* C h i e f A c t u a r y , Soc ia l S e c u r i t y A d m i n i s t r a t i o n . In the 1956 amendments to the Social Security Act, Congress continued its policy of making the old-age and survivors insurance program self-supporting. The amendments included provisions increasing the cost of the program, but the greater cost–except for the new disability insurance benefits–is roughly offset by ...

Pathways to Early Retirement in Denmark, 1984-2000 This paper describes and analyses the pathways to early retirement in Denmark. The analyses are based on a 10 per cent panel sample of the population 45-66 years old followed from 1984 onwards. We use a multinomial logit approach to analyse the characteristics of individuals that retire through each pathway compared to those remaining in the la...

abstract circumcision is the most common surgery performed worldwide and about 30% of men are circumcised, of whom 70% are muslim. the majority of male neonates are circumcised based on religious and cultural practices. neonatal circumcision has several advantages when compared to an older age group receiving the procedure. there is considerable controversy about circumcision – neonatal or othe...

Public policymakers and program administrators often face decisions that impact the retirement incomes of individuals. An important question that these decision-makers may wish to address concerns the distributional impacts of the programmatic changes under consideration. Who (what population groups) would gain income and how much? Who would be unaffected? Who would lose and by how much? The qu...

Abstract: We study the impact of the introduction of one of the major pillars of the social insurance system in the United States: the introduction of Medicare in 1965. Our results suggest that, in its first 10 years, the establishment of universal health insurance for the elderly had no discernible impact on elderly mortality. However, we find a substantial reduction in the elderly’s exposure ...

OBJECTIVES To measure expatriates' knowledge of health insurance benefits with respect to outpatient, inpatient, prescription drug, and dental services, and to link this knowledge to sociodemographic and employment characteristic.  Methods: Cross-sectional, face-to-face interviews were conducted from March 2015 to February 2016 with a stratified random sample of 3,398 male insured expatriate wo...

There are health benefits to breastfeeding for both mothers and their children. The preventive health effects of breastfeeding continue into adulthood, lowering rate of various chronic illnesses. African-American women, especially of lower socioeconomic status, are less likely to breastfeed in comparison to their racial and ethnic counterparts. The purpose of this study is to explore how Africa...

This paper describes how much families know about their health insurance coverage and investigates whether consumer education and simplified benefit structures would improve knowledge. Families' perceptions about their insurance benefits were measured in two household surveys administered in six sites. Knowledge was assessed by comparing families' responses with policy data collected from the c...

BACKGROUND We conducted a pilot test of American Cancer Society Workplace Solutions, an intervention that takes a marketing approach to increasing employers' adoption of evidence-based practices to prevent and control chronic diseases among their employees. CONTEXT We delivered the intervention and assessed the changes in practices of 8 large employers in the Pacific Northwest. METHODS Work...