Income Inequality over the Later-Life Course: A Comparative Analysis of Seven OECD Countries

This paper examines income inequality over stages of the later-life course (age 45 and older) and systems that can be used to mitigate this inequality. Two hypotheses are tested: (i) Levels of income inequality decline during old age because public benefits are more equally distributed than work income; (ii) Because of the progressive nature of government benefits, countries with stronger public income security programs are better able to reduce income inequalities during old age. The analysis is performed by comparing age groups within seven OECD countries (Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States) using Luxembourg Income Study data. Both hypotheses are supported. Several conclusions are drawn from the findings.retirement, income dynamics, comparative analysis, public pensions

Age-specific Income Inequality and Life Expectancy: New Evidence

Objectives -- The study has two primary goals. First, to test the hypothesis that higher levels of income inequality are related to lower levels of population health with updated data from around year 2000. Second, to examine the inequality-health relationship across the life course with particular focus on old age when income distributions often shift dramatically. Design -- Correlation techniques were used to assess the relationship between income inequality (Gini ratio) at ages 0+, 25+, 65+, 75+, and 85+ and life expectancy at corresponding ages (0, 25, 65, 75, 85) by sex, before and after adjusting for average population income. Analyses were conducted on two sets of data: 18 wealthy countries and 28 wealthy and non-wealthy countries. Data sources -- International cross-sectional data on income and life expectancy from about year 2000 were derived from the Luxembourg Income Study and the United Nations Demographic Yearbook respectively. Results -- Among wealthy countries the negative effect of income inequality on life expectancy at birth becomes insignificant after controlling for average absolute income: the correlation coefficient changes from -0.603 to -0.207 for men and -0.605 to 0.024 for women. A similar pattern is observed at age 25. By contrast, the effect becomes increasingly positive and significant across old age, notably for males, regardless of adjustments for average population income or countries of observation. Conclusions -- These updated results do not support the inequality-health hypothesis. The relationship between income inequality and life expectancy at earlier ages in wealthy countries can be explained by the confounding effect of average absolute income. In old age the data are entirely contrary to the hypothesis. More research is needed to understand the mechanisms that facilitate the increasing positive effect of income inequality on life expectancy in late life.Cross-national; Income Inequality; Population Health; Life Expectancy; Age

Social Transfers and Income Inequality in Old-age: A Multi-national Perspective

This paper examines variation in old-age income inequality between industrialized nations with modern welfare systems. The analysis of income inequality across countries with different retirement income systems provides a perspective on public pension policy choices and designs and their distributional implications. Because of the progressive nature of public pension programs, we hypothesize that there is an inverse relationship between the quality of public pension benefits and old-age income inequality -- that is, countries with comprehensive, universal, and generous public pension systems will exhibit more equal distributions of income in old age. Luxembourg Income Study data indeed show that cross-national variation in old-age income inequality is partly explained by differences in the percentage of seniors' total income derived from public pension transfers. Sweden, for example, has the highest level of government transfers and the lowest level of old-age income inequality, while Israel and the U.S. have the lowest levels of dependency on government transfers and the highest levels of income inequality. A notable exception is Canada where public transfers represent only a moderate portion of elderly income, yet old-age income inequality is relatively low. This suggests that other factors besides quality of public pension benefits play a role in differences in old-age income inequality across countries.old-age; income inequality; public pension policy; government transfers

