Acculturation among Mexican-heritage preadolescents: A latent class analysis

This study applies advanced conceptualization and measurement to an analysis of acculturation among 1632 Mexican-heritage preadolescents. We assessed whether - and how - multiple measures combine to form a latent acculturation construct that groups individuals into classes; and determine how many and what classes (or types) of acculturation are experienced by this sample of 5th graders. Measures included attitudinal, behavioral, and linguistic acculturation, generation status, time in the US, ethnic identification, and contact with the culture of origin. The analysis identified five classes of acculturation, differing in size and characterized by specific measures of acculturation: less acculturated, moderately bicultural, strongly bicultural, highly acculturated, and marginalized. Although most youths fell into the first four classes, consonant with their exposure to American society, a small minority of youths fell into the last class. Despite substantial exposure to US culture and recent exposure to Mexican culture, these youth showed little affinity for either culture.     

Impact of Road Traffic Deaths on Expected Years of Life Lost and Reduction in Life Expectancy in Brazil

The road traffic crash burden is significant in Brazil; calculating years of life lost and life expectancy reduction quantifies the burden of road traffic deaths to enable prioritization of this issue. Years of life lost and reduction in life expectancy were calculated using 2008 population/crash data from Brazil’s ministries of health and transport. The potential for reduction in crash mortality was calculated for hypothetical scenarios reducing death rates to those of the best-performing region and age category. In Brazil, road traffic deaths reduce the at-birth life expectancy by 0.8 years for males and by 0.2 years for females. Many years of life lost for men and woman could be averted—270,733 and 123,986, respectively—if all rates matched those of the lowest-risk region and age category. This study further characterizes the burden of motor vehicle deaths in Brazil and quantifies the potential health benefits of policies/interventions that reduce road traffic death rates to those of the best-performing subpopulations.     

Games without Rules

We introduce the notion of an outcome space, in which strategic interactions are embedded. This allows us to investigate the idea that one strategic interaction might be an expanded version of another interaction. We then characterize the Nash equilibria arising in such extensions and demonstrate a folk-type theorem stating that any individually rational element of the outcome space is a Nash equilibrium.