Income Inequality, Status Seeking, and Consumption

Using the Chinese urban household survey data between 1997 and 2006, we find that income inequality has a negative (positive) impact on households’ consumption (savings), even after we control for family income. We argue that people save to improve their social status when social status is associated with pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits. Rising income inequality can strengthen the incentives of status-seeking savings by increasing the benefit of improving status and enlarging the wealth level that is required for status upgrading. We also find that the negative effect of income inequality on consumption is stronger for poorer and younger people, and income inequality stimulates more education investment, which are consistent with the status seeking hypothesis.income inequality; social status; consumption and savings; status seeking; education investment

Cognitive Control in Majority Search: A Computational Modeling Approach

Despite the importance of cognitive control in many cognitive tasks involving uncertainty, the computational mechanisms of cognitive control in response to uncertainty remain unclear. In this study, we develop biologically realistic neural network models to investigate the instantiation of cognitive control in a majority function task, where one determines the category to which the majority of items in a group belong. Two models are constructed, both of which include the same set of modules representing task-relevant brain functions and share the same model structure. However, with a critical change of a model parameter setting, the two models implement two different underlying algorithms: one for grouping search (where a subgroup of items are sampled and re-sampled until a congruent sample is found) and the other for self-terminating search (where the items are scanned and counted one-by-one until the majority is decided). The two algorithms hold distinct implications for the involvement of cognitive control. The modeling results show that while both models are able to perform the task, the grouping search model fit the human data better than the self-terminating search model. An examination of the dynamics underlying model performance reveals how cognitive control might be instantiated in the brain for computing the majority function

Utilization of a Metabolic Syndrome Index in Evaluating the Life in Balance Lifestyle Intervention for Prevention of Type 2 Diabetes among Urban American Indians and Alaska Natives

Background: A myriad of diabetes prevention programs modeled on the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) are carried out worldwide to fight against the current diabetes pandemic. The percentage of weight reduction is a widely used indicator to evaluate diabetes prevention programs. However, weight change alone may not fully reflect the efficacy of lifestyle intervention. A metabolic syndrome index is a promising novel scale for evaluation of diabetes prevention programs because it is a systematic, comprehensive, and stable indicator that reflects the metabolic risk reduction for diabetes and its complications at multiple levels and dimensions. Methods: A total of 22 overweight and obese AI/ANs (age, 39.6 ± 10.4 years; BMI, 34.1± 6.3 kg/m2) at increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes residing in Las Vegas participated in the LIB program between April, 2010 and December, 2011. Metabolic syndrome was defined according to the American Heart Association and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute criteria. Clinical measures were collected at three different points in time before and after the completion of the LIB lifestyle core curriculum and the end of post-program follow-up. Results: Only 12 of the 22 participants completed the whole LIB program. Among the five metabolic syndrome components, only waist circumference demonstrated a significant correlation with weight. After a mean follow-up interval of 10.4 months, the metabolic syndrome index was reduced by 11% at the completion of the LIB program. The study population demonstrated significant decreased waist circumference and elevated HDL cholesterol. Triglycerides manifested the highest percentage change without statistical significance. No significant change was observed in blood pressure and fasting blood glucose. Conclusions: These findings imply that the application of a metabolic syndrome index provides more detailed information than weight in evaluating diabetes prevention programs by analyzing pre-post changes in multiple diabetes markers, particularly when the target population has normal to slightly elevated BMI. Additionally, the changes in metabolic syndrome components outline the characteristics of diabetes prevention programs, showing great potential for helping public health professionals to individualize and optimize program curriculums for different target populations. Promotion of metabolic syndrome index in diabetes research will establish a unified criterion in evaluating diabetes prevention programs and facilitate efficacy comparison among different programs

Cancer among Asian American Population in the United States: Incidence and Survival Disparities

Part I Cancer incidence disparities exist among specific Asian American populations. However, the existing reports exclude data from large metropoles like Chicago, Houston, and New York. Moreover, incidence rates by subgroup have been underestimated due to the exclusion of Asians with unknown subgroup. Cancer incidence data for 2009 to 2011 for eight states accounting for 68% of the Asian American population were analyzed. Race for cases with unknown subgroup was imputed using stratified proportion models by sex, age, cancer site, and geographic regions. Age-standardized incidence rates were calculated for 17 cancer sites for the six largest Asian subgroups. Our analysis comprised 90,709 Asian and 1,327,727 non-Hispanic white cancer cases. Asian Americans had significantly lower overall cancer incidence rates than non-Hispanic whites (336.5 per 100,000 and 541.9 for men, 299.6 and 449.3 for women, respectively). Among specific Asian subgroups, Filipino men (377.4) and Japanese women (342.7) had the highest overall incidence rates while South Asian men (297.7) and Korean women (275.9) had the lowest. In comparison to non-Hispanic whites and other Asian subgroups, significantly higher risks were observed for colorectal cancer among Japanese, stomach cancer among Koreans, nasopharyngeal cancer among Chinese, thyroid cancer among Filipinos, and liver cancer among Vietnamese. South Asians had remarkably low lung cancer risk. Overall, Asian Americans have a lower cancer risk than non-Hispanic whites, except for nasopharyngeal, liver and stomach cancers. The unique portrayal of cancer incidence patterns among specific Asian subgroups in this study provides a new baseline for future cancer surveillance research and health policy. Part II Globally, Asian countries bear a disproportionate gastric cancer burden. Asian Americans, the fastest growing minority population in the US, show not only higher incidence of gastric cancer compared to non-Hispanic whites (NHWs), but also significantly higher survival. Benefiting from more uniform staging and treatment practices within the US, we examine for the first time the heterogeneity in the Asian American population, which may elucidate the causes of these disparities. SEER data from 2000 to 2012 were used to calculate 5-year survival estimates for NHWs and the six largest Asian ethnicities. Multivariate analyses were performed to identify critical prognostic factors and survival disparities between Asian groups and NHWs. We analyzed 33,313 NHW and 8,473 Asian gastric cancer cases. All Asian groups had significantly higher 5-year survival than NHWs, at 29.8%. Among Asians, Koreans and Vietnamese had the highest and lowest survival, 45.4% and 35.7%, respectively. The Korean survival advantage was largely attributable to relatively high proportions of localized stage and low proportions of cardia tumors. After adjusting for major prognostic factors, the survival disadvantage of NHWs, while attenuated, remained significant in comparison to all Asian groups (HR: 1.33; 95% CI: 1.24-1.43; reference: Korean). The survival disparities within the Asian groups vanished with adjustment. This study characterizes distinctive gastric cancer survival patterns among the six major Asian groups and NHWs in the US. The causes of the survival disadvantage for NHWs remain elusive. The observed survival disparity affecting NHW in relation to Asians points to the need for increased awareness of gastric cancer screening and treatment options of NHWs, who account for the majority of cases

Research on the identification and evolution of health industry policy instruments in China

The application of health industry policies could be discovered more quickly and comprehensively through the automated identification of policy tools, which could provide references for the formulation, implementation, and optimization of subsequent policies in each province. This study applies the Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformer (BERT) model to identify policy tools automatically, utilizes Focal Loss to reduce the unbalance of a dataset, and analyzes the evolution of policy tools in each province, which contains time, space, and topic. The research demonstrates that the BERT model can improve the accuracy of classification, that supply and environment policy tools are more prevalent than demand tools, and that policy instruments are organized similarly in four major economic regions. Moreover, the policy’s attention to topics related to healthcare, medicine, and pollution has gradually shifted to other topics, and the extent of policy attention continues to be concentrated on the health service industry, with less attention paid to the manufacturing industry from the keywords of the various topics