Human Trafficking in America’s Schools

Human trafficking is modern slavery. It involves exploiting a person through force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of forced labor, commercial sex, or both. Victims of human trafficking include men, women, boys, girls, and transgender individuals lured by the promise of a better life in the United States and adults and children who were born and raised in the United States.

The International Labour Organization estimated, in 2012, that children represented 26 percent (or 5.5 million) of the 20.9 million victims worldwide.1 Both U.S. citizen and foreign national children are trafficked for sex and labor in the United States.2 In fact, many child victims of human trafficking are students in the American school system. School administrators and staff need to be aware that cases of child trafficking are being reported in communities throughout the nation. No community—urban, rural, or suburban—school, socioeconomic group, or student demographic is immune.

This guide was developed to help school officials

• understand how human trafficking impacts schools
• recognize the indicators of possible child trafficking
• develop policies, protocols, and partnerships to address and prevent the exploitation of children

Source: American Institutes for Research

Download the guide | Read more online

Who Runs the International System? Power and the Staffing of the United Nations Secretariat

Abstract:

National governments frequently pull strings to get their citizens appointed to senior positions in international institutions. We examine, over a 60 year period, the nationalities of the most senior positions in the United Nations Secretariat, ostensibly the world's most representative international institution. The results indicate which nations are successful in this zero-sum game, and what national characteristics correlate with power in international institutions. The most overrepresented countries are small, rich democracies like the Nordic countries. Statistically, democracy, investment in diplomacy, and economic/military power are predictors of senior positions--even after controlling for the U.N. staffi ng mandate of competence and integrity. National control over the United Nations is remarkably sticky; however the in influence of the United States has diminished as US ideology has shifted away from its early allies. In spite of the decline in US influence, the Secretariat remains pro-American relative to the world at large.

Source: Center for Global Development

Download full pdf publication | Read more at the Center for Global Development

U. S. Census Bureau Facts: Hispanic Heritage Month 2014: Sept. 15–Oct. 15

From the Press Release:

In September 1968, Congress authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to proclaim National Hispanic Heritage Week, observed during the week that included Sept. 15 and Sept. 16. Congress expanded the observance in 1989 to a monthlong celebration (Sept. 15 – Oct. 15) of the culture and traditions of those who trace their roots to Spain, Mexico and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean.

Sept. 15 is the starting point for the celebration because it is the anniversary of independence of five Latin American countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. In addition, Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence days on Sept. 16 and Sept. 18, respectively

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Read full release and access data

More Express Sympathy for Israel than the Palestinians

From the introduction:

Most Americans say they sympathize “a lot” (34%) or “some” (32%) with Israel, while roughly a quarter sympathize with Israel “not much” (15%) or “not at all” (12%). There is less public sympathy for the Palestinians: 11% sympathize with Palestinians a lot, though 35% have some sympathy for them. Nearly half say they have little (20%) or no sympathy (27%) for the Palestinians.

Source: Pew Research Center for People and the Press

Download full pdf report | Download pdf topline questionnaire | View graphs online

Survey Finds That The Public Favors a shift in U.S. Policy to Expedite the Legal Processing of Central American Children.

From the online overview:

As the president and Congress struggle over how to deal with the influx of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America across the U.S.-Mexican border, a new survey finds that the public favors a shift in U.S. policy to expedite the legal processing of the children.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted July 8-14 among 1,805 adults, finds that about half (53%) think that the legal process for dealing with Central American children who cross the border illegally should be accelerated, even if that means that some children who are eligible for asylum are deported. Fewer (39%) support staying with the current policy, even though the process could take a long time and the children will stay in the U.S. in the interim.

Most Republicans (60%) and independents (56%) think legal processing of the children should be sped up even if it means some children who are eligible for asylum are deported. Democrats are divided: 46% favor an expedited legal process, but about as many (47%) favor maintaining the current policy, though that might result in a lengthy legal process and a long stay in the U.S. for the children.
Source: Pew Research Center

Read online overview
Download full pdf report
Download topline questionnaire

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Introduction:
Millions of people live in poverty in this country. They suffer not only material deprivation, but also the hardships and diminished life prospects that come with being poor. Childhood poverty often means growing up without the advantages of a stable home, high-quality schools, or consistent nutrition. Adults in poverty are often hampered by inadequate skills and education, leading to limited wages and job opportunities. And the high costs of housing, healthcare, and other necessities often mean that people must choose between basic needs, sometimes forgoing essentials like meals or medicine. In recognition of these challenges, The Hamilton Project has commissioned fourteen innovative, evidence-based antipoverty proposals. These proposals are authored by a diverse set of leading scholars, each tackling a specific aspect of the poverty crisis.

Source: Brookings Institution

Download all proposals in pdf format
View highlights and learn more about the proposals

The New Scarlet Letter? Negotiating the U.S. Labor Market with a Criminal Record

In 2011, nearly 700,000 people were released from either a state or federal prison. These releases added to the roughly six million adults who have served prison time in the past. Many will experience a host of difficulties upon reentering noninstitutional society. Those with minor children (especially incarcerated men) often accumulate substantial back child-support obligations while incarcerated and face the legal requirement to pay down the balance. Many face precarious housing situations and a high risk of homelessness following release. Most have little in the way of assets and receive a very small amount of “gate money” upon release, usually no more than a few hundred dollars. Many will be returned to custody for either parole violations or a new felony offense.

In light of these problems and the sheer number of individuals released from our prisons each year, policymakers at all levels of government are increasingly focused on how to foster and support the successful reentry of former prison inmates. For a myriad of reasons, stable employment is of central importance to the successful reentry of former inmates into noninstitutionalized society. 

Source: Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

Download full pdf publication

American Time Use Survey (ATUS) Data Released

From the summary:

On an average day in 2013, employed adults living in households with no children under age 18 engaged in leisure activities for 4.5 hours, about an hour more than employed adults living with a child under age 6, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Nearly everyone age 15 and over (95 percent) engaged in some sort of leisure activity, such as watching TV, socializing, or exercising.

These and other results from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) were released today. These data include the average amount of time per day in 2013 that individuals worked, did household activities, and engaged in leisure and sports activities. Additionally, measures of the average time per day spent providing childcare--both as a primary (or main) activity and while doing other things--for the combined years 2009-13 are provided. For a further description of ATUS data and methodology, see the Technical Note.

Source: U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics

 Main American Time Use Survey page with links to data files
American Time Use Survey Technical Note 
ATUS Tables
ATUS Charts

The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences (2014)

From the description:

The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines research and analysis of the dramatic rise of incarceration rates and its affects. This study makes the case that the United States has gone far past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits and has reached a level where these high rates of incarceration themselves constitute a source of injustice and social harm.

Source: National Academies Press

Download full pdf publication
Read publication online

New Tool: Online ‘Legislative Explorer’ uses big data to track decades of lawmaking

From the news release:

The Legislative Explorer tracks the progress of every bill and resolution introduced in Congress since 1973 — 250,000 in all. It notes each time a bill or resolution advances from one stage of the process to the next, in or out of committee or moves to the floor for consideration, totaling about 750,000 such movements.

Users can drill down through the graphically presented data in lots of ways, including by type of legislation, sponsors, party or chamber of origin. The tool also has filters allowing users to sort results many ways, including by gender of sponsoring legislator, committee affiliation and — perhaps most helpful of all — whether the legislation is considered major or minor.

Source: University of Washington

The free tool is available at www.legex.org.

The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States

From the introduction:

Most Hispanics in the United States continue to belong to the Roman Catholic Church. But the Catholic share of the Hispanic population is declining, while rising numbers of Hispanics are Protestant or unaffiliated with any religion. Indeed, nearly one-in-four Hispanic adults (24%) are now former Catholics, according to a major, nationwide survey of more than 5,000 Hispanics by the Pew Research Center. Together, these trends suggest that some religious polarization is taking place in the Hispanic community, with the shrinking majority of Hispanic Catholics holding the middle ground between two growing groups (evangelical Protestants and the unaffiliated) that are at opposite ends of the U.S. religious spectrum.

Source: Pew Research on Religious Life

Download full pdf report
Read online introduction
View interactive chart on "religious switching"

Compilation of U.S. Data Sources

Data collection and analysis are essential parts of National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership's (NNIP) work. Explore the pages below to see how NNIP partners are using these data sources in their local communities. We'll list additional data sources as our partners add new examples, so check back often. If you are interested in data sources not listed here, use the site's general search box.

Source: National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership

Visit NNIP site list to download data.

Findings of the Big Data and Privacy Working Group Review

From the blog post:

The big data revolution presents incredible opportunities in virtually every sector of the economy and every corner of society.

Big data is saving lives. Infections are dangerous—even deadly—for many babies born prematurely. By collecting and analyzing millions of data points from a NICU, one study was able to identify factors, like slight increases in body temperature and heart rate, that serve as early warning signs an infection may be taking root—subtle changes that even the most experienced doctors wouldn't have noticed on their own.

Big data is making the economy work better. Jet engines and delivery trucks now come outfitted with sensors that continuously monitor hundreds of data points and send automatic alerts when maintenance is needed. Utility companies are starting to use big data to predict periods of peak electric demand, adjusting the grid to be more efficient and potentially averting brown-outs.

Big data is making government work better and saving taxpayer dollars. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have begun using predictive analytics—a big data technique—to flag likely instances of reimbursement fraud before claims are paid. The Fraud Prevention System helps identify the highest-risk health care providers for waste, fraud, and abuse in real time and has already stopped, prevented, or identified $115 million in fraudulent payments.

But big data raises serious questions, too, about how we protect our privacy and other values in a world where data collection is increasingly ubiquitous and where analysis is conducted at speeds approaching real time. In particular, our review raised the question of whether the "notice and consent" framework, in which a user grants permission for a service to collect and use information about them, still allows us to meaningfully control our privacy as data about us is increasingly used and reused in ways that could not have been anticipated when it was collected.

Source: The White House Blog

Download Big Data Privacy Report
Read entire summary on The White House Blog

The Gender Wage Gap: 2013; Differences by Race and Ethnicity, No Growth in Real Wages for Women

Description:

The gender wage gap in the United States has not seen significant improvement in recent years, and remains a reality for women across racial and ethnic groups. In 2013, the ratio of women’s to men’s median weekly full-time earnings was 82.1 percent, an increase of more than one percentage point since 2012,when the ratio was 80.9 percent (but still slightly lower than the 2011 ratio of 82.2 percent). This corresponds to a weekly gender wage gap of 17.9 percent. Real earnings have remained largely unchanged since 2012; women’s median weekly earnings increased by $5 to $706 in 2013; men’s median weekly earnings increased to $860, a marginal increase of $7 compared with 2012.

Source:  Institute for Women's Policy Research (via Cynthia Epstein CASBS Fellow 2014, 2005, 1978)

Download PDF of The Gender Wage Gap: 2013; Differences by Race and Ethnicity, No Growth in Real Wages for Women

Read more information about Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) online

Housing Adequacy Gap for Minorities and Immigrants in the U.S.

Abstract:

Home adequacy for different groups in the U.S. has not been adequately studied. Using the data from the national level American Housing Survey for the year 2009 and logit model, this paper finds that there is a significant adequacy difference for Blacks and Hispanics when compared to whites in the U.S. However, that is not the case for immigrants relative to the natives. We also find that then naturalization improves housing adequacy among immigrant homeowners, whereas, the female headed households have a significantly higher home adequacy than that of the male headed households. Similar to the homeownership findings, this paper highlights that the public policies should aim to narrow the home adequacy gap between whites and minorities and encourage naturalization to improve adequacy among immigrant homeowners.

Source: Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA)

View abstract at IZA
Download full pdf at: Housing Adequacy Gap for Minorities and Immigrants in the U.S.

State Estimates of Adult Mental Illness from the 2011 and 2012 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health

Brief:

• New State-level estimates produced by SAMHSA will advance our understanding of the nature and extent of mental illness; State-level data is critical to policymakers responsible for the planning and implementation of effective programs and services in communities 
• Among adults aged 18 or older, the rate of serious mental illness (SMI) in the past year ranged from 3.1 percent in New Jersey to 5.5 percent in West Virginia; nationally the rate was 4.0 percent, which equates to 9.3 million Americans with SMI 
•  Nationally, 42.5 million adults aged 18 or older experienced any mental illness (AMI) in the past year, corresponding to a rate of 18.2 percent of the adult population; among States, AMI rates ranged from 14.7 percent in New Jersey to 22.3 percent in Utah 

Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Link to online report and statistics: State Estimates of Adult Mental Illness from the 2011 and 2012 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health

Pew Report: Most Say U.S. Should ‘Not Get Too Involved’ in Ukraine Situation

From the online summary:

As Russian troops remain in Ukraine’s Crimea region and Crimea’s Parliament has set up a secession vote, Americans prefer the U.S. to not get too involved in the situation. By a roughly two-to-one margin (56% vs. 29%), the public says it is more important for the U.S. to not get involved in the situation with Russia and Ukraine than to take a firm stand against Russian actions. The new national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted March 6-9, 2014 among 1,003 adults, find more disapprove (44%) than approve (30%) of the way the Obama administration is handling the situation involving Russia and Ukraine, while roughly a quarter (26%) offer no opinion.

Source: Pew Research Center for People and the Press

Download full pdf report:  Most Say U.S. Should ‘Not Get Too Involved’ in Ukraine Situation
Download topline questionnaire (pdf)

United States Department of Justice: Legislative Histories

Description: 

This site serves as a gateway to legislative histories that were compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Library Staff throughout the years. These legislative histories were originally researched, collected and bound as paper volumes by DOJ librarians and made available only to DOJ employees through the Department's Main Library collection. Today, they have been digitized and are now available for general use. The legislative histories are composed of the most important components for the law documented in each legislative history which may include some, or all, of the following: the U.S. Public Law; House and Senate Documents; House, Senate, and Conference Reports; House and Senate Committee Hearings; Congressional Debates (Congressional Record); related Bills; and Presidential Signing Statements.

 Source: U.S. Department of Justice

Link to resource: USDOJ Legislative Histories

Is The United States Still a Land Of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility

From the Summary

There is a growing public perception that intergenerational income mobility – a child’s chance of moving up in the income distribution relative to her parents – is declining in the United States. We present new evidence on trends in intergenerational mobility in the U.S. using de-identified administrative earnings records. These data have less measurement error and much larger sample sizes than previous survey- based studies and thus yield more precise estimates of intergenerational mobility over time.

Source: Harvard University/University of California-Berkeley

Link to site with papers, maps and data: Equality of Opportunity Project

Census Bureau Data Visualization Gallery

Description:

The Census Bureau is working to increase our use of visualization in making data available to the public, and this gallery is an early part of that effort. The first posted visualizations will pertain largely to historical population data, building on prior work done to portray historical changes in the growth and redistribution of the U.S. population. For later visualizations, the topics will expand beyond decennial census data to include the full breadth of Census Bureau data sets and subject areas, from household and family dynamics, to migration and geographic mobility, to economic indicators.

 Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Link to Census Bureau Data Visualization Gallery