The Impact of the Macroeconomy on Health Insurance Coverage: Evidence from the Great Recession

This paper investigates the impact of the macroeconomy on the health insurance coverage of Americans using panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for 2004-2010, a period that includes the Great Recession of 2007-09. We find that a one percentage point increase in the state unemployment rate is associated with a 1.67 percentage point (2.12%) reduction in the probability that men have health insurance; this effect is strongest among college-educated, white, and older (50-64 year old) men. We estimate that 9.3 million Americans, the vast majority of whom were adult men, lost health insurance due to a higher unemployment rate alone during the 2007-09 recession. We conclude with a discussion of how components of recent health care reform may influence this relationship in the future.health insurance, Medicaid, SCHIP, recession, unemployment

A factorization of a super-conformal map

A super-conformal map and a minimal surface are factored into a product of two maps by modeling the Euclidean four-space and the complex Euclidean plane on the set of all quaternions. One of these two maps is a holomorphic map or a meromorphic map. These conformal maps adopt properties of a holomorphic function or a meromorphic function. Analogs of the Liouville theorem, the Schwarz lemma, the Schwarz-Pick theorem, the Weierstrass factorization theorem, the Abel-Jacobi theorem, and a relation between zeros of a minimal surface and branch points of a super-conformal map are obtained.Comment: 21 page

Superconductivity and Pseudogap in Quasi-Two-Dimensional Metals around the Antiferromagnetic Quantum Critical Point

Spin fluctuations (SF) and SF-mediated superconductivity (SC) in quasi-two-dimensional metals around the antiferrromagnetic (AF) quantum critical point (QCP) are investigated by using the self-consistent renormalization theory for SF and the strong coupling theory for SC. We introduce a parameter y0 as a measure for the distance from the AFQCP which is approximately proportional to (x-xc), x being the electron (e) or hole (h) doping concentration to the half-filled band and xc being the value at the AFQCP. We present phase diagrams in the T-y0 plane including contour maps of the AF correlation length and AF and SC transition temperatures TN and Tc, respectively. The Tc curve is dome-shaped with a maximum at around the AFQCP. The calculated one-electron spectral density shows a pseudogap in the high-density-of-states region near (pi,0) below around a certain temperature T* and gives a contour map at the Fermi energy reminiscent of the Fermi arc. These results are discussed in comparison with e- and h-doped high-Tc cuprates.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

A quantum electron star

We construct and probe a holographic description of state of matter which results from coupling a Fermi liquid to a relativistic conformal field theory (CFT). The bulk solution is described by a quantum gas of fermions supported from collapse into the gravitational well of AdS by their own electrostatic repulsion. In the probe limit studied here, the Landau quasiparticles survive this coupling to a CFT.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

The Impact of the Macroeconomy on Health Insurance Coverage: Evidence from the Great Recession

This paper investigates the impact of the macroeconomy on the health insurance coverage of Americans using panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for 2004-2010, a period that includes the Great Recession of 2007-09. We find that a one percentage point increase in the state unemployment rate is associated with a 1.67 percentage point (2.12%) reduction in the probability that men have health insurance; this effect is strongest among college-educated, white, and older (50-64 year old) men. For women and children, health insurance coverage is not significantly correlated with the unemployment rate, which may be the result of public health insurance acting as a social safety net. Compared to the previous recession, the health insurance coverage of men is more sensitive to the unemployment rate, which may be due to the nature of the Great Recession.

