The Economic Impact of Deafness

The purpose of this paper was to determine the economic impact of deafness over a 40-year work life. Information provided by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service made it possible to estimate the lifetime earnings of 4,398 deaf adults who had a wide variety of educational backgrounds. Data on the U.S. population as a whole (matched on age and education), extracted from U.S. Bureau of the Census publications, were used for purposes of comparison. Results indicate that the economic cost of deafness is great. Over the course of a lifetime deaf people earn between $356,000 and$609,000 less than their comparably educated hearing counterparts. Overall differences between deaf and hearing persons would be increased further by virtue of the fact that hearing people are more likely to receive some college education, and are thus more likely to enjoy attendant higher salaries. As an afterword, some of the non-economic costs of deafness are noted

Book Review

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The Effect of Postsecondary Education on the Occupational Attainments of Deaf Adults

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Providing Deaf People with the Opportunity for a Degree: Benefits to Individual and Society

This study was conducted to determine the extent to which individual and societal financial sacrifices necessary to support postsecondary education for deaf people are worthwhile by determining the relationship of college to both higher salaries for deaf individuals and additional taxes paid to the government. The Internal Revenue Service provided data on earnings of, and taxes paid by, several groups of college applicants: those not accepted; no- shows; withdrawals; sub-bachelor graduates; and bachelor degree recipients. Projections of their earnings received and taxes paid over 20 years were made. Principal findings were that, after20 years: (1) deaf Bachelor degree recipients will have earned roughly $220,000 more than sub-Bachelor alumni and$320,000-$365,000 more than persons without degrees; and (2)deaf Bachelor graduates will have paid approximately$89,000morein taxes than those with sub-Bachelor degrees and $126,000-$140,000 more than those without degrees. Both individual and society benefit economically when deaf people earn postsecondary degrees

The Orbital Light Curve of Aquila X-1

We obtained R- and I-band CCD photometry of the soft X-ray transient/neutron- star binary Aql X-1 in 1998 June while it was at quiescence. We find that its light curve is dominated by ellipsoidal variations, although the ellipsoidal variations are severely distorted and have unequal maxima. After we correct for the contaminating flux from a field star located only 0.46" away, the peak-to-peak amplitude of the modulation is ~0.25 mag in the R band, which requires the orbital inclination to be greater than 36 degrees. The orbital period we measure is consistent with the 18.95 h period measured by Chevalier & Ilovaisky (1998). During its outbursts the light curve of Aql X-1 becomes single humped. The outburst light curve observed by Garcia et al. (1999) agrees in phase with our quiescent light curve. We show that the single humped variation is caused by a ``reflection effect,'' that is, by heating of the side of the secondary star facing towards the neutron star.Comment: 18 manuscript pages, 7 figures; accepted by A