Population Studies and Training Center

In the Media

Liberty Street Economics (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

Racial Discrimination in Child Protective Services

Childhood experiences have an enormous impact on children’s long-term societal contributions. Experiencing childhood maltreatment is associated with compromised physical and mental health, decreased educational attainment and future earnings, and increased criminal activity.
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Robin Jeffrey, a visiting Research Professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies in Singapore, and Patrick Heller, Professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs at Brown University in the U.S., will speak at a session on Kerala economy.
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National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

New Report Identifies Policies to Reduce Intergenerational Poverty in the U.S.

Implementing a portfolio of programs and policies to reduce intergenerational poverty would yield a high payoff for children and the entire nation, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
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Arise News

Education, Growth, and Religion

Dayo Sobowale argues that religion has a way of interfering with states’ capacity for sustainable growth.
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The Christian Science Monitor

They moved to Vermont for climate safety. Then came floods.

In the past few years, Vermont has earned high rankings for its relatively low climate risk. A 2020 ProPublica report classified four Vermont counties as part of the top 10 across the country that are least likely to suffer from climate change effects like wildfires, extreme heat, and sea level rise.
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The U.S. had more than 9 million open roles in June, and while that’s down from the peak of 12 million in March 2022, it’s still among the highest number of openings we’ve had since before 2000.
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Critics of freeway expansion projects cite the need to combat climate change and air pollution, the legacy of displacing and polluting communities of color, and research that shows that expanding freeways doesn’t alleviate traffic congestion.
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VoxEU CEPR

The roots of cultural diversity

Societal diversity fosters creativity and cultural cross-pollination, but can also hinder social cohension. This column uses data on oral traditions and folkloric motifs across the world to examine the impact of the prehistoric migration of humans out of Africa on cultural diversity.
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Is the trauma of displacement enduring? What is its impact – on the economy, on electoral behavior, on art – even decades later? How is a society affected when it suddenly needs to take in a large number of refugees?
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To narrow the nation’s deeply entrenched health disparities, a permanent entity with regulatory powers should be created by the president to oversee health equity efforts across the entire federal government, says a report issued by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
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Nature Human Behaviour

We must invest in behavioural economics for the HIV response

Effective HIV prevention and treatment are widely available, but services are underused and underdelivered. Behavioural economics offers insights into why this is and shows us cost-effective interventions to change behaviours.
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On July 6, 2023, members of the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) community gathered in the Amphitheater “Leonidas Zervas” of the National Research Foundation in Athens to award an Honorary Doctorate of the Department of Economics, of the School of Economics, to Professor Oded Galor.
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Medicaid is an essential source of maternal and postpartum care for low-income Americans, covering 42% of births in the U.S. But many immigrants don’t have access to this coverage, making them more vulnerable to maternal health problems, as highlighted by a new study of nearly 73,000 postpartum people across 19 states and New York City between 2012 and 2019.
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Elite colleges have long been filled with the children of the richest families: At Ivy League schools, one in six students has parents in the top 1 percent. A large new study, released Monday, shows that it has not been because these children had more impressive grades on average or took harder classes.
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Dire warnings of teacher shortages are nothing new, especially during the pandemic, and are sometimes overblown. But a confluence of warning signs suggest that the country is at a post-pandemic inflection point.
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It’s not surprising that in places where food is scarce, obesity serves as a significant marker of wealth. But what the new study points out is that in poor countries, information is also scarce. And in those situations, loan officers use whatever bits of evidence they can find to help make critical economic decisions.
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The Hill

Americans are older than ever

The nation’s median age reached 38.9 in 2022, according to new Census data; that’s the highest it has ever been.
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Over the last three generations, Christian children in Africa have surpassed their parents’ level of education at a much higher rate than Muslim and traditionalist children there have, research shows.
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Minnesota Reformer

A crazy idea worth considering: more school

Minnesota children spend fewer hours and days in the classroom than their peers nationwide. Among states with mandated instructional time, only Colorado requires fewer days than Minnesota, according to the Education Commission of the States.
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The Washington Post

13 parents share the best reasons to have children

In honor of Mother's Day, Washington Post columnist Alyssa Rosenberg shares her favorite anecdotes from parenting writers and experts, including one from PSTC economist Emily Oster.
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A $3.1 million NIH grant supports Professor Blair T. Johnson and collaborators from Brown University in analyzing the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) interventions.
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If you are looking for a silver lining from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's this sad short-lived truth, Megan Ranney, MD, deputy dean at Providence, R.I.-based Brown University School of Public Health, told Becker's: "During the pandemic there were no school or workplace shootings."
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A recent survey of 1,586 women conducted by Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA) in partnership with YouGov, an international research organization, and economist Emily Oster found only 26 percent of respondents feel good about their retirement savings.
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The past several weeks have seen somewhat widespread discussion of a truly upsetting trend in adolescent and teen mental health. In the most recent CDC data, 40 percent of high school students indicated that during the previous year they had experienced sadness severe enough that it impeded their ability to do their normal activities for at least two weeks.
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Climate change disasters’ impact on population health, health disparities, and the national health care delivery infrastructure are subjects of too little academic research at a time when policymakers’ need for such data has never been greater. That’s according to five top academic research experts convened in a virtual seminar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI).
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Kate Mason — a Brown University anthropology professor who co-founded the Pandemic Journaling Project with Sarah Willen, a University of Connecticut anthropology professor — said the writings, submitted anonymously, had two things in common: "a lot of deep loneliness" and "a lot of fear and uncertainty."
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As schools reckon with the toll of the pandemic, leaders across the country have begun to test out a strategy they hope will help students catch up on missed learning: tutoring.
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When mothers weigh the choice to leave the workforce, childcare costs are the immediate concern, says PSTC Economist Emily Oster, That makes sense, but it doesn't mean parents considering a break from the workforce shouldn't also consider longer-term factors as well.
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