Research Brief: National and Administrative Datasets Available to Explore Rehabilitation Related Research on Disability and Employer Practices

A number of large national and administrative datasets collect rich information on a range of topics that can inform specific rehabilitation research and policy questions. However, for those who desire to use these files, it has traditionally been an arduous task to learn their finer details. A new online catalog compiled by the Cornell University RRTC team enables researchers to more readily understand the variables contained in these files and to assess which subset of files contain similar measures for cross-data comparison studies

The Health Status of Southern Children: A Neglected Regional Disparity

Purpose: Great variations exist in child health outcomes among states in the United States, with southern states consistently ranked among the lowest in the country. Investigation of the geographical distribution of children’s health status and the regional factors contributing to these outcomes has been neglected. We attempted to identify the degree to which region of residence may be linked to health outcomes for children with the specific aim of determining whether living in the southern region of the United States is adversely associated with children’s health status. Methods: A child health index (CHI) that ranked each state in the United States was computed by using statespecific composite scores generated from outcome measures for a number of indicators of child health. Five indicators for physical health were chosen (percent low birth weight infants, infant mortality rate, child death rate, teen death rate, and teen birth rates) based on their historic and routine use to define health outcomes in children. Indicators were calculated as rates or percentages. Standard scores were calculated for each state for each health indicator by subtracting the mean of the measures for all states from the observed measure for each state. Indicators related to social and economic status were considered to be variables that impact physical health, as opposed to indicators of physical health, and therefore were not used to generate the composite child health score. These variables were subsequently examined in this study as potential confounding variables. Mapping was used to redefine regional groupings of states, and parametric tests (2-sample t test, analysis of means, and analysis-of-variance F tests) were used to compare the means of the CHI scores for the regional groupings and test for statistical significance. Multiple regression analysis computed the relationship of region, social and economic indicators, and race to the CHI. Simple linear-regression analyses were used to assess the individual effect of each indicator. Results: A geographic region of contiguous states, characterized by their poor child health outcomes relative to other states and regions of the United States, exists within the “Deep South” (Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida). This Deep-South region is statistically different in CHI scores from the US Census Bureau– defined grouping of states in the South. The mean of CHI scores for the Deep-South region was \u3e1 SD below the mean of CHI scores for all states. In contrast, the CHI score means for each of the other 3 regions were all above the overall mean of CHI scores for all states. Regression analysis showed that living in the Deep- South region is a stronger predictor of poor child health outcomes than other consistently collected and reported variables commonly used to predict children’s health. Conclusions: The findings of this study indicate that region of residence in the United States is statistically related to important measures of children’s health and may be among the most powerful predictors of child health outcomes and disparities. This clarification of the poorer health status of children living in the Deep South through spatial analysis is an essential first step for developing a better understanding of variations in the health of children. Similar to early epidemiology work linking geographic boundaries to disease, discovering the mechanisms/pathways/causes by which region influences health outcomes is a critical step in addressing disparities and inequities in child health and one that is an important and fertile area for future research. The reasons for these disparities may be complex and synergistically related to various economic, political, social, cultural, and perhaps even environmental (physical) factors in the region. This research will require the use and development of new approaches and applications of spatial analysis to develop insights into the societal, environmental, and historical determinants of child health that have been neglected in previous child health outcomes and policy research. The public policy implications of the findings in this study are substantial. Few, if any, policies identify these children as a high-risk group on the basis of their region of residence. A better understanding of the depth and breadth of disparities in health, education, and other social outcomes among and within regions of the United States is necessary for the generation of policies that enable policy makers to address and mitigate the factors that influence these disparities. Defining and clarifying the regional boundaries is also necessary to better inform public policy decisions related to resource allocation and the prevention and/or mitigation of the effects of region on child health. The identification of the Deep South as a clearly defined sub-region of the Census Bureau’s regional definition of the South suggests the need to use more culturally and socially relevant boundaries than the Census Bureau regions when analyzing regional data for policy development

Intergenerational Mobility and the Informative Content of Surnames

We propose an alternative method for measuring intergenerational mobility. Traditional methods based on panel data provide measurements that are scarce, difficult to compare across countries and almost impossible to get across time. In particular this means that we do not know how intergenerational mobility is correlated with growth, income or the degree of inequality. Our proposal is to measure the informative content of surnames in one census. The more information does the surname have on the income of an individual, the more important is background in determining outcomes; and thus, the less mobility there is. The reason for this is that surnames inform on family relationships because the distribution of surnames is necessarily much skewed. A large percentage of the population is bound to have a very unfrequent surname. For them the partition generated by surnames is very informative on family linkages. First, we develop a model whose endogenous variable is the joint distribution of surnames and income. Then we explore the relationship between mobility and the informative content of surnames. We allow for assortative mating to be a determinant of both. Then, we use our methodology to show that in a large Spanish region the informative content of surnames is large and consistent with the model. We also show that it has increased over time, indicating a substantial drop in the degree of mobility. Finally, using the peculiarities of the Spanish surname convention we show that the degree of assortative mating has also increased over time, in such a manner that might explain the decrease in mobility observed. Our method allows us to provide measures of mobility comparable across time. It should also allow us to study other issues related to inheritance.inheritance, birth-death processes, cross-sectional data, population genetics

Occupational Mortality, Age at Marriage and Marital Fertility Early Twentieth Century England and Wales

What factors determine fertility and to what extent do we really understand the decision processes that underpinned when to marry, when to start having children and how many children to have in the historical past? In many ways, the posing of such questions may seem surprising given the now copious literature on the subject.1 In this paper we use new datasets built from previously under-exploited primary source materials and improved econometric modelling to build on previous work and thereby improve on our understanding of the determinants of the demand for children in early twentieth century England and Wales

“Isn’t it time you were finishing?”: Women’s Labor Force Participation and Childbearing in England, 1860–1920

This contribution examines the relationship between women’s labor force participation (LFP) and fertility in three industrial towns of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England from a feminist economic perspective. The study augments existing, statistical, approaches to demographic history by discussing women’s motivations. Women’s LFP influenced their likelihood of family limitation (via effects on both age at marriage and marital fertility). Where women were most likely to be in paid work, they were most likely to limit family size. It is further argued that the diversity of LFP patterns is the principal explanation for the varied patterns of fertility decline in different parts of Britain

Ethnicity, gender and poverty in the United Kingdom

Gender and ethnicity remain two of the most important factors influencing individuals economic well being. However, a person's likelihood of being in poverty cannot simply be 'read off' from their gender or ethnicity. This briefing paper analyses the statistics relating to gender and ethnicity and highlights the complex intersection of the two. Some of the implications for policy makers are also drawn out