Fermi surfaces in general co-dimension and a new controlled non-trivial fixed point

Traditionally Fermi surfaces for problems in $d$ spatial dimensions have dimensionality $d-1$, i.e., codimension $d_c=1$ along which energy varies. Situations with $d_c >1$ arise when the gapless fermionic excitations live at isolated nodal points or lines. For $d_c > 1$ weak short range interactions are irrelevant at the non-interacting fixed point. Increasing interaction strength can lead to phase transitions out of this Fermi liquid. We illustrate this by studying the transition to superconductivity in a controlled $\epsilon$ expansion near $d_c = 1$. The resulting non-trivial fixed point is shown to describe a scale invariant theory that lives in effective space-time dimension $D=d_c + 1$. Remarkably, the results can be reproduced by the more familiar Hertz-Millis action for the bosonic superconducting order parameter even though it lives in different space-time dimensions.Comment: 4 page

Reduced dimensionality in layered quantum dimer magnets: Frustration vs. inhomogeneous condensates

Motivated by recent experiments on BaCuSi2O6, we investigate magnetic excitations and quantum phase transitions of layered dimer magnets with inter-layer frustration. We consider two scenarios, (A) a lattice with one dimer per unit cell and perfect inter-layer frustration, and (B) an enlarged unit cell with inequivalent layers, with and without perfect frustration. In all situations, the critical behavior at asymptotically low temperatures is three-dimensional, but the corresponding crossover scale may be tiny. Magnetic ordering in case (B) can be discussed in terms of two condensates; remarkably, perfect frustration renders the proximity effect ineffective. Then, the ordering transition will be generically split, with clear signatures in measurable properties. Using a generalized bond-operator method, we calculate the low-temperature magnetic properties in the paramagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases. Based on the available experimental data on BaCuSi2O6, we propose that scenario (B) with inequivalent layers and imperfect frustration is realized in this material, likely with an additional modulation of the inter-layer couling along the c axis.Comment: 23 pages, 18 figs, (v2) new fig for bandwidths, (v3) triplon binding energy discussed, (v4) small changes for clarification, accepted (PRB

Ferromagnetic Quantum Critical Fluctuations and Anomalous Coexistence of Ferromagnetism and Superconductivity in UCoGe Revealed by Co-NMR and NQR Studies

Co nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) studies were performed in the recently discovered UCoGe, in which the ferromagnetic and superconducting (SC) transitions were reported to occur at $T_{\rm Curie} \sim 3$ K and $T_S \sim 0.8$ K (N. T. Huy {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 99} (2007) 067006), in order to investigate the coexistence of ferromagnetism and superconductivity as well as the normal-state and SC properties from a microscopic point of view. From the nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate $1/T_1$ and Knight-shift measurements, we confirmed that ferromagnetic fluctuations which possess a quantum critical character are present above $T_{\rm Curie}$ and the occurrence of ferromagnetic transition at 2.5 K in our polycrystalline sample. The magnetic fluctuations in the normal state show that UCoGe is an itinerant ferromagnet similar to ZrZn$_2$ and YCo$_2$. The onset SC transition was identified at $T_S \sim 0.7$ K, below which $1/T_1$ of 30 % of the volume fraction starts to decrease due to the opening of the SC gap. This component of $1/T_1$, which follows a $T^3$ dependence in the temperature range of $0.3 - 0.1$ K, coexists with the magnetic components of $1/T_1$ showing a $\sqrt{T}$ dependence below $T_S$. From the NQR measurements in the SC state, we suggest that the self-induced vortex state is realized in UCoGe.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures. submitted to J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. To appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Quantum critical dynamics of the two-dimensional Bose gas

The dilute, two-dimensional Bose gas exhibits a novel regime of relaxational dynamics in the regime k_B T > |\mu| where T is the absolute temperature and \mu is the chemical potential. This may also be interpreted as the quantum criticality of the zero density quantum critical point at \mu=0. We present a theory for this dynamics, to leading order in 1/\ln (\Lambda/ (k_B T)), where \Lambda is a high energy cutoff. Although pairwise interactions between the bosons are weak at low energy scales, the collective dynamics are strongly coupled even when \ln (\Lambda/T) is large. We argue that the strong-coupling effects can be isolated in an effective classical model, which is then solved numerically. Applications to experiments on the gap-closing transition of spin gap antiferromagnets in an applied field are presented.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure