Suchergebnisse

This visualization illustrates the proportion of U.S. residents at every age between 0 and 80 years who are foreign born and native born. The author uses a robust cross-sectional sample from the 2022 American Community Survey and groups individuals into nine distinct racial and ethnic (i.e., ethnoracial) groups. Following demographic expectations, age-specific immigrant shares of the total population are largest in midlife. However, across different ethnoracial groups the pattern varies greatly. Among Hispanic White individuals, a presumed immigrant-dominant group, there is no age at which the majority of members are foreign born. Alternatively, among non-Hispanic Asians and Pacific Islanders, Hispanics from other races, and multiracial Hispanics, there is a clear divide between majority foreign-born and majority native-born age groups. These results show the strengths of disaggregating the Hispanic population and the need to consider the intersection of age, race, and immigration when formulating social policy.

AbstractAffordable housing has declined in recent decades, yet limited research has examined the demographic and economic changes influencing place‐level affordability—especially outside of large metros. In this study I examine the effects of county‐level population growth and decline, population aging, and natural amenity development on rates of affordable housing, income, and housing costs across four types of counties. While declines in affordability from 1990 to 2016 were universal between rural and urban counties, population growth is associated with decreases in affordability in rural counties but increased affordability in large metros counties due to estimated decreases in housing costs. Population aging is estimated to improve affordability in large and small metro counties, despite the associated decrease in income and housing costs across all county types. The effects of aging vary greatly between owners and renters. Natural amenity development, despite its theoretical importance, is not associated with changes in affordability for rural counties.

Test and evaluation of laser warning devices is important due to the increased use of laser devices in aerial applications. In this thesis, an atmospheric aberrating system is deve1oped to enable in-1ab testing of laser warning devices. This system employs laser 1ight at 632.8nm from a He1ium-Neon source and a spatial light modulator (SLM) to cause phase changes using a birefringent liquid crystaJ material. Before the system can be used, the SLM phase response must be quantified to ensure proper manipulation of index of refrnction. Additionally, diffraction from the SLM and rea1-world system scaling are addressed. Once completed, the atmospheric simulator is demonstmted and verified. Control of the SLM is achieved by 1oading 256 1evel bitmaps which dictate the desired index of refraction changes (called phase screens). Phase screens are created using a Fourier series technique applied to an atmospheric model in the form of a power spectrum. Five laser propagation scenarios are created, each with a set of screens describing turbulence for a particular case. Outgoing radiation from the SLM is then measured using a CCD targetboard for intensity and a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor for phase. Comparing system output phase statistics to atmospheric theory reveals a moderate correlation in a11 turbu1ence cases indicating desired performance. Intensity statistics are compared to the log normal distribution governed by the weak fluctuation regime. An error analysis reveals that strong turbu1ence data matches theory but that weak turbulence data is inconclusive due to measurement precision issues. As an additional check on performance, a wave optics computer simu1ation is created ana1ogous to the 1ab-bench design. Phase and intensity data affirm lab-bench results so that the aberrating SLM system can be operated confidently.

AbstractThirty years ago, rural Americans got married and had children at significantly younger ages than urban Americans. More recent data indicate that these differences persist today, but our understanding of what drives these differences remains limited. To address this gap, we (1) generate Kaplan–Meier estimates of the ages of the first marriage, first union, and first birth among those who lived in rural and urban areas in 2019, (2) evaluate the extent to which rural–urban differences in the timing of family formation reflect selective migration, (3) assess whether rural–urban differences in childhood SES and demographic characteristics further explain differences in timing, and (4) explore rural–urban differences by gender. We find substantial 4.3, 3.8, and 5.1‐year gaps in the ages at which rural and urban women marry, start unions, and become parents, respectively. These gaps largely do not reflect selective migration. Differences in women's age of first birth are attributable to differences in childhood conditions, yet differences in marital and union timing remain unexplained. Rural–urban gaps in the timing of family formation are much larger among women than among men. These patterns of early family formation in rural America have critical implications for families' and children's well‐being as well as rural depopulation.

