Preparing a Referee Report: Guidelines and Perspectives

Abstract:
Peer review is fundamental to the efficacy of the scientific process. We draw from our experience both as editors, authors and association representatives to provide a set of guidelines for referees in preparing their reports and cover letters to journal editors. While our document is directed to anyone asked to review a paper, our suggestions are especially relevant for new members of the profession when preparing their first reports.

Source: NBER [via SSRN]

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Enlisting in the Military The Influential Role of Genetic Factors

Abstract:

Given that enlistment in the U.S. military is completely voluntary, there has been a great deal of interest in identifying the various factors that might explain why some people join the military, whereas others do not. The current study expanded on this line of literature by estimating the extent to which genetic and environmental factors explained variance in the liability for lifetime participation in the military. Analysis of twin pairs drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) revealed that 82% of the variance was the result of genetic factors, 18% of the variance was the result of nonshared environmental factors, and none of the variance was accounted for by shared environmental factors. In light of a number of limitations, replication studies are needed to determine the robustness of these findings and whether they are generalizable to other samples and populations. 

Source: Sage Open

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Network’s Online Intermediaries project

The Network’s Online Intermediaries project is a policy-oriented research initiative aimed at examining the rapidly changing landscape of online intermediary governance at the intersection of law, technology, norms, and markets. In concert with other research projects, it seeks to develop criteria, comparative methods, and a shared data repository, and to compile insights and lessons learned across diverse communities of knowledge aimed at informing and improving Internet policy-making globally.

The first research output as part of the larger initiative consists of a case study series exploring online intermediary liability frameworks and issues in Brazil, the European Union, India, South Korea, the United States, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam, and a synthesis paper that seeks to distill key observations and provide a high-level analysis of some of the structural elements that characterize varying governance frameworks, with a focus on intermediary liability regimes and their evolution. This research builds upon a series of in-person working meetings, including a workshop hosted by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where the draft country reports and key elements of the synthesis were discussed. Throughout the process, learning calls supported the sharing of research and methods among the collaborators.

Read more about the project and access reports here.

The Causal Effects of Growing up in Different Counties on Earnings in Adulthood

How can we improve economic opportunities for low-income children? The Equality of Opportunity Project uses “big data” to develop new answers to this question. The previous phase of the project presented statistics on how upward mobility varies across areas of the U.S. and over time. In the current phase, we focus on families who moved across areas to study how neighborhoods affect upward mobility. We find that every year of exposure to a better environment improves a child’s chances of success, both in a national quasi-experimental study of five million families and in a re-analysis of the Moving to Opportunity Experiment. We use the new methodology and data to present estimates of the causal effect of each county in America on upward mobility.

Source: Harvard, Equality of Opportunity Project

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From Humanitarian to Economic: The Changing Face of Vietnamese Migration

Although war and conflict forced the majority of Vietnamese migration that occurred in the second half of the 20th century, Vietnam’s tremendous economic growth has driven recent migration to and from the country. No longer are the indelible images of people on unseaworthy boats trying to survive pirates to reach refuge on foreign shores the face of Vietnamese migration. With a decade of real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of more than 5 percent annually, unemployment below 6 percent, and a growing labor force, the face of Vietnamese migration today is more likely to be a student pursuing an overseas education, a construction worker in the Middle East, or a Chinese or Canadian tourist visiting the beaches of Nha Trang and boating in Ha Long Bay.

Source: Migration Policy Institute

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Time Period, Generational, and Age Differences in Tolerance for Controversial Beliefs and Lifestyles in the United States, 1972–2012

From the abstract:

Americans have become increasingly tolerant of controversial outgroups in results from the nationally representative General Social Survey (1972–2012, N = 35,048). Specifically, adults in the 2010s (versus the 1970s and 1980s) were more likely to agree that Communists, homosexuals, the anti-religious, militarists, and those believing Blacks are genetically inferior should be allowed to give a public speech, teach at a college, or have a book in a local library. Cross-classification hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses separating the effects of time period, cohort/generation, and age show that these trends were driven by both a linear time period effect and a curvilinear cohort effect, with those born in the late 1940s (Boomers) the most tolerant when age and time period were controlled. Tolerance of homosexuals increased the most, and tolerance of racists the least. The increase in tolerance is positively correlated with higher levels of education and individualistic attitudes, including rejecting traditional social rules, but is negatively correlated with changes in empathy.

Source:  Social Forces (2015)

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Preparing for the Digital University: A Review of the History and Current State of Distance, Blended, and Online Learning

This report is one of a series of reports describing the historical developments and current state of distance education, online learning, and blended learning. With the intent of informing future research and practice in the emerging discipline of digital learning, this tertiary study focuses on the history and state of distance education, and the understanding of the large body of empirical research as captured by secondary studies (i.e., meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews).

Source: MOOC Research Initiative (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)

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The Rise of Female Entrepreneurs: New Evidence on Gender Differences in Liquidity Constraints

Abstract:

Small business activity and female entrepreneurship have become increasingly important features of the UK economy since the start of the Great Recession. In this paper, we re-examine the impact of liquidity constraints on new business formation in an instrumental variables framework, using a previously unexplored data set from the UK. The new results indicate that it is primarily single women that drive the well-established empirical relationship between personal wealth and business start-ups. Therefore, public policies specifically targeted at relieving the liquidity constraints of women could help further accelerate the rise of female entrepreneurship.

Source: Institute of Labour

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Primary Resource Database: Calisphere

From the annoucement:
Researchers are now able to explore Calisphere’s incredible collection of digital primary sources within the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). This month, the CDL successfully shared more than 225,000 metadata records from Calisphere from UC libraries and over 120 other libraries, archives and museums in California with DPLA. In addition, another 112,000 from the collections of the San Francisco and Los Angeles public libraries were shared as part of a pilot to grow the number of California contributions. As a result, visitors to the DPLA website will now be able to discover important digital collections from across California, amidst a large and growing national aggregation. DPLA currently provides access to over 10 million items contributed by 1,600 institutions nationwide.

