our estimates suggest that the marked changes in peer characteristics at exam school admissions cutoffs have little causal effect on test scores or college quality.     

The U.S. Forest Service and Its Responsibilities under the National Environmental Policy Act: A Work Design Problem

The U.S. Forest Service’s responsibilities under the National Environmental Policy Act entail a wide range of activities including scoping, scientific analysis, social and economic analysis, managing public input and involvement, media relations, regulatory analysis, and litigation. These myriad duties raise several important organizational and management questions. First, is the U.S. Forest Service capable of discharging these widely varying tasks with high levels of effectiveness and efficiency? To what extent should these activities be outsourced to private contractors or other providers? For those responsibilities retained in-house, what organizational structure best supports their effective and efficient execution? To address these questions, this article draws on concepts from new institutional economics and insights from the privatization and strategic organizational design literatures.     

The physician executive in a changing world.

Physicians are losing their historic franchise as sole and primary providers of medical care. In addition to eroding moral and scientific authority, physicians are also losing income and status. It is no wonder that physicians are retrenching--confused and angry about the increasing marginalization of their profession and about society's changing expectations. Physicians are caught in a transition zone between the world that was and the one that will soon be. This is destabilizing and causes great anxiety. Rather than being buffeted by changing social and cultural definitions of health care, physicians must become proactively involved in the future of their profession. Physicians can only do this by offering a better mental model of health, medicine, and the community. This cannot be a defensive retreat from engagement. Rather, it must be an imaginative vision, vigorously set forth--a vision that will enlist the support of all constituencies involved in the effort to improve the health and well-being of all members of our society. The physician executive needs to work with physicians to orchestrate this effort to create a new vision of health in the 21st century.     

The O. J. Simpson Verdict: Predictors of Beliefs about Innocence or Guilt

This study examined ethnicity and psychological predictors of beliefs in guilt and innocence in the O. J. Simpson trial. A mixed-gender, multiethnic sample of 441 college students completed measures examining trial beliefs, trial-related attitudes, ethnic identification, pro- and anti-Black attitudes, and authoritarian personality traits. Results revealed that: (1) mean differences existed among ethnic groups on all variables examined; (2) proximal attitudes mediated relations between psychological characteristics and trial outcome beliefs; and (3) specific relations depended (to some extent) on ethnic group membership. Differences within and between ethnic groups may reflect schematic differences due to differential experiences with societal institutions, identification with (or rejection of) mainstream values, and race relations in American society.     

The training process of the Maryland Guardianship Assistance Project: a collaborative model for kinship foster care

Understanding models of multidisciplinary collaborations in child welfare has become essential for policy development, program success, and improving outcomes for children in foster care. The authors present the state of Maryland's Guardianship Assistance Project (GAP) as a model of multidisciplinary collaboration in child welfare and describe the training process that supported the development of the model. Key components for effective collaborative practice, lessons learned, and recommendations from the GAP collaboration are presented.     

A Cohort Model of Fertility Postponement

We introduce a new formal model in which demographic behavior such as fertility is postponed by differing amounts depending only on cohort membership. The cohort-based model shows the effects of cohort shifts on period fertility measures and provides an accompanying tempo adjustment to determine the period fertility that would have occurred without postponement. Cohort-based postponement spans multiple periods and produces “fertility momentum,” with implications for future fertility rates. We illustrate several methods for model estimation and apply the model to fertility in several countries. We also compare the fit of period-based and cohort-based shift models to the recent Dutch fertility surface, showing how cohort- and period-based postponement can occur simultaneously.     

Religion,Infidelity, and Divorce: Reexamining the Effect of Religious Behavior on Divorce Among Long-Married Couples

Previous scholarship linking marital infidelity and divorce has tended to have 2 limitations: focusing on young marriages and overlooking the influence of religiosity. Using data from the panel study of Marital Instability over the Life Course (N = 763), we address both of these limitations. Using structural equation modeling and proportional hazards modeling, we examine the effect of religiosity on marital infidelity and subsequent divorce among couples married for at least 12 years. Our analyses reveal that religiosity reduces the likelihood of marital infidelity among these couples. However the effect of religiosity on the likelihood of a subsequent divorce is more complicated: Religiosity appears to indirectly reduce the likelihood of a subsequent divorce by increasing levels of marital happiness. Surprisingly, no influence is found of marital infidelity on marital stability or divorce. Implications for scholars concerned with marital stability are discussed.