Unmet needs for developmental disabilities services

Data collected from a representative sample of persons who are developmentally disabled living in three counties in Florida in 1989 were analyzed to determine the number of services these persons receive, the extent to which they do not receive services they need, the reasons these services are not received, and the factors which are related to satisfaction with services. A battery of 90 services which can be grouped into 8 general categories was used, and the data were collected in face-to-face interviews with 312 persons.     

Biosocial models of demographic behavior: An introduction

A workshop on biosocial models of demographic behavior was organized to provide information to members of the Social Sciences and Population Study Section (SSP), the group entrusted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with the responsibility for conducting the first level of peer review of demographic applications submitted to NIH for possible funding. Some of the variables studies by demographers are biological, e.g., fertility, fecundity, morbidity, and mortality, so demographers are not unaware of biological variables. However, they tend to treat biological variables as something to be explained by social, economic, and psychological factors rather than to be integrated into an explanatory paradigm. This workshop contains papers that focus upon various stages of the life cycle and explore the importance of biosocial variables in explaining selected aspects of human behavior.This introduction presents an overview of the topics covered by the authors of the papers presented and the workshop, and is based upon opening remarks at the DRG Workshop on Biosocial Models of Demographic Behavior, Bethesda, MD, 12 October 1994.     

Aging With Rising Risk: Have Older Households Experienced Faster-Growing Risk Exposure Than Younger Ones Since the 1990s?

Financial markets have been characterized by boom and bust cycles since the 1980s, while the responsibility for managing retirement wealth has increasingly shifted onto individual households at the same time. Policy makers and experts have expressed concern over rising risk exposure among older householders, who appear to be increasingly exposed to the growing financial risks just as they near retirement. We consider household data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances from 1989 to 2010 to analyze the correlation between age and risk exposure. We test whether older householders’ risk exposure has indeed grown over time, whether it has increased more than that of younger householders, whether changes in the demographic composition of older householders have contributed to older households’ rising risk exposure, and the degree to which increases in risk exposure can be traced to a growing concentration of household assets held in stocks and housing and to rising householder indebtedness. Our results indicate that risk exposure has grown more for older householders than for younger ones, that demographic changes among older householders have contributed to additional increases in older householders’ risk exposure, and that the growth of older householders’ risk exposure is driven more by rising risky asset concentration and less by greater indebtedness.