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Military Service Records and Unit Histories: A Guide to Locating Sources

From the Introduction:
This guide provides information on locating military unit histories and individual service records of discharged, retired, and deceased military personnel. It includes contact information for military history centers, websites for additional sources of research, and a bibliography of other publications.

Source: Congressional Research Service

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Boomers’ Confidence in Secure Retirement Sinks to Five-Year Low

From the Press Release:

The Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) today released a new research report that found Baby Boomers’ confidence in having sufficient savings to last throughout retirement has dropped to a five-year low. Declining each year since 2011, the first year this study was conducted, the report found only 27 percent of Boomers are highly confident their savings will last. Despite the drop in confidence, 44 percent of Boomers expect their financial situation to improve during the next five years, up from 32 percent in 2012.

Source: Insured Retirement Institute

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How Does Socio-Economic Status Shape a Child's Personality?

Abstract:

We show that socio-economic status (SES) is a powerful predictor of many facets of a child's personality. The facets of personality we investigate encompass time preferences, risk preferences, and altruism, as well as crystallized and fluid IQ. We measure a family's SES by the mother's and father's average years of education and household income. Our results show that children from families with higher SES are more patient, tend to be more altruistic and less likely to be risk seeking, and score higher on IQ tests. We also discuss potential pathways through which SES could affect the formation of a child's personality by documenting that many dimensions of a child's environment differ systematically by SES: parenting style, quantity and quality of time parents spend with their children, the mother's IQ and economic preferences, a child's initial conditions at birth, and family structure. Finally, we use panel data to show that the relationship between SES and personality is fairly stable over time at age 7 to 10. Personality profiles that vary systematically with SES might offer an explanation for social immobility.

Source: Institute of Labour

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Virtually No Effect? Different Uses of Classroom Computers and their Effect on Student Achievement

Abstract:
Most studies find little to no effect of classroom computers on student achievement. We suggest that this null effect may combine positive effects of computer uses without equivalently effective alternative traditional teaching practices and negative effects of uses that substitute more effective teaching practices. Our correlated random effects models exploit within-student between-subject variation in different computer uses in the international TIMSS test. We find positive effects of using computers to look up information and negative effects of using computers to practice skills, resulting in overall null effects. Effects are larger for high-SES students and mostly confined to developed countries.

Source: Institute of Labour

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Fact Sheet: Hunger and mass incarceration

People in prison are more likely to have struggled with hunger and poverty before entering prison. This puts them at high risk for returning to conditions of hunger and poverty after prison.

Source: Bread for the World Institute

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New Report Finds Incarceration for ‘Status Offenses’ Still Widespread

From the Press Release:

More than half of U.S. states allow children to be detained for repeated nonviolent “status offenses” such as skipping school, running away from home or possession of alcohol, a new report says.

The revelation comes more than 40 years after the landmark Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) stipulated that in states receiving federal juvenile justice grants, no child should be locked up for such minor transgressions. They’re called status offenses because they are considered crimes owing only to a youth’s status as a juvenile.

Source: Coalition for Juvenile Justice

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Association between an Internet-Based Measure of Area Racism and Black Mortality

Abstract:

Racial disparities in health are well-documented and represent a significant public health concern in the US. Racism-related factors contribute to poorer health and higher mortality rates among Blacks compared to other racial groups. However, methods to measure racism and monitor its associations with health at the population-level have remained elusive. In this study, we investigated the utility of a previously developed Internet search-based proxy of area racism as a predictor of Black mortality rates. Area racism was the proportion of Google searches containing the “N-word” in 196 designated market areas (DMAs). Negative binomial regression models were specified taking into account individual age, sex, year of death, and Census region and adjusted to the 2000 US standard population to examine the association between area racism and Black mortality rates, which were derived from death certificates and mid-year population counts collated by the National Center for Health Statistics (2004–2009). DMAs characterized by a one standard deviation greater level of area racism were associated with an 8.2% increase in the all-cause Black mortality rate, equivalent to over 30,000 deaths annually. The magnitude of this effect was attenuated to 5.7% after adjustment for DMA-level demographic and Black socioeconomic covariates. A model controlling for the White mortality rate was used to further adjust for unmeasured confounders that influence mortality overall in a geographic area, and to examine Black-White disparities in the mortality rate. Area racism remained significantly associated with the all-cause Black mortality rate (mortality rate ratio = 1.036; 95% confidence interval = 1.015, 1.057; p = 0.001). Models further examining cause-specific Black mortality rates revealed significant associations with heart disease, cancer, and stroke. These findings are congruent with studies documenting the deleterious impact of racism on health among Blacks. Our study contributes to evidence that racism shapes patterns in mortality and generates racial disparities in health.

Source: PLoS One

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Why legal scholars attach formulations such as "Do Not Cite or Circulate" to draft works.

Abstract:

This short essay ponders why legal scholars attach formulations such as "Do Not Cite or Circulate" to draft works. It argues against the practice in most circumstances, particularly for work posted on the internet. 

Source: U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 521. Available at SSRN
Number of Pages in PDF File: 19

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SV150: Searchable database of Silicon Valley's top 150 companies for 2015

Silicon Valley's top public tech companies ranked, in everything from sales to taxes paid. (Dollar figures in millions.) 

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World Health Organization Launches Open Access to the WHO Global Medicines* Safety Database

This database allows you to browse and view data on suspected side-effects from various medicinal products (also known as suspected adverse drug reactions (“ADRs”)). All data contained herein is sourced from VigiBase, the World Health Organization’s global database for ADRs, maintained by the Uppsala Monitoring Centre. The UMC is the WHO Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring based in Uppsala, Sweden providing scientific leadership and operative support to the WHO Program for International Drug Monitoring

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U. of Tennessee Libraries Launches New Digital Collection of Smoky Mountain Photos, Film Clips From 1940s-1960s Set to Local Music

The UT Libraries has created an online digital collection of photos and home movies of the Smokies taken in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s by a Townsend businessman. Folk songs performed by local musicians have been added to the originally silent film clips. The William Derris Collection, composed of 334 slides and twelve film clips, is available online for free. 

William Derris, owner of the Derris Motel in Townsend, Tennessee, crisscrossed the Great Smoky Mountains by automobile, recording the people and scenery in both slides and silent film. He used the images and films to entertain and inform the guests at his motel. Derris’s images document landscapes, flora, wildlife, and people in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, including Townsend, Tuckaleechee, Cades Cove, Wears Valley, Little Greenbrier, and Fontana. 

Approximately 4,400 slides and eight reels of 8mm film shot by Derris were donated to UT Libraries. The film footage was first digitized, and then the most interesting Smokies content was excerpted to create shorter clips.

View films online | View slides online

Where Do Americans Usually Shop for Food and How Do They Travel To Get There? Initial Findings from the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey

This report compares food shopping patterns of (1) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) households to nonparticipant households, (2) participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC) to nonparticipants, and (3) food-insecure to food-secure households.

Source: US Department of Agriculture

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Single black female BA seeks educated husband: Race, assortative mating and inequality

There is a growing trend in the United States towards assortative mating — a clunky phrase that refers to people’s tendency to choose spouses with similar educational attainment. Rising numbers of college-educated women play a key role in this change. It is much easier for college graduates to find and marry each other when there are more equal numbers of each gender within an educational bracket. 

In this Long Memo, we examine race gaps in marriage patterns in terms of educational sorting, using 5-year estimates from the 2008-2012 waves of the American Community Survey. We focus in particular on college graduates.

Source: Brookings Institution

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Reducing Harms to Boys and Young Men of Color from Criminal Justice System Involvement

Boys and young men of color are overrepresented in all aspects of the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems, at considerable cost to those involved, their families, and their communities. This overrepresentation is most acute for African Americans, although other communities of color are also affected. This paper reviews systemic, institutional, and community policies and practices that greatly impact the life chances of boys and young men of color. Policy and practice changes that would reduce criminal justice engagement and that would reduce the harms caused to communities of color from criminal justice engagement are identified and suggestions are made for developing more evidence of effectiveness for initiatives in this area.

Source: Urban Institute

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Television viewership declines: Digital Video and the Connected Consumer

The report, developed for communications, media and technology companies, found that video consumption – anytime, anywhere – has become mainstream, accelerating the decline of traditional TV viewing. Viewership for long form video content, such as movies and television on a TV screen, has declined by 13 percent globally over the past year and by 11 percent in the United States. Similarly, the report found sports viewership on TV screens declined by 10 percent globally and nine percent in the United States.

Nearly all age brackets reported double-digit declines in TV viewing globally, with 14- to 17-year-olds abandoning the TV screen at the rate of 33 percent for movies and television shows and 26 percent for sporting events. This decline continues for 18- to 34-year-olds at 14 percent for movies and television shows and 12 percent for sporting events, and for 35- to 54-year-olds, at 11 and nine percent, respectively. It does, however, flatten among the 55 and older crowd, at six percent and one percent respectively.

Source: Accenture

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Measuring Instruction in Higher Ed

To appraise the state of the art in measuring instruction in college and also explore possible future initiatives, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation brought together twenty-two experts on education and the learning sciences in November 2014.
The report draws on a wealth of knowledge and experience in K-12 education as well as in higher education, and finds a solid foundation on which to build. But there is a great deal more to do. STEM fields have been more heavily studied than the social sciences and the arts and humanities; research in the science of learning proliferates but is not typically applied in a way that demonstrates how different instructional approaches can yield better student learning outcomes; various rubrics and protocols are used – routinely in some instances -- to assess instructional quality but sometimes without as much evidence of their effectiveness as one would like.

The report also articulates a number of crucial design issues that future efforts will need to address early in any work. What ends should instructional measurement serve? (Here participants spoke with one voice: measures of instructional quality should be designed to improve instructional practice and ultimately student learning outcomes and not for high-stakes assessment of institutional performance.) Should efforts be focused on a single discipline or seek to draw lessons from across disciplines, perhaps even leveraging the relative progress being made in the STEM fields to invigorate work in the arts and humanities? Are there obvious starting points, for example, a common taxonomy that distinguishes instructional types or modalities; a review of the research that underpins existing measures and approaches; a focus on instruction in general education?

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Disparities in Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Mental Health Services in the U.S.

Mental health is recognized as a central determinant of individual well-being, family relationships, and engagement in society, yet there are considerable variations in mental health and mental health care according to race and ethnicity among youth in the U.S. 

Taking a developmental perspective, the authors explore four areas that may give rise to inequalities in mental health outcomes, highlight specific protective factors and barriers to care, and, finally, outline an agenda for future research.

Source: William T. Grant Foundation

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The Human Rights Impact of Less Lethal Weapons and Other Law Enforcement Equipment

The Human Rights Impact of Less Lethal Weapons and Other Law Enforcement Equipment details the medical and other risks associated with a wide range of weaponry and equipment used in policing, including crowd control during demonstrations, as well as in prisons. And it recommends stricter controls or, in some cases, bans to stem future abuses.

Source: Amnesty International

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The High Public Cost of Low Wages

Stagnating wages and decreased benefits are a problem not only for low-wage workers who increasingly cannot make ends meet, but also for the federal government as well as the 50 state governments that finance the public assistance programs many of these workers and their families turn to. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of enrollees in America’s major public support

Source: The Center for Labor Research and Education, UC Berkeley

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State Higher Education Finance Report

A recession beginning in 2008 dramatically reduced state revenue and ended the growth in state and local support achieved between 2004 and 2008. In 2014, for the second straight year, overall state and local funding for higher education increased, reaching $86.3 billion, up 5.7 percent from 2013, but still below 2008-2011 levels. Initial estimates from the Grapevine survey of FY 2015 appropriations for higher education show continued growth overall of 5.2 percent in nominal terms. These data all point to continuing economic recovery and restoration of state funding for higher education on average nationally.

Source: State Higher Education Executive Officers Association

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U.S. Postsecondary Faculty in 2015; Diversity In People, Goals And Methods, But Focused On Students

Our work aimed to fill important gaps in the knowledge by developing a greater understanding of postsecondary faculty, and their attitudes and beliefs as they affect pedagogical choices and impact student outcomes. We believe this is crucial, as faculty are the key interface between the system and students, often the first to see student needs, and in any event, are crucial in developing and adopting approaches to meet these needs. At the same time, U.S postsecondary faculty are diverse personally, both within and across institutions. Consequently, while many conjectures and hypotheses exist with respect to faculty goals, objectives, and behaviors, there is not a systematic understanding of how these may differ across the professoriate, and how any differences affect the faculty behaviors which most affect student outcomes.

The investigation focused on both the intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors associated with perceptions of education held by postsecondary faculty in the United States. The research illuminates how different internal and external factors (motivational, behavioral, contextual enablers/barriers, values, beliefs, and demographics) come together to influence faculty members’ willingness to learn about new pedagogies, incorporate new ideas in their work, and spread new ideas regarding teaching and learning to peers and campus leaders.

Source: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

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Gunfire declined significantly in 2014

Press Release:

Gunfire declined significantly in 2014 in American cities monitored by ShotSpotter, according to a study released recently by the company.

SST, which operates ShotSpotter, examined data in 28 cities that used the gunfire detection system in both 2013 and 2014. Instances of recorded gunfire dropped by 28.8 percent, according to the company.

All but two of the 28 cities saw reductions in their rates of gunfire.

ShotSpotter uses an array of microphones to record, identify and locate instances in which weapons are discharged. During 2014, it was used in 47 total cities.

The technology recorded 33,975 separate gunfire incidents nationwide in 2014, with 117,161 rounds fired. That breaks down to roughly 105 incidents per day.

Source: SST

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Quality & Disparities Report Access to Health Care Improving Among all Racial and Ethnic Groups Following Affordable Care Act; Additional Work Remains

This annual report on the nation's health care includes a section on measures of access to care that for the first time cover a period after implementation of the Affordable Care Act's Health Insurance Marketplaces. Data covering January to June 2014 show that the overall rate of "uninsurance"—a measure of access to care—decreased substantially to 15.6 percent in the second quarter of 2014 among those age 18 to 64 (from a high of 22.3 percent in 2010). Because the data run through June 2014, they capture enrollment gains only from the first open enrollment period in the Health Insurance Marketplaces. The second open enrollment period began on November 15, 2014, and is not captured in the report.

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

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Read online and access reports and datasets from previous years 

Congressional Research: International Law and Agreements: Their Effect Upon U.S. Law

Description:

This report provides an introduction to the roles that international law and agreements play in the United States. International law is derived from two primary sources—international agreements and customary practice. Under the U.S. legal system, international agreements can be entered into by means of a treaty or an executive agreement. The Constitution allocates primary responsibility for entering into such agreements to the executive branch, but Congress also plays an essential role. First, in order for a treaty (but not an executive agreement) to become binding upon the United States, the Senate must provide its advice and consent to treaty ratification by a two-thirds majority. Secondly, Congress may authorize congressional-executive agreements. Thirdly, many treaties and executive agreements are not self-executing, meaning that implementing legislation is required to provide U.S. bodies with the domestic legal authority necessary to enforce and comply with an international agreement’s provisions.

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Human Capital Trends 2015

Introduction:

Global organizations today navigate a “new world of work”—one that requires a dramatic change in strategies for leadership, talent, and human resources. More than 3,300 organizations from 106 countries contributed to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2015 survey, assessing the importance of specific talent challenges and their readiness to meet them.  

This report explores 10 major trends that emerged from our research, which reflects four major themes for 2015: leading, engaging, reinventing, and reimagining. We present the capability gaps associated with each of these trends and offer practical insights to help you address these challenges in your organization. We also outline six key findings and invite you to interact with the Human Capital Trends Dashboard to explore the trends by geography, industry, and company size.

Source: Deloitte

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Characteristics of the College-Educated Population and the Science and Engineering Workforce in the United States

Introduction:

T​he number of college graduates in the United States nearly doubled between 1993 and 2013, from 29 million to 55 million, according to the National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG). The number of college graduates with degrees in science and engineering (S&E) fields grew faster than the number of college graduates with degrees in non-S&E fields. Additionally, in 2013, about 1 in 10 college graduates were employed in an S&E occupation, and this proportion has remained largely unchanged since 1993. Women accounted for more than one-half of the college graduate population in the United States in 2013. However, women constituted only 29% of those employed in S&E occupations.

Source: National Science Foundation

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What Courses Should Law Students Take? Harvard’s Largest Employers Weigh In

Abstract:

We report the results of an online survey, conducted on behalf of Harvard Law School, of 124 practicing attorneys at major law firms. The survey had two main objectives: (1) to assist students in selecting courses by providing them with data about the relative importance of courses and (2) to provide faculty with information about how to improve the curriculum and best advise students. The most salient result is that students were strongly advised to study accounting and financial statement analysis, as well as corporate finance. These subject areas were viewed as particularly valuable, not only for corporate/transactional lawyers, but also for litigators. Intriguingly, non-traditional courses and skills, such as business strategy and teamwork, are seen as more important than many traditional courses and skills.

Source: Harvard Business School Working Paper Series

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After Great Recession, More Married Fathers Providing Child Care

Description:

The U.S. economy lost 8.7 million jobs between December 2007 and January 2010. Sixty-nine percent of the jobs lost during the recession were held by men, 2 and the employment rate of married fathers (whether working full or part time) with employed wives decreased from 92 percent in 2005 to 88 percent in 2011.3 The large job losses and persistently high unemployment from the Great Recession and its aftermath prompted families to adapt to financial hardship and reallocate fathers’ and mothers’ time spent in the labor force and in the home.