Wintertime aerosol in Las Vegas, Nevada

2014 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Numerous studies have found adverse health effects in subjects who live next to major roadways due to air pollution; in particular, there can be severe impacts on lung function and development in children living and/or attending school next to major roadways due to their exposure to air pollutants, including particulate matter (PM) or aerosol. The composition of aerosol at an elementary school next to a major freeway in Las Vegas, Nevada during winter 2008 was measured using a suite of measurements. An Aerodyne High Resolution Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (HR-AMS) was used to quantify the composition of non-refractory PM1 aerosol, including organic matter (OM); an Aethalometer was used to quantify black carbon (BC); a Sunset OCEC analyzer was used to measure organic and elemental carbon (OC, EC); and a particle-into-liquid system (PILS) coupled to two ion chromatographs (IC) was used to measure fine particle ions. Hi-volume PM2.5 samplers were used to collect aerosol on quartz fiber filters at between 2 and 24 hour intervals during the study, a subset of which were analyzed for PAHs and the biomass burning tracer levoglucosan. Data were analyzed by positive matrix factorization (PMF) to determine the amount of fresh, hydrocarbon-like organic aerosol (HOA), more oxidized OA (low-volatility and semi-volatile OA [LV-OOA, SV-OOA]) and biomass burning OA (BBOA). PM1 aerosol was predominantly carbonaceous, with OM plus BC accounting for 74% of the overall average 6.9 μg/m3 of PM measured. BC had a diurnal pattern similar to traffic volume, while OM was higher in the evening compared to the morning. OM was a mixture of fresh HOA, urban- and regional-scale OOA, and BBOA; in the evening, SV-OOA and BBOA peaked, while HOA concentrations were on average the same in the morning and evening, similar to BC. OM/OC ratios were low (1.52 ±0.14 on average) during the morning rush hour (average OM = 2.4 μg/m3) when vehicular emissions dominate this near-road measurement site, and even lower (1.46 ± 0.10) in the evening (average OM=6.3 μg/m3), when a combination of vehicular and fresh residential biomass burning emissions was typically present during a period characterized by strong atmospheric stability. While nitrate and sulfate had size distributions typical of secondary species with a sharp peak in particle diameter between 400 nm and 500 nm, OM had a broader distribution between 100 nm and 400 nm diameter particles, reflecting its combination of fresh, smaller particles and aged, larger particles. OM concentrations were on average similar between periods when the sampling site was upwind and downwind of the freeway, though during the morning OM concentrations were higher under downwind conditions, as was the fraction of HOA

Trends in antibacterial resistance among Streptococcus pneumoniae isolated in the USA: update from PROTEKT US Years 1–4

© 2008 Jenkins et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Maximising the global health impact of future HIV cure-related interventions through advance planning

Thinking about public health impact should inform HIV curative investigations. Should an effective HIV cure or sustained viral remission intervention emerge from ongoing investigations, implementation strategies aimed at ensuring global access will be needed if these approaches are to be impactful, and planning accordingly makes sense now. Specifically, we discuss three key access barriers to future cure-related interventions: high cost of the strategy; non-financial challenges to procurement, distribution and point-of-care delivery; and non-adherence and the need for long-term monitoring. As we argue, plans and decision-making for overcoming each of these barriers will need to be developed in advance. An evaluation of remaining barriers and likely global impact of the leading strategies under investigation should inform decisions on which strategy might receive funding priority. Among the strategies being investigated, implementation barriers for latency-reversing agents, immunotherapy and combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) may be overcome on a global scale with some effort. Overcoming implementation barriers for medically complex and high-risk interventions, such as stem cell and, to some degree, gene therapy, may be less feasible

Combining continuous near–road monitoring and inverse modeling to isolate the effect of highway expansion on a school in Las Vegas

AbstractThe impact of a highway expansion on a school adjacent to the highway is investigated with a novel method called the Sustained Wind Incidence Method (SWIM). SWIM falls under the broad group of environmental forensics methods where measured concentration data are used to identify possible contributors such as a point, line or a sectional source. SWIM helps to identify potential sources by highlighting spatial domains associated with the markers unique to potential contributors. In this study, SWIM is used to identify sources of traffic related emissions. The marker used to measure the impact of the traffic due to expansion is black carbon (BC), a key traffic related emission mostly associated with large vehicles (>12m in length), collected both before and after the expanded lanes were open for use. Using this method, multiple source domains may be simultaneously identified. For this study, the data collection site was situated at the school about 20 meters from the sound wall (7 meters high) separating the school and the highway. SWIM results show that the road expansions may have impacted the traffic patterns of the nearby non–highway feeder road and on–ramp (adjacent to the sound wall) traffic to the highway. This sector showed a surprisingly larger change than the highway in the observed increase in their relative contribution to the receptor site. Some domains (apportioned sector) show a dramatic increase ranging roughly from 10% to 50% in relative contributions. Using the output from SWIM and knowledge of local contributors, a local source landscape is painted