Are American Homeowners Locked into Their Houses? The Impact of Housing Market Conditions on State-to-State Migration

U.S. policymakers are concerned that negative home equity arising from the severe housing market decline may be constraining geographic mobility and consequently serving as a factor in the nation's persistently high unemployment rate. Indeed, the widespread drop in house prices since 2007 has increased the share of homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages. At the same time, migration across states and among homeowners has fallen sharply. Using a logistic regression framework to analyze data from the Internal Revenue Service on state-to-state migration between 2006 and 2009, the authors discover evidence that house lock decreases mobility but find it has a negligible impact on the national unemployment rate. A one-standard deviation increase in the share of underwater nonprime households in the origin state reduces the outflow of migrants from the origin to the destination state by 2.9 percent. When aggregated across the United States, this decrease in mobility reduces the national state-to-state migration rate by 0.05 percentage points, resulting in roughly 110,000 to 150,000 fewer individuals migrating across state lines in any given year. Assuming that all of these discouraged migrants were job-seekers who were previously unemployed before relocating and then found a job in their new state would reduce the nation's unemployment rate by at most one-tenth of a percentage point in a given year. The cumulative effect over this period would yield an unemployment rate of 9.0 percent versus 9.3 percent in 2009. Recognizing that not all state-to-state migrants are job-seekers, not all job-seekers were previously unemployed, and not all previously unemployed job-seekers will successfully find work in their new location yields an unemployment rate that is virtually unchanged from the actual one that prevailed from 2006 to 2009

The Devil is in the Details: Variation in Public Acceptance of Fuels Treatments Across Western Fire-Prone Communities

Implementation of broad landscape management goals to confront the wildfire crisis occurs at the project level and is subject to public scrutiny. Although the research literature demonstrates broad public acceptability of fuels treatments, a closer examination of the studies reveals notable variation in acceptance. Survey data from thirteen western U.S. communities using the same measures of acceptability are presented. Results highlight high acceptance with notable variation in treatment type and study location. Results indicate that the devil is in the details

The Devil is in the Details: Variation in Public Acceptance of Fuels Treatments Across Western Fire-Prone Communities

Implementation of broad landscape management goals to confront the wildfire crisis occurs at the project level and is subject to public scrutiny. Although the research literature demonstrates broad public acceptability of fuels treatments, a closer examination of the studies reveals notable variation in acceptance. Survey data from thirteen western U.S. communities using the same measures of acceptability are presented. Results highlight high acceptance with notable variation in treatment type and study location. Results indicate that the devil is in the details

Multisite parent-centered risk assessment to reduce pediatric oral chemotherapy errors

PURPOSE: Observational studies describe high rates of errors in home oral chemotherapy use in children. In hospitals, proactive risk assessment methods help front-line health care workers develop error prevention strategies. Our objective was to engage parents of children with cancer in a multisite study using proactive risk assessment methods to identify how errors occur at home and propose risk reduction strategies. METHODS: We recruited parents from three outpatient pediatric oncology clinics in the northeast and southeast United States to participate in failure mode and effects analyses (FMEA). An FMEA is a systematic team-based proactive risk assessment approach in understanding ways a process can fail and develop prevention strategies. Steps included diagram the process, brainstorm and prioritize failure modes (places where things go wrong), and propose risk reduction strategies. We focused on home oral chemotherapy administration after a change in dose because prior studies identified this area as high risk. RESULTS: Parent teams consisted of four parents at two of the sites and 10 at the third. Parents developed a 13-step process map, with two to 19 failure modes per step. The highest priority failure modes included miscommunication when receiving instructions from the clinician (caused by conflicting instructions or parent lapses) and unsafe chemotherapy handling at home. Recommended risk assessment strategies included novel uses of technology to improve parent access to information, clinicians, and other parents while at home. CONCLUSION: Parents of pediatric oncology patients readily participated in a proactive risk assessment method, identifying processes that pose a risk for medication errors involving home oral chemotherapy