Source: University of New Hampshire, Carsey School of Public Policy
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Access to Unemployment Insurance Benefits for Family Caregivers: An Analysis of State Rules and Practices

Introduction:

This research report presents detailed information on the policies and practices in place in state unemployment insurance (UI) programs that provide potential temporary financial assistance to family caregivers. The report draws on legal analysis from 50 states and the District of Columbia and in-depth interviews with advocates and UI agency officials from 10 targeted states that have “caregiver-friendly” UI rules in place.

Source: AARP

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Clarity and confusion? The new jurisprudence of aboriginal title

Introduction:

The Supreme Court of Canada has revolutionized the jurisprudence of aboriginal rights and title. Various decisions have overturned the doctrine of adverse occupancy, which at one time had been thought to have extinguished aboriginal title in British Columbia (Delgamukkw); created a governmental duty to consult First Nations regarding use of land to which they have a claim of aboriginal rights or title (Haida Nation); approved a specific claim to aboriginal title (Tsilhqot’in); and extended the duty of consultation to First Nations whose aboriginal title was previously thought to have been extinguished by treaty (Mikisew). These decisions have created a new range of property rights for First Nations, which they should be able to use to advance their prosperity. However, the new jurisprudence has also set up many barriers to voluntary market transactions by multiplying the number of owners and claimants, and laying down opaque und unpredictable rules for making decisions about lands that are subject to claims of aboriginal title or to treaty rights such as hunting and fishing.

Source: Fraser Institute

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Higher education in the EU: Approaches, issues and trends

Introduction:

The performance and quality of higher education has become a vital sign of a country’s capacity to foster its future economic development. The race for talent is currently open on a global scale. In spite of the fact that the United States is still the global leader with 17% of international students, the EU is increasingly popular with the United Kingdom, France and Germany accounting respectively for 13%, 6%, and 6% of world students.

One of the elements accounting for the global attraction of EU universities resides in relatively lower tuition fees compared to American universities. Likewise, efforts made to develop quality and accreditation frameworks for mobility within the EU place Europe at the top of the most advanced global regions in this respect. While EU universities took more time to develop Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), they now account for approximately one quarter of MOOCs in the world and the numbers are constantly rising. Since May 2014, the EU has also its own global ranking system: U-Multirank.

Even though it is difficult to predict in what ways technological change will affect higher education in the longer term, it is clear that sustained effort and on-going international cooperation will be required to improve current structures and take full advantage of the impact of new technologies.

Source: European Parliamentary Research Service

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Higher education and workforce policy: Creating more skilled workers (and jobs for them to fill)

Executive Summary:

Employment of Americans in middle-wage jobs has been declining, due to trends both in employer demand and worker skill attainment. Workforce development in the US now mostly occurs in community and forprofit colleges, as well as the lower-tier of 4-year colleges. Enrollment rates are high, even among the disadvantaged, but completion rates are very low and earnings are uneven for graduates. Community colleges lack not only resources but also incentives to respond to the job market (while the for-profit colleges need stronger regulation). Sectoral training and career pathway models show promise but need scaling and maintenance of quality, and employers also need greater incentives to participate and create more good jobs. Three sets of policies should help address these problems:

1. Providing more resources to community (and lower-tier 4-year) colleges but also creating incentives and accountability by basing state subsidies on student completion rates and earnings of graduates; 
2. Expanding high-quality career and technical education plus work-based learning models like apprenticeship; and 
3. Assisting and incentivizing employers to create more good jobs. Other supportive policies—including higher minimum wages, paid parental leave, and labor law reform—would help as well. Together these proposals should create more good jobs and more good workers to fill them.

Source: Brookings Institution

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Data: Gendered disparities in Mexico-U.S. migration by class, ethnicity, and geography

From the abstract:

Background: Men are more likely than women to migrate from Mexico to the United States. This disparity has been shown to vary by level of education, suggesting that gender may interact with other forms of social status to inform the relative risk of Mexico-U.S. migration for men and women. 

Objective: This study examines whether and how the gender disparity in migration from Mexico to the United States varies by class, ethnicity, and geography.

 Methods: Data from two waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey are used to estimate the rate of migration to the United States for men and women across class, ethnic, and geographic groups.

Source: Demographic Research

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The Impact of Foreclosures on Neighborhood Crime

Intro:

In the last few years, mortgage foreclosures have uprooted millions of households, and many have expressed concern that the foreclosed homes they leave behind are increasing crime. The three papers that emerged from our project study this question by examining whether and how elevated foreclosures affect different types of crime in the immediately surrounding area, in five cities around the country.

Source: National Criminal Justice Reference Service

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New Database: American Archive of Public Broadcasting

From the Press Release:

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), a collaboration between the Library of Congress, WGBH Boston and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, launched a new website at americanarchive.org today, providing the public with access to a collection of American public radio and television content dating back to the 1950s. These audio and video materials, created by more than 120 public broadcasting organizations across the country, have now been digitized and preserved, and will be a resource for scholars, researchers, educators, filmmakers and the general public to delve into the rich history of public broadcasting across America.

The website will initially provide access to 2.5 million inventory records created during the American Archive Content Inventory Project. The records will provide information about which public media video and audio materials have been digitized and preserved in the AAPB, indicate which video and audio files are available for research on location at WGBH and the Library of Congress, and highlight the participating stations. Contributing stations’ histories, information about significant productions and resources for participating organizations will be available online.

Source: Library of Congress

Access Archive of Public Broadcasting

Academic Journals: Is it time to shake things up?

Via The Guardian:

Researchers are estimated to waste 15 million person-hours a year on unpublished submissions to scientific journals. How can we make scientific communication more efficient? This was one of the questions raised at a recent debate at a conference celebrating the 350th anniversary of the Philosophical Transactions, the world’s oldest scientific journal, published by the Royal Society. I am in the team of historians from the University of St Andrews who ran the conference, and writing a history of the journal and its editorial practices. We want to bring this history right up to the present day, and so invited four experts in scientific publishing to discuss the present and future of the learned journal.

