Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to G J Duncan.
Longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the German Socio-Economic Panel show that in the Federal Republic of Germany, women experience even sharper drops in economic status immediately after a marital split than in the United States, while German and American men fare about the same. German social policy does little to reduce the disparities.
Remarriage is one of the most important determinants of physical and economic well-being among the widowed. The goal of this study is to estimate how hazard rates for remarriage vary among widows and widowers on the basis of both observable and unobservable characteristics. The remarriage estimates rely on nationally representative samples of widows and widowers from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Continuous-time hazard rate regressions indicate strong age and duration dependence effects for middle-aged widows and widowers and for older widowers. Among middle-aged widows, blacks and those with dependent children in the home have lower rates of remarriage. For middle-aged widowers, living in urbanized areas limits the prospects of remarriage. For older widowers, education and, to some extent, economic status appear to have positive effects on the remarriage rates. Overall, age and time since widowhood have the strongest and most consistent effects on remarriage rates for different widowed groups.
In order to establish the degree of renal malfunction necessary for colchicine toxicity in patients receiving it daily for the prevention of recurrent acute gout, we obtained serum creatinine levels and measured or estimated creatinine clearances in a consecutive series of 17 patients with demonstrated colchicine myotoxicity. An estimate of creatinine clearance, based on ideal body weight and age, was nearly always 50 ml/min or less, and was the most practical predictor of the risk of toxicity. By comparison, patients with gout from the same clinical data base, but without myotoxicity, had normal renal function. The data yield clear guidelines for safe use of colchicine chronically.
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Echinococcus is a genus of tapeworm endemic in certain parts of the world but found only rarely in the United States. An extremely unusual case of an intramuscular infestation involving an extremity occurred in a 41-year-old man. Since the infestation closely resembled a soft-tissue tumor on clinical and roentgenographic examination, the patient was treated with an incisional biopsy of the mass, which consisted of a cystic cavity filled with clear fluid. The diagnosis of an Echinococcus cyst was made only after permanent section analysis revealed numerous scoleces within the cyst lining. The patient was asymptomatic six months after cyst excision but still remains at risk for recurrence of the infestation. The present report serves to alert the reader to this rare but potentially fatal condition. Preoperative diagnosis is imperative to avoid inadvertant rupture of a hydatid cyst, which releases viable scoleces into the systemic circulation and may precipitate an anaphylactic reaction.
This article presents a model of teenage out-of-wedlock births that incorporates the effects of both welfare and nonwelfare economic opportunities. We construct measures of the likely "medium-run" income available to a teenage girl in the event of an out-of-wedlock birth and in the absence of a birth and then estimate a logit model to determine their importance in influencing fertility behavior. The model is estimated with data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics on nearly 900 black teenagers. We find weak and statistically insignificant positive effects of Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) benefit levels and stronger and significant negative effects of economic opportunities on the probability of AFDC-related out-of-wedlock teen births.
A central question in the debate about the effects of welfare programs is whether their intended positive results--providing needed resources to recipients and their children--outweigh any unintended negative results--for example, the breaking up of families, reduction in work effort, or the fostering of a welfare "culture" that is passed on from parent to child. Recent research shows that although work effort is affected adversely by the generosity of welfare programs, effects on family structure appear quite weak, most welfare experiences are relatively short, and the majority of women who grew up in homes heavily dependent on welfare do not rely on those programs when they are young adults.
Although discrete-choice statistical techniques have been used with increasing regularity in demographic analyses, McFadden's conditional logit model is less well known and seldom used. Conditional logit models are appropriate when the choice among alternatives is modeled as a function of the characteristics of the alternatives, rather than (or in addition to) the characteristics of the individual making the choice. We argue that this feature of conditional logit makes it more appropriate for estimating behavioral models. In this article, the conditional logit model is presented and compared with the more familiar multinomial logit model. The difference between the two techniques is illustrated with an analysis of the choice of marital and welfare status by divorced or separated women.
Our analysis suggests that Weitzman's finding concerning the precipitous decline in the economic status of women following divorce is likely to be incorrect. Her findings not only imply improbably large changes in income but are also inconsistent with the information she reports on changes in income and in income per capita. Corrected estimates suggest a decline in economic status of about one-third, rather than the widely cited 73 percent figure. It remains the case that the economic status of men and women diverge substantially in the years after divorce. That difference, however, is not nearly as dramatic as suggested by Weitzman's findings.
A close look at the income flows in the years following a divorce or separation reveals marked differences in the distribution of effects. The economic consequences of divorce are especially adverse for women. In most cases, children remain with the mother, who usually has considerably lower potential labor market earnings than her former husband, partly because her responsibilities for the children are likely to reduce her labor supply and may have limited her past human capital investments. Alimony and child support are the principal mechanisms for transfers from the ex-husband to the ex-wife, but payments are rarely frequent or sizeable enough to make up for an appreciable amount of the labor income lost through the departure of the ex-husband. Human capital investments on the part of the mother have a modest effect on her economic situation in the years following the divorce. Most men who divorce or separate are immediately better off because they retain most of their labor incomes, typically do not pay large amounts of alimony and child support to their ex-wives, and no longer have to provide for the level of needs associated with their former families. Much more important than growth in the ex-wife's own labor income is the role of a new husband's labor income upon her remarriage. More than half of the white women remarry within five years following a divorce or separation; the comparable fraction for black women is less than half. An interesting question is whether the currently unmarried would enjoy the same kind of economic benefits, were they to remarry, as women who have remarried. Estimates from a model of the new husband's labor income, adjusted for selection bias inherent in the process of remarriage, indicate that the currently unmarried would probably not gain equal benefits if they were to remarry. The expected labor income of potential husbands of black women averages only about $5000--a modest amount when compared with the alternatives available to these women.
Our review of research suggests that family poverty has selective effects on child development. Most important for policy are indications that deep or persistent poverty early in childhood affects adversely the ability and achievement of children. Although the 1996 welfare reforms have spurred many welfare-to-work transitions, their time limits and, especially, sanctions are likely to deepen poverty among some families. We suggest ways policies might be aimed at preventing either economic deprivation itself or its effects.
We assess the impact of the New Hope Project, an antipoverty program tested in a random assignment experimental design, on family functioning and developmental outcomes for preschool- and school-aged children (N = 913). New Hope offered wage supplements sufficient to raise family income above the poverty threshold and subsidies for child care and health insurance to adults who worked full-time. New Hope had strong positive effects on boys' academic achievement, classroom behavior skills, positive social behavior, and problem behaviors, as reported by teachers, and on boys' own expectations for advanced education and occupational aspirations. There were not corresponding program effects for girls. The child outcomes may have resulted from a combination of the following: Children in New Hope families spent more time in formal child care programs and other structured activities away from home than did children in control families. New Hope parents were employed more, had more material resources, reported more social support, and expressed less stress and more optimism about achieving their goals than did parents in the control sample. The results suggest that an anti-poverty program that provides support for combining work and family responsibilities can have beneficial effects on the development of school-age children.
Black teenage mothers who receive benefits through Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) around the time they give birth are more likely to be receiving AFDC at age 26 than are other black teenage mothers or women who do not have a teenage birth, even after adjustments are made for differences in parental background and the economic accomplishments of siblings. Moreover, they are also more likely to have a lower earned family income and a lower total family income (when transfer income such as AFDC is taken into account). The results of this analysis suggest that AFDC receipt around the time of a nonmarital teenage birth itself may be an independent cause of future economic problems for these young mothers, although they do not elucidate the causal mechanism by which such an association might operate.
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Although hundreds of studies have documented the association between family poverty and children's health, achievement, and behavior, few measure the effects of the timing, depth, and duration of poverty on children, and many fail to adjust for other family characteristics (for example, female headship, mother's age, and schooling) that may account for much of the observed correlation between poverty and child outcomes. This article focuses on a recent set of studies that explore the relationship between poverty and child outcomes in depth. By and large, this research supports the conclusion that family income has selective but, in some instances, quite substantial effects on child and adolescent well-being. Family income appears to be more strongly related to children's ability and achievement than to their emotional outcomes. Children who live in extreme poverty or who live below the poverty line for multiple years appear, all other things being equal, to suffer the worst outcomes. The timing of poverty also seems to be important for certain child outcomes. Children who experience poverty during their preschool and early school years have lower rates of school completion than children and adolescents who experience poverty only in later years. Although more research is needed on the significance of the timing of poverty on child outcomes, findings to date suggest that interventions during early childhood may be most important in reducing poverty's impact on children.