Births, Deaths, and New Deal Relief during the Great Depression

This paper examines the impact of New Deal relief programs on infant mortality, noninfant mortality and general fertility rates in major U.S. cities between 1929 and 1940. We estimate the effects using a variety of specifications and techniques for a panel of 114 cities for which data on relief spending during the 1930s were available. The significant rise in relief spending during the New Deal contributed to reductions in infant mortality, suicide rates, and some other causes of death, while contributing to increases in the general fertility rate. Estimates of the relationship between economic activity and death rates suggest that many types of death rates were pro-cyclical, similar to Ruhm's (2000) findings for the modern U.S.. Estimates of the relief costs associated with saving a life (adjusted for inflation) are similar to estimates found in studies of modern social insurance programs.

Entropy of Folding of the Triangular Lattice

The problem of counting the different ways of folding the planar triangular lattice is shown to be equivalent to that of counting the possible 3-colorings of its bonds, a dual version of the 3-coloring problem of the hexagonal lattice solved by Baxter. The folding entropy Log q per triangle is thus given by Baxter's formula q=sqrt(3)(Gamma[1/3])^(3/2)/2pi =1.2087...Comment: 9 pages, harvmac, epsf, uuencoded, 5 figures included, Saclay preprint T/9401

The Welfare of Children During the Great Depression

This paper examines the impact of New Deal relief programs on demographic outcomes in major U.S. cities during the 1930s. A five-equation structural model is estimated that tests the effect of the relief spending on infant mortality, non-infant mortality, and fertility. For 111 cities for which data on relief spending during the 1930s were available, we collected annual data that matched the relief spending to the demographic variables, socioeconomic descriptions of the cities, and retail sales, which serve as a proxy for the level of economic activity. Relief spending directly lowered infant mortality rates to the degree that changes in relief spending can explain nearly one-third of the decline in infant mortality during the 1930s. Relief spending also raised general fertility rates. Our estimates suggest that the cost of saving an infant life during this period ranged from $2 to 4.5 million dollars (measured in year 2000 dollars). This range is similar to that found in modern studies of the effect of Medicaid and is within the range of market values of human life.

Folding transition of the triangular lattice in a discrete three--dimensional space

A vertex model introduced by M. Bowick, P. Di Francesco, O. Golinelli, and E. Guitter (cond-mat/9502063) describing the folding of the triangular lattice onto the face centered cubic lattice has been studied in the hexagon approximation of the cluster variation method. The model describes the behaviour of a polymerized membrane in a discrete three--dimensional space. We have introduced a curvature energy and a symmetry breaking field and studied the phase diagram of the resulting model. By varying the curvature energy parameter, a first-order transition has been found between a flat and a folded phase for any value of the symmetry breaking field.Comment: 11 pages, latex file, 2 postscript figure

Bundles of Interacting Strings in Two Dimensions

Bundles of strings which interact via short-ranged pair potentials are studied in two dimensions. The corresponding transfer matrix problem is solved analytically for arbitrary string number N by Bethe ansatz methods. Bundles consisting of N identical strings exhibit a unique unbinding transition. If the string bundle interacts with a hard wall, the bundle may unbind from the wall via a unique transition or a sequence of N successive transitions. In all cases, the critical exponents are independent of N and the density profile of the strings exhibits a scaling form that approaches a mean-field profile in the limit of large N.Comment: 8 pages (latex) with two figure

A Model Ground State of Polyampholytes

The ground state of randomly charged polyampholytes is conjectured to have a structure similar to a necklace, made of weakly charged parts of the chain, compacting into globules, connected by highly charged stretched `strings'. We suggest a specific structure, within the necklace model, where all the neutral parts of the chain compact into globules: The longest neutral segment compacts into a globule; in the remaining part of the chain, the longest neutral segment (the 2nd longest neutral segment) compacts into a globule, then the 3rd, and so on. We investigate the size distributions of the longest neutral segments in random charge sequences, using analytical and Monte Carlo methods. We show that the length of the n-th longest neutral segment in a sequence of N monomers is proportional to N/(n^2), while the mean number of neutral segments increases as sqrt(N). The polyampholyte in the ground state within our model is found to have an average linear size proportional to sqrt(N), and an average surface area proportional to N^(2/3).Comment: 8 two-column pages. 5 eps figures. RevTex. Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Effects of Self-Avoidance on the Tubular Phase of Anisotropic Membranes

We study the tubular phase of self-avoiding anisotropic membranes. We discuss the renormalizability of the model Hamiltonian describing this phase and derive from a renormalization group equation some general scaling relations for the exponents of the model. We show how particular choices of renormalization factors reproduce the Gaussian result, the Flory theory and the Gaussian Variational treatment of the problem. We then study the perturbative renormalization to one loop in the self-avoiding parameter using dimensional regularization and an epsilon-expansion about the upper critical dimension, and determine the critical exponents to first order in epsilon.Comment: 19 pages, TeX, uses Harvmac. Revised Title and updated references: to appear in Phys. Rev.