Socioeconomic Status, Neighborhood, Household Behavior, and Children's Health in the United States: Evidence from Children's Health Survey Data

Using insights from economics, pediatrics, psychology, and sociology, this paper examines the effects of income, income inequality, neighborhood characteristics, maternal health, the participation in religious services, breastfeeding, household smoking, and racial/ethnic composition of population on child health. Using aggregate data on children's health and well-being for 50 U.S. states derived from the National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH, 2005), we document the following results: (1) the independent effects of income inequality on children's health vary across domains of child health outcomes, as some aspects of child health (mental health) are more responsive to the immediate environment of family and neighborhood than others; (2) neighborhood characteristics are powerful predictors of children's health; (3) there is a large effect of maternal health on children's health; (4) children who participate in religious services at least once a week have less socio-emotional difficulties compared to children who do not, and (5) breastfeeding has beneficial effect on children's health, while household smoking has negative effect on children's health and well-being.Consumer/Household Economics, Health Economics and Policy,

Measuring the Impact of Globalization on the Well-being of the Poor: Methodology and an Application to Africa

Whereas a large number of empirical studies have been devoted to analyzing the relationship between measures of income and globalization (defined by openness to international trade), much less attention has been paid to the analysis of well-being for the various subgroups of population and their causal associations with globalization. To address this gap in the literature, this paper first analyzes the quality of life (QOL) of 'poor' and 'non-poor' population segments of 40 African countries over a period of 1980-2000, and then examines their causal association with openness to trade. In order to understand the impact of openness to trade on the well-being of poor, we assume the causal chain Openness_ Income_ Poverty_ Well-being of poor and empirically examine link by link for Africa. The first link of the chain is from openness to growth. The second link in the causal chain from openness to well-being is the interrelationship between growth and poverty. The third link of the chain is from reduction in poverty to improvement of well-being. The major findings of this paper are: First, nearly every well-being indicator declines as the poor's population share increases; second, the tendency for QOL to decline with increasing poor's population share is common to the African and non-African countries; third, women suffer a double QOL disadvantage in areas of health and education as the poor's share of population increases; and fourth, globalization has improved incomes of African countries, however, there is a no significant decline in poverty and improvement in well-being of the poor over the period. We discuss the key challenges faces by African countries to beneficially engage in the world economy.International Relations/Trade,

Moving Beyond Income: Neighborhood Structure, Household Behavior, and Children's Health in the United States

Using insights from economics, pediatrics, psychology, and sociology, this paper examines the effects of income, income inequality, participation in religious services, maternal health, breastfeeding, household smoking, neighborhood characteristics, and racial/ethnic composition of population on child health. Using aggregate data on children's health and well-being for 50 U.S. states derived from the National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH, 2005), we document the following results: (1) neighborhood characteristics are a more powerful predictor of children's health than income; (2) there is a large effect of mother's health on children's health; (3) the independent effect of income inequality on children's health vary across domains of child health outcomes, as some aspects of child health (mental health) are more responsive to the immediate environment of family and neighborhood than others; (4) breastfeeding has beneficial effect on children's health, while household smoking has negative effect on children's health and well-being; and (5) childrens who participate in religious services at least once a week have less socio-emotional difficulties compared to children who do not.children's health, neighborhood characteristics, socioeconomic status, Health Economics and Policy, I1,

DISTRIBUTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, CHILD LABOR AND POVERTY IN INDIA

This paper contributes to the growing debate on regional economic inequality and polarization in India. The specific objectives of this paper are to: (1) analyze regional development disparities amongst various states in India to determine if they are on a convergent course; (2) analyze the evolution of regional inequalities amongst states with respect to a number of socioeconomic indicators and factors that have been suggested to affect the incidence of child labor; (3) investigate and test empirically whether polarization is taking place in Indian states; and (4) investigate whether regional indices of human development and child labor incidence follow similar patterns. Using a consistent data series and applying a number of recently developed measures, trends over the decades of 1961-1991 are documented. The results show that there is little evidence to suggest that any convergence of either the Ò or ã type is taking place amongst the states in India and while there has been no significant decrease in regional inequalities relating to human development, inequalities relating to child labor incidence have increased.Labor and Human Capital,

