The Rise in Disability Recipiency and the Decline in Unemployment

Between 1984 and 2000, the share of non-elderly adults receiving benefits from the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs rose from 3.1 to 5.3 percent. We trace this growth to reduced screening stringency and, due to the interaction between growing wage inequality and a progressive benefits formula, a rising earnings replacement rate. We explore the implications of these changes for the level of labor force participation among the less skilled and their employment responses to adverse employment shocks. Following program liberalization in 1984, DI application and recipiency rates became two to three times as responsive to plausibly exogenous labor demand shocks. Contemporaneously, male and female high school dropouts became increasingly likely to exit the labor force rather than enter unemployment in the event of an adverse shock. The liberalization of the disability program appears to explain both facts. Accounting for the role of disability in inducing labor force exit among the low-skilled unemployed, we calculate that the U.S. unemployment rate would be two-thirds of a percentage point higher at present were it not for the liberalized disability system.

Does Medicaid Pay Too Much for Prescription Drugs? A Case Study of Atypical Anti-Psychotics

During the last several years, government spending on drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses has increased at more than 30% per year, with the $3 billion in 2001 Medicaid expenditures exceeding spending in any other therapeutic category. This growth has been primarily driven by a shift to atypical anti-psychotic drugs, which are several times more expensive than the conventional anti-psychotics that preceded them and are purchased almost exclusively by state governments through the Medicaid program. In this paper, I estimate the productivity of these new drugs using a 5% sample of California Medicaid recipients eligible for the program in at least one month between January of 1993 and December of 2001 and diagnosed with schizophrenia during that period. My results indicate that the shift to atypical anti-psychotics has significantly increased government spending, has not reduced the utilization of hospitals or long-term care facilities, and has not improved observable measures of health among Medicaid recipients. The findings suggest that the price of a prescription drug purchased differentially by consumers with Medicaid or other public health insurance may be an inaccurate measure of it value to patients.

An Editor for Helping Novices to Learn Standard ML

This paper describes a novel editor intended as an aid in the learning of the functional programming language Standard ML. A common technique used by novices is programming by analogy whereby students refer to similar programs that they have written before or have seen in the course literature and use these programs as a basis to write a new program. We present a novel editor for ML which supports programming by analogy by providing a collection of editing commands that transform old programs into new ones. Each command makes changes to an isolated part of the program. These changes are propagated to the rest of the program using analogical techniques. We observed a group of novice ML students to determine the most common programming errors in learning ML and restrict our editor such that it is impossible to commit these errors. In this way, students encounter fewer bugs and so their rate of learning increases. Our editor, C Y NTHIA, has been implemented and is due to be tested on st..

Triangulum II: Not Especially Dense After All

Among the Milky Way satellites discovered in the past three years, Triangulum II has presented the most difficulty in revealing its dynamical status. Kirby et al. (2015a) identified it as the most dark matter-dominated galaxy known, with a mass-to-light ratio within the half-light radius of 3600 +3500 -2100 M_sun/L_sun. On the other hand, Martin et al. (2016) measured an outer velocity dispersion that is 3.5 +/- 2.1 times larger than the central velocity dispersion, suggesting that the system might not be in equilibrium. From new multi-epoch Keck/DEIMOS measurements of 13 member stars in Triangulum II, we constrain the velocity dispersion to be sigma_v < 3.4 km/s (90% C.L.). Our previous measurement of sigma_v, based on six stars, was inflated by the presence of a binary star with variable radial velocity. We find no evidence that the velocity dispersion increases with radius. The stars display a wide range of metallicities, indicating that Triangulum II retained supernova ejecta and therefore possesses or once possessed a massive dark matter halo. However, the detection of a metallicity dispersion hinges on the membership of the two most metal-rich stars. The stellar mass is lower than galaxies of similar mean stellar metallicity, which might indicate that Triangulum II is either a star cluster or a tidally stripped dwarf galaxy. Detailed abundances of one star show heavily depressed neutron-capture abundances, similar to stars in most other ultra-faint dwarf galaxies but unlike stars in globular clusters.Comment: accepted to ApJ, Table 5 available as a machine-readable table by clicking on "Other formats" on the right. Proof corrections reflected in version

Increasing prevalence of asthma diagnosis and symptoms in children is confined to mild symptoms

