Gravitationally Induced Neutrino-Oscillation Phases

In this essay, we introduce a new effect of gravitationally induced quantum mechanical phases in neutrino oscillations. These phases arise from an hitherto unexplored interplay of gravitation and the principle of the linear superposition of quantum mechanics. In the neighborhood of a 1.4 solar-mass neutron star, gravitationally induced quantum mechanical phases are roughly 20% of their kinematical counterparts. When this information is coupled with the mass square differences implied by the existing neutrino-oscillation data we find that the new effect may have profound consequences for type-II supernova evolution.Comment: First Prize Gravity Research Foundation Essay (1996). Added two appendices. Appendix A: Erratum. Appendix B: Neutrino oscillations as a new energy transport mechanism for supernova explosions (taken from a 1996 JRO Fellowship proposal

Health Inequality

There are many reasons why poverty matters, but it is especially troubling that it affects such fundamental outcomes as health and access to health care. If poverty did not bring about all manner of health risks, we would likely be somewhat less troubled by it. But of course poverty and other forms of social and economic disadvantage do often translate into deficits in health and health care. The purpose of this brief is to examine long-term trends in American health and to lay out the current state of evidence on the extent to which health and health care are unequally distributed. We also note how the recent economic downturn affected these trends and disparities. The key backdrop to this assessment is the tripling of U.S. health expenditures since the 1960s. In 2012, per capita expenditures on health were $8,915, more than double those from 1995, though growth has slowed in the past 4 years.1 Some of this rise is attributable to population aging. Costs associated with Medicare, a program established in 1965 to subsidize health care for those aged 65 and older, have grown as the elderly population constitutes an ever-larger portion of the U.S. population. Still, overall U.S. health expenditures have increased faster than the growth of the elderly population and faster than health expenditures in other OECD countries.2 It is possible that such rising costs have led to a more unequal distribution of health and health care. At the same time, health inequalities may also be affected by the economy (e.g., recessions), changes in how insurance is provided, and any number of other factors. In this brief, our objective is not to attempt to tease out the causes of any possible changes in health inequalities, but rather to provide a descriptive summary of the current evidence on trends in (a) health, (b) foregone health care and insurance coverage, and (c) health risk factors. To preview our results, we find first that some health indicators, such as life expectancy, show an overall improvement. But not all indicators are improving. For example, an increasing number of Americans report delaying or foregoing health care, particularly during the recent economic recession. Second, economic and racial disparities in health indicators are often substantial, and when changes in these disparities are observed, they usually take the form of an increase in absolute size. Third, a large proportion of Americans still remain uninsured in 2012 (i.e., 15 percent), although the proportion of children who are uninsured declined by nearly 2 percentage points between the late 1990s and 2012

Continuous Training, Job Satisfaction and Gender – An Empirical Analysis Using German Panel Data

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), this paper analyzes the relationship between training and job satisfaction focusing in particular on gender diff erences. Controlling for a variety of socio-demographic, job and fi rm characteristics, we fi nd a diff erence between males and females in the correlation of training with job satisfaction which is positive for males but insignifi cant for females. This diff erence becomes even more pronounced when applying individual fi xed eff ects. To gain insights into the reasons for this diff erence, we further investigate training characteristics by gender. We fi nd that fi nancial support and career-orientation of courses only seems to matter for the job satisfaction of men but not of women.Training; job satisfaction; gender differences; fixed effects

State of the States’ Health

Inequalities in access to health and health care are especially important forms of inequality because they speak to who lives long and who lives well. It is well known that, even though the United States spends more on health care per capita than any other country, it has some of the worst access and outcome results among wealthy nations.1 While important, such cross-country comparisons hide substantial health inequality within the United States. Even a cursory inspection of the data suggests that some states are indeed better performers on key health measures. For example, only one in ten adults in Utah smoke, whereas more than one in four do so in West Virginia. The purpose of this brief is to examine whether state differences of this magnitude are commonly found across various other health measures. We focus not just on average levels of health access, behaviors, and outcomes, but also on how unequally they are distributed. Although everyone would presumably prefer a state with high average health scores, it also matters whether the health disparities between the poor and relatively well-off are very large. If a state has a high mean level of health but also subjects its poor residents to a large “health penalty,” then anyone who is at risk of being poor would presumably want to avoid that state (at least insofar as the penalty is large enough to render them worse off than their counterparts in other states). Therefore, we examine two important features of a state’s health profile: the average level of health, behavioral, or access problems in the state; and the variation in the distribution of these outcomes by income