AbstractMobile home residence in the United States is associated with negative social, economic, and health‐related outcomes. However, although research on mobile home residence at the individual level has been performed, a geographic understanding of mobile home prevalence in the United States remains absent from the literature. Therefore, the purpose of our analysis was to evaluate the county‐level drivers of mobile home prevalence in the continental United States in 2015. The influence of five groups of variables—demographic, economic, housing, industry and occupation, and natural amenities—were assessed in a series of nested ordinary least squares regressions. Additionally, the full model was run as a spatial lag regression to control for spatial autocorrelation. Our results indicate that the primary drivers of mobile home prevalence in U.S. counties were the percent of population in near poverty, the labour force participation rate, and the percent of the population employed in natural resource occupations.

In 2014, a whistleblower reported that many U.S. veterans died while waiting for care at the Phoenix VHA. Problems with veteran's care through 2018 reveal ongoing and systematic problem. In March 2018, the VA Inspector General identified critical deficiencies at the Washington, DC VA Medical Center including failures to track patient safety events accurately, ineffective sterile processing and more than 10 thousand open or pending prosthetic/sensory aid consults. The VHA clearly has problems with access and quality in a budget-constrained environment. In this policy analysis, four separate interventions that address the gap between the magnitude as well as the use of the VHA's fixed budget versus access and cost expectations are explored. These policy interventions include maintaining the status quo, returning to a "VHA-only" option, transitioning to a CMS central payer system and consolidating care under the DoD TRICARE insurance plans. An objective evaluation suggests that extending TRICARE to veterans during the phasing out the VHA's care responsibilities, while politically unpalatable, would likely provide the best of four possible solutions under various criterion weighting schemes. A central payer solution under the CMS would also be a viable consideration. Results suggest that TRICARE patient perceptions of quality are superior to VHA and non-VHA/non-DoD, that access provided by the TRICARE program is ranked second in terms of venue acceptance only to the CMS solution set based on primary provider acceptance and that the cost per beneficiary of a TRICARE solution ($6.5 K/beneficiary) is far better than a VHA-only solution ($14.0 K/beneficiary), the CMS central payer solution ($12.2 K/beneficiary), or the status quo (between $12.2 K and $14.0 K/beneficiary). The intent of this paper is to provoke thoughtful consideration of solutions for providing access to high-quality healthcare for veterans within or outside of the VHA.

When critical, verbally disinhibited women pair with verbally inhibited men, relationship quality suffers, rendering the relationship precarious. The interpersonal and personal antecedents of this precarious couple effect were examined. It was found that the precarious couple effect was partially mediated by unhealthy communication patterns, specifically, the absence of mutual constructive criticism and the presence of a woman‐demand/man‐withdraw pattern. It is proposed further that such unhealthy communication patterns emerge because inhibited men who endorse traditional conceptions of sex roles are dissatisfied with relatively disinhibited women who are also critical, setting in motion a chain of unhealthy communication patterns. Results were generally consistent with this prediction. Implications for understanding the role of sexism and personality mismatch in relationships are discussed.

AbstractThis article presents findings from a qualitative study of the practices and experiences of people working in multidisciplinary child sexual exploitation (CSE) partnerships in three coastal towns in England. The study is based on focus groups conducted with 36 practitioners from a range of professional groups, including police, social work, substance misuse, education, specialist youth workers, sexual health, and statutory and non‐statutory children's services. The article begins with an overview of the three towns and the structure of their responses to CSE. It goes on to explore a range of factors, which contribute to the local issues around CSE and which affect and direct multiagency working. These include practitioner perspectives on CSE vulnerability, the discrepancy between young peoples' and practitioners' views about "exploitation", a discussion of how CSE perpetrators initiate and develop contact with young people and the role of incentives—including drugs and alcohol—as part of CSE exploitation. We finish by drawing out some general conclusions.