BACKGROUND: The prevalence of childhood asthma is increasing but few studies have investigated trends in asthma severity. We investigated trends in asthma diagnosis and symptom morbidity between an eight year time period in a paired prevalence study. METHODS: All children in one single school year aged 8-9 years in the city of Sheffield were given a parent respondent questionnaire in 1991 and 1999 based on questions from the International Survey of Asthma and Allergy in Children (ISAAC). Data were obtained regarding the prevalence of asthma and wheeze and current (12 month) prevalences of wheeze attacks, speech limiting wheeze, nocturnal cough and wheeze, and exertional symptoms. RESULTS: The response rates in 1991 and 1999 were 4580/5321 (85.3%) and 5011/6021 (83.2%), respectively. There were significant increases between the two surveys in the prevalence of asthma ever (19.9% v 29.7%, mean difference 11.9%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 10.16 to 13.57, p<0.001), current asthma (10.3% v 13.0%, mean difference 2.7%, 95% CI 1.44 to 4.03, p<0.001), wheeze ever (30.3% v 35.8%, mean difference 5.7%, 95% CI 3.76 to 7.56, p<0.001), wheeze in the previous 12 months (17.0% v 19.4%, mean difference 2.5, 95% CI 0.95 to 4.07, p<0.01), and reporting of medication use (16.9% v 20%, mean difference 3.0%, 95% CI 1.46 to 4.62, p<0.001). There were also significant increases in reported hayfever and eczema diagnoses. CONCLUSIONS: Diagnostic labelling of asthma and lifetime prevalence of wheeze has increased. The current 12 month point prevalence of wheeze has increased but this is confined to occasional symptoms. The increased medication rate may be responsible for the static prevalence of severe asthma symptoms. The significant proportion of children receiving medication but reporting no asthma symptoms identified from our 1999 survey suggests that some children are being inappropriately treated or overtreated

Moral Hazard and Claims Deterrence in Private Disability Insurance

Exploiting within-firm, over-time variation in plan parameters for nearly 10,000 Long Term Disability (LTD) policies held by US employers, we present the first empirical analysis of the determinants of private LTD spells. We find that a shorter waiting period and a higher replacement rate increase the incidence of LTD spells. Sixty percent of the latter effect is due to the mechanical censoring of shorter spells, with the remainder due to the deterrence of spells that would have continued beyond the waiting period. Deterrence is driven primarily by a reduction in the incidence of shorter duration spells and less severe disabilities

The detection of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) using loop mediated isothermal amplification in conjunction with a simplified DNA extraction process

Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) is a commercially important species of white fish, and one of three species legally identifiable as cod in the UK. Mislabelling of G. morhua does occur, as does the substitution of G. morhua for less expensive species. Sensitive molecular tests based on PCR have been developed for this species, but they have limitations, including the need for expensive thermal cycling equipment, and complex DNA extraction procedures. A loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay was designed for the G. morhua cytochrome b gene, which was capable of detecting 0.1% w/w G. morhua in a homogenised raw fish mix. The LAMP assay was also able to detect G. morhua DNA when a rapid sample preparation was used, involving heating 100 mg of fish in a 1 ml aliquot of water and testing the supernatant, showing a higher tolerance of amplification inhibitors than a PCR assay. The LAMP assay did not generate a positive result when challenged with a range of non-target species, including Gadus macrocephalus, and Gadus chalcogrammus, indicating a high level of specificity. Direct detection of a positive reaction using propidium iodide was also demonstrated

Combustion of dried animal dung as biofuel results in the generation of highly redox active fine particulates.

BACKGROUND: The burning of biomass in the developing world for heating and cooking results in high indoor particle concentrations. Long-term exposure to airborne particulate matter (PM) has been associated with increased rates of acute respiratory infections, chronic obstructive lung disease and cancer. In this study we determined the oxidative activity of combustion particles derived from the biomass fuel dung cake by examining their capacity to deplete antioxidants from a model human respiratory tract lining fluid (RTLF). For comparison, the observed oxidative activity was compared with that of particles derived from industrial and vehicular sources. RESULTS: Incubation of the dung cake particle suspensions in the RTLF for 4 h resulted in a mean loss of ascorbate of 72.1 +/- 0.7 and 89.7 +/- 2.5% at 50 and 100 microg/ml, respectively. Reduced glutathione was depleted by 49.6 +/- 4.3 and 63.5 +/- 22.4% under the same conditions. The capacity of these samples to deplete ascorbate was in excess of that observed with diesel or gasoline particles, but comparable to that seen with residual oil fly ash and considerably in excess of all three control particles in terms of glutathione depletion. Co-incubation with the metal chelator diethylenetriaminepentaacetate inhibited these losses, whilst minimal inhibition was seen with superoxide dismutase and catalase treatment. The majority of the activity observed appeared to be contained within aqueous particle extracts. CONCLUSION: These data demonstrate that biomass derived particles have considerable oxidative activity, largely attributable to their transition metal content