DECOMPOSING WELL-BEING INDICATORS USING DISTRIBUTIONAL DATA

This paper makes two principal contributions: first, we propose a method for representing well-being aggregates and estimating population subgroup decompositions when data is available on population distributions across subgroups; second, we analyze the Quality of Life (QOL) of 'poor' and 'non-poor' population segments of 86 countries for the years 1980s and 1990s. The three major findings of this paper are as follows: First, nearly every well-being indicator declines as poor's population share increases; second, evidence of a significant difference in the QOL-poor's population share relationship between Asian and nonAsian countries is present for only few QOL indicators. In other words, the tendency for QOL to decline with increasing poor's population share is common to the Asian and nonAsian countries; third, women suffer a double QOL disadvantage in areas of health and education as the poor's share of population increases. This is due to the existence of relatively wider gender gaps in the well-being indicators among poor populations in Asia and elsewhere.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Measuring the Quality of Life across Countries: A Sensitivity Analysis of Well-being Indices

quality of life, domains of quality of life, Borda rule, principal components analysis, well-being indices

Supervised Machine Learning Techniques for Trojan Detection with Ring Oscillator Network

With the globalization of the semiconductor manufacturing process, electronic devices are powerless against malicious modification of hardware in the supply chain. The ever-increasing threat of hardware Trojan attacks against integrated circuits has spurred a need for accurate and efficient detection methods. Ring oscillator network (RON) is used to detect the Trojan by capturing the difference in power consumption; the power consumption of a Trojan-free circuit is different from the Trojan-inserted circuit. However, the process variation and measurement noise are the major obstacles to detect hardware Trojan with high accuracy. In this paper, we quantitatively compare four supervised machine learning algorithms and classifier optimization strategies for maximizing accuracy and minimizing the false positive rate (FPR). These supervised learning techniques show an improved false positive rate compared to principal component analysis (PCA) and convex hull classification by nearly 40% while maintaining > 90\% binary classification accuracy

The Quiet Resignation: Why Do So Many Female Lawyers Abandon Their Careers?

Thirty percent of female lawyers leave their careers. The same is true for female doctors. Over time, an increasing number of married professionals have recreated traditional gender roles, and society has lost a tremendous amount of training and well-honed talent as a result. Neither workplace discrimination nor family obligations can fully and satisfactorily explain the trend. Both of those theories assume that women take a more dependent and vulnerable position in the household because of constraints, but in one important respect, men are more constrained than women, and they are better off for it: to maintain social status, men have to work. Women do not. This Article advances a theory and corroborating evidence that the cultural acceptance of female underemployment is a privilege in the abstract, but a curse in practice. Even under the best conditions, the early stages of professional careers involve mistakes, mismatches, and disappointments. An opportunity to escape the stress of the public sphere by focusing on the family may have great appeal in the short run even though the long-run consequences are severe. Asymmetric cultural acceptance creates an easy off-ramp for females, to nearly everybody’s detriment

A SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF QUALITY OF LIFE INDICES ACROSS COUNTRIES

This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of interrelationships among the determinants of the Quality of Life (QOL). We show that various measures of well-being are highly sensitive to domains of QOL that are considered in the construction of comparative indices, and how measurable inputs into the well-being indicators are aggregated and weighted to arrive at composite measures of QOL. We present a picture of conditions among the 43 countries of the world with respect to such interrelated domains of QOL as the relationship with family and friends, emotional well-being, health, work and productivity, material well-being, feeling part of one's community, personal safety, and the quality of environment. On the basis of Borda Rule and the principal components approach, we search for factor-indices that may function as QOL indices comparatively across countries. Such indices can be useful in making QOL comparisons and evaluations with reference to both time and place. Comparing and analyzing well-being conditions among countries in this way are aimed at facilitating the discovery of extant of problems with government policies impacting QOL.quality of life, domains, Borda rule, principal components, and rankings, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, I31, D60, D63,

Determinants of Dietary Quality: Evidence from Bangladesh

Whereas a large number of empirical studies have been devoted to analyzing consumer demand for dietary energy (or dietary quantity), much less attention has been paid to the demand for dietary quality, an equally important aspect of food security. To address this gap in the literature, this paper uses data from a nationally representative household expenditure survey conducted in Bangladesh in 2000 on the food acquisition behavior of 7,440 households over a two week period. Two indicators of dietary quality are employed: household protein availability and household diet diversity. Using two-stage least squares regression to correct for the endogeneity of income, we find significant roles of income, education, gender of household head, and prices of key foods. The determination of dietary quality in the country has a strong gender dimension. While male education plays a positive role, female education is found to have a substantially stronger influence. Further, female household headship is associated with lower dietary quality than male headship. Given the crucial roles of income and education in increasing access to a high quality diet, the results call for the continued implementation of well targeted poverty reduction and education programs. Promoting female education and addressing the unique constraints faced by female headed households with respect to diet quality could be a significant policy instrument for government and non-government organizations in addressing food insecurity in Bangladesh.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,