Source: The Guardian

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Reproductive Health — Trends in the States: First Quarter 2015

By the end of the first quarter of the year, legislators had introduced 791 provisions related to sexual and reproductive health and rights. Nearly 42% of these provisions (332 provisions) seek to restrict access to abortion services; abortion restrictions have been introduced in 43 states. By April 1, 53 abortion restrictions had been approved by a legislative chamber, and nine had been enacted. Many of the new abortion restrictions enacted this year would either limit the use of medication abortion (Arkansas and Idaho) or ban abortion at 20 weeks postfertilization (West Virginia), a disturbing combination of attempts to curtail access in both the early and later months of pregnancy, potentially leaving women with fewer options and a greatly reduced time frame to get the care they need.

Source: Guttmacher Institute

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Congressional Research: Cybersecurity: Authoritative Reports and Resources, by Topic (March 30, 2015)

This report provides references to analytical reports on cybersecurity from CRS, other government agencies, trade associations, and interest groups. The reports and related websites are grouped under the following cybersecurity topics:

• Policy overview 
• National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) 
• Cloud computing and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) 
• Critical infrastructure 
• Cybercrime, data breaches, and data security 
• National security, cyber espionage, and cyberwar (including Stuxnet) 
• International efforts 
• Education/training/workforce 
• Research and development (R&D)

In addition, the report lists selected cybersecurity-related websites for congressional and government agencies; news; international organizations; and other organizations, associations, and institutions.

Source: Congressional Research Service

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The Changing Shape of American Cities

Introduction:
The last two decades have brought dramatic changes to many American cities. Most cities in the United States in 1990 had a “donut” shape, with wealthier residents in a booming suburban ring surrounding a decaying core. Today cities are increasingly resembling what has been called a new donut – with three, rather than two rings. The center has grown much more desirable to educated, higher-income residents, especially young adults under the age of 35. Poverty, meanwhile, is migrating outwards, creating an “inner ring” of urban and early suburban neighborhoods around the core, where per capita incomes have fallen and education rates are stagnant. Beyond the inner ring, an outer ring of newer and larger suburbs continues to add population.

Source: Demographics Research Group, University of Virginia Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.

Download full pdf publication | Read online press release

Immigrant Women in the United States

Introduction:

Following a history of majority male migration through the mid-20th century, women have migrated to the United States in large numbers as a result of the emphasis on family reunification ushered in by the 1965 Immigration Act. Female immigrants represent 51 percent of the overall foreign-born population, with 21.2 million immigrant women residing in the United States in 2013, out of a total immigrant population of 41.3 million. The female share of the immigrant population is higher in the United States than it is globally, where about 48 percent of the international migrant stock is female (see Figure 1). Even as female migration has increased globally since 1980, the share in the United States—the world’s top immigrant destination—has decreased slightly from 53 percent in 1980 to around 51 percent in 2013.

Source: Migration Policy Institute

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CDC Grand Rounds: the Future of Cancer Screening

From the introduction:

In the United States, patients frequently receive cancer screening recommendations from a physician during an office visit for a general examination or a medical condition. However, in some parts of the world, such as the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, recommendations for screening are made outside of routine medical care settings. These countries use organized systems to contact all adults for whom screening is recommended to remind them to receive cancer screening at recommended intervals. These systems include comprehensive data collection and evaluation systems that provide feedback to improve quality of screening and minimize breakdowns in the multiple steps of the cancer screening process.

Source: CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report

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Faith-Based Funding Backed, But Church-State Doubts Abound

Introduction:

As religion plays a more prominent role in public life, sharp divisions of opinion about the mixing of church and state are apparent. Most notably, while the public expresses strong support for the idea of faith-based groups receiving government funding to provide social services, in practice, it has many reservations. Most Americans would not extend that right to non-Judeo-Christian religious groups including: Muslim Americans, Buddhist Americans, Nation of Islam and the Church of Scientology. Many also have reservations about allowing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the Mormons — to apply for federal funding to offer social services.

Source: Pew Research Center

Download full pdf publication | Read more at Pew Research Center 

California's New Vagrancy Laws: The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State

Abstract:

Vagrancy laws conjure up a distant past when authorities punished people without a home or permanent residence. Whether the objects of pity or scorn, vagrants could be cited or jailed under laws selectively enforced against anyone deemed undesirable. Although such laws have generally been struck down by courts as unconstitutionally vague, today’s “vagrants” are homeless people, who face growing harassment and punishment for their presence in public.

More than one in five homeless people in the country lives in California, and two-thirds are unsheltered. The state legislature has done little to respond to this widespread problem, forcing municipal governments to address homelessness with local laws and resources. Cities have responded by enacting and enforcing new vagrancy laws — a wide range of municipal codes that target or disproportionately impact homeless people.

Through extensive archival research and case studies of several cities, the report presents detailed evidence of the growing enactment and enforcement of municipal anti-homeless laws in recent decades as cities engage in a race to the bottom to push out homeless people. It concludes with a call for a state-level solution to end the expensive and inhumane treatment of some of California's most vulnerable residents.

Source: Social Science Resource Network

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A Deep Dive Into Party Affiliation : Sharp Differences by Race, Gender, Generation, Education

Description:

A new analysis of long-term trends in party affiliation among the public provides a detailed portrait of where the parties stand among various groups in the population. It draws on more than 25,000 interviews conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2014, which allows examination of partisan affiliation across even relatively small racial, ethnic, educational and income subgroups.

Source: Pew Research Center

Download complete pdf report | Read more at Pew Research

Abortion Legislation in Europe

This report summarizing laws on abortion in selected European countries shows diverse approaches to the regulation of abortion in Europe.

A majority of the surveyed countries allow abortion upon the woman’s request in the early weeks of pregnancy, and allow abortion under specified circumstances in later periods. Some countries impose a waiting period of a certain number of days following counseling. Some require consultation with medical personnel before an abortion may be performed. Several countries require that medical personnel certify the abortion is for a reason permitted by law. The most restrictive country surveyed here, Ireland, allows abortion only when there is a real and substantial risk to the woman’s life.

