Maps are used to track diseases and illustrate the social context of health problems. However, commercial mapping software requires special training. This article illustrates how nonspecialists used Google Earth, a free program, to create community maps. The Bronx, New York, is characterized by high levels of obesity and diabetes. Residents and medical students measured the variety and quality ...

Since the early 1970s, ballot initiatives and court rulings have sought to equalize funding across California schools. Yet 30 years later, variations in funding remain both across and within school districts. Moreover, although “funding per pupil” provides a readily available and understandable measure of school resources within a district, it provides little insight into how individual schools...

Are regulations on the payday loan effective? Do people switch to other forms of expensive credit such as pawnshop loans because of such regulations? In this study, we aim to find the answers to these two questions through exploring state-level variations in regulations on payday loans and other alternative financial services. Using FDIC’s panel survey data and Google Trends data, we find that ...

BACKGROUND Marriage histories are a valuable data source for investigating nuptiality. While researchers typically acknowledge the problems associated with their use, it is unknown to what extent these problems occur and how marriage analyses are affected. OBJECTIVE This paper seeks to investigate the quality of marriage histories by measuring levels of misreporting, examining the characteris...

BACKGROUND There is a growing awareness of the importance of mental health care in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) student-athletes; however, there is a lack of literature on mental health resources in collegiate settings. Identifying current practices can set the stage to improve the delivery of care. HYPOTHESIS There is great variability in resources and current practices an...

vi Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Background 1 Study objectives 2 Study setting 3 Methods 3 Chapter 2: Early marriage: Preferences and realities 5 Age at marriage: Girls’ preferences 5 Age at marriage: Parents’ preferences 6 Age at marriage: The reality 7 Chapter 3: Factors underlying early marriage 9 Poverty and the burden of marriage-related expenses 9 Concerns about finding a suitable groom 9 ‘Ev...

Student wastage in higher education is a problem of great importance in our society. The time has come to try to start a service to give specialised help for redeployment in continued education or in suitable employment that carries further training prospects. This would be not only a humane social service, but a real component of the educational and economic system. At present, wastage in the ...

Early retirement incentives (ERIs) are increasingly prevalent in education as districts seek to close budget gaps by replacing expensive experienced teachers with lower-cost newer teachers. Combined with the aging of the teacher workforce, these ERIs are likely to change the composition of teachers dramatically in the coming years. We use exogenous variation from an ERI program in Illinois in t...