Source: Law Library of Congress

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The Changing Role of Criminal Law in Controlling Corporate Behavior

Abstract:

What should be the role of the criminal law in controlling corporate behavior, and how can the execution of that role be improved? On the one hand, corporations have enormous power, and, when a corporation causes harm, there is a natural instinct to apply criminal sanctions, society's most serious expression of moral disapproval. In the wake of a harm in which a corporation had a prominent role, there are often calls for an increased use of the criminal law to tame corporate excesses. On the other hand, criminal liability has historically usually required criminal intent, a concept that applies oddly to a legal construction, such as a corporation. And more recently, critics have decried what they have termed the overcriminalization of corporate behavior, suggesting that there has been an overreliance on the use of criminal law in this context.

To provide guidance to policymakers on the proper role of criminal sanctions in this context, RAND Corporation researchers (1) measure the current use of criminal sanctions in controlling corporate behavior, (2) describe how the current regime developed, and (3) offer suggestions about how the use of criminal sanctions to control corporate behavior might be improved.

Source: RAND Corporation

Download full pdf publication | Read abstract online

Congressional Research Service Report: Sex Trafficking of Children in the United States: Overview and Issues for Congress (January 28, 2015)

The trafficking of individuals within U.S borders is commonly referred to as domestic human trafficking, and it occurs in every state of the nation. One form of domestic human trafficking is sex trafficking. Research indicates that most victims of sex trafficking into and within the United States are women and children, and the victims include U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike. Recently, Congress has focused attention on domestic sex trafficking, including the prostitution of children, which is the focus of this report.

Source: Congressional Research Service (via Federation of American Scientists)

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The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Improving U.S. Educational Outcomes

From the introduction

This study addresses a key challenge confronting the United States—how to promote both widely shared and faster economic growth. It does so by analyzing and describing the effects of raising educational achievement, especially for those not at the top of the economic ladder.The results of this analysis, which are consistent with a large body of research across a variety of academic disciplines, demonstrate that improving the education of future workers accelerates economic growth and can promote more equal opportunity over the long run. The result: stronger, more broadly shared economic growth, which in turn raises national income and increases government revenue, providing the means by which to invest in improving our economic future.

Source: Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Download full pdf publication | Download pdf of  "Fast Facts"

Americans overestimate social class mobility

Abstract:

In this research we examine estimates of American social class mobility—the ability to move up or down in education and income status. Across studies, overestimates of class mobility were large and particularly likely among younger participants and those higher in subjective social class—both measured (Studies 1–3) and manipulated (Study 4). Class mobility overestimates were independent of general estimation errors (Study 3) and persisted after accounting for knowledge of class mobility assessed in terms of educational attainment and self-ratings. Experiments revealed that mobility overestimates were shaped by exposure to information about the genetic determinants of social class—a faux science article suggesting genetic constraints to economic advancement increased accuracy in class mobility estimates (Study 2)—and motivated by needs to protect the self—heightening the self-relevance of class mobility increased overestimates (Study 3). Discussion focused on both the costs and benefits of overestimates of class mobility for individuals and society.

Source: Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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Political Party Affiliation, Political Ideology, and Mortality

Abstract:

Background: Ecological and cross-sectional studies have indicated that conservative political ideology is associated with better health. Longitudinal analyses are needed. Political beliefs, assessed by an individual’s political party affiliation or political ideology, may be predictive of health and longevity.

Methods: Data were derived from the 2008 General Social Survey-National Death Index dataset. Cox proportional analysis models were used to determine whether political party affiliation or political ideology were associated with risk for mortality. Also, we attempted to identify whether self-reported happiness and self-rated health acted as mediators between political beliefs and risk for mortality.

Results: In this analysis of 32,830 participants, we find that political party affiliation and political ideology are both associated with mortality. However, with the exception of Independents (adjusted hazards ratio [AHR]=0.93, 95% Confidence Interval [CI]=0.90,0.97) political party differences are explained by the participants’ underlying sociodemographic characteristics. With respect to ideology, conservatives (AHR=1.06, 95% CI=1.01,1.12) and moderates (AHR=1.06, 95% CI=1.01,1.11) are at greater risk for mortality during follow-up than liberals.

Conclusion: Political party affiliation and political ideology appear to be different predictors of mortality. Key words: Political party affiliation, political ideology, mortality, survival analysis

Source: Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health

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Minimum wages in the EU

Minimum wages are meant to support household incomes and protect those with low wages from drifting into poverty. Moreover, they are seen as a means to reduce income inequality. Striking a balance between the needs of a worker and economic factors is their main aim according to the ILO. At the same time, they can be described as a moral value defining the lowest threshold under which employment is not acceptable.

The right of a worker to gain an equitable wage is laid down in the European Social Charter, ratified by all EU Member States. The EU itself has no legal competences on pay. Minimum wages are exclusively defined at national level. However, the discussion on a common European threshold (for example 60% of the national median wage) has gained momentum in recent years. European Commission president Juncker spoke in favour of a European minimum wage in 2013 and again in 2014. The European Parliament has also called for a common European minimum wage in several resolutions.

This keysource is a collection of research on national minimum wage systems and a common European minimum wage policy.

Source: European Parliamentary Research Service

Read full article and analysis

The Politics of Selecting the Bench from the Bar: The Legal Profession and Partisan Incentives to Politicize the Judiciary

Abstract:

The American judiciary, like other branches of government, has increasingly come under attack as both ideologically driven and politicized. Using an original dataset that captures the ideological positioning of nearly half a million judges and lawyers who have made campaign contributions, we present empirical evidence showing politicization through various tiers of judicial hierarchy. Specifically, we show that, the higher the court, the more conservative and more polarized it becomes, in contrast with the broader population of attorneys, who tend to be liberal. These findings suggest that political actors not only rely on ideology in the selection of judges onto courts, but that they do so strategically, prioritizing higher courts. As explanation for these findings, we present a model of judicial politicization that formulates the ideological composition of the judiciary as a function of the ideological distributions of attorneys and politicians. To our knowledge, our study is the first to provide a direct ideological comparison across tiers of the judiciary and between judges and lawyers, and also the first to document how -- and why -- American courts are politicized

Source: Harvard University

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Black Lives Matter: Eliminating Racial Inequity in the Criminal Justice System

A new publication from The Sentencing Project provides a comprehensive review of programs and policies across the nation and identifies a broad range of initiatives that can address racial disparities at all levels of the criminal justice system. Black Lives Matter: Eliminating Racial Inequity in the Criminal Justice System highlights initiatives in more than 20 states designed to address the criminal justice system’s high rate of contact with people of color.

Source: The Sentencing Project

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Open Data Barometer Report

As the UN leads a conversation on the need for a Data Revolution to support the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, our research highlights the lack of open and accessible data on the performance of key public services. If the political and social impacts of open data are to be realised, work to increase the supply of datasets from right across government will be needed, alongside sustained investment in capacity building, training and support for effective data use.

Source: World Wide Web Foundation

Read online report | View rankings | Download PDF 

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

New Study Reveals “Double Jeopardy” Faced by Women of Color in STEM

This report examines whether the four distinct patterns of gender bias that have been documented in experimental social psychologists’ labs reflect what is actually occurring at work for women in the STEM fields, and particularly for women of color. The study documented by this report shows that gender bias exists, and it exists for women of color: 100% of the scientists interviewed reported encountering gender bias at work.

It is understood that women of color face “double jeopardy” because they encounter race as well as gender bias. Much less discussed is that women of color often experience gender bias in ways that differ significantly by race. This study explores how the experience of gender bias differs by race. The report also introduces a new approach to organizational change to interrupt gender bias, called Metrics-Based Bias Interrupters.

Source: Hastings School of Law, University of California

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Sociology Faculty Salaries Appear to Be Better Off 2013 – 2014: Faculty Salary Brief for Sociology and Other Social Science Disciplines

For the first time since the end of the Great Recession, sociology faculty salaries (across ranks) in current dollars increased faster than the rate of inflation, according to annual surveys by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and surveys by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR). In fact, the average sociology faculty salary in AY 2013-2104 increased by 2.7% from the previous year (AY 2012-2013) in current dollars. This average increase was 1.2 percentage points above the rate of inflation, the highest since the AY 2009-2010 recession years, and was higher than the 2.2% increase in current dollars for all full-time faculty members across disciplines, according to the annual AAUP survey (Curtis and Thornton 2014; Flaherty 2014) and the 2.1% raise as measured by CUPA-HR (CUPA-HR 2014). Although the percent increase in salaries was higher than average, when compared to other social science disciplines, sociology faculty had the lowest salaries, on average.

Source: American Sociological Association

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Special Collection on Women’s Heart Health

For American Heart Month 2015, the editorial team at Women’s Health Issues has assembled a special collection of research on women’s cardiovascular health published in the journal since mid-2011, following the release of updated American Heart Association guidelines on the prevention of cardiovascular disease in women. The articles address healthcare services for women at risk for cardiovascular disease; social determinants of health; and physical activity in specific populations of women.

 These articles will be accessible for free during the month of February 2015 so that they are available to a wider interested audience.

Source: Women's Health Issues

Link to collection of articles.

Research on Body-Worn Cameras and Law Enforcement

Introduction:

In a sample of police departments surveyed in 2013, approximately 75 percent of them reported that they did not use body-worn cameras. The survey was funded by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). PERF’s report about the survey notes a number of perceived benefits for using body-worn cameras, including better evidence documentation and increased accountability and transparency. But the report also notes many other factors that law enforcement executives must consider, such as privacy issues, officer and community concerns, data retention and public disclosure policies, and financial considerations. The costs of implementing body-worn cameras include not only the cost of the cameras, but also of any ancillary equipment (e.g., tablets that let officers tag data in the field), data storage and management, training, administration, and disclosure.

Source: National Institute of Justice

Link to the collection of studies and abstracts at the National Institute of Justice

Highlights of women’s earnings in 2013

From the introduction:

 In 2013, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings of $706. On average in 2013, women made 82 percent of the median weekly earnings of male full-time wage and salary workers ($860). In 1979, the first year for which comparable earnings data are available, women earned 62 percent of what men earned. This report presents earnings data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a national monthly survey of approximately 60,000 households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Information on earnings is collected from one-fourth of the CPS sample each month. It is important to note that the comparisons of earnings in this report are on a broad level and do not control for many factors that can be significant in explaining earnings differences. See the accompanying technical notes section for more information, including a description of the source of the data and an explanation of the concepts and definitions used in this report.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

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NBER Paper: Motivation and Incentives in Education: Evidence from a Summer Reading Experiment

Abstract:

For whom and under what conditions do incentives work in education? In the context of a summer reading program called Project READS, we test whether responsiveness to incentives is positively or negatively related to the student’s baseline level of motivation to read. Elementary school students were mailed books weekly during the summer, mailed books and also offered an incentive to read, or assigned to a control group. We find that students who were more motivated to read at baseline were more responsive to incentives, suggesting that incentives may not effectively target the students whose behavior they are intended to change.

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

Download full pdf publication | Link to abstract at NBER

NBER Paper: Age and the Trying Out of New Ideas

Abstract:

Older scientists are often seen as less open to new ideas than younger scientists. We put this assertion to an empirical test. Using a measure of new ideas derived from the text of nearly all biomedical scientific articles published since 1946, we compare the tendency of younger and older researchers to try out new ideas in their work. We find that papers published in biomedicine by younger researchers are more likely to build on new ideas. Collaboration with a more experienced researcher matters as well. Papers with a young first author and a more experienced last author are more likely to try out newer ideas than papers published by other team configurations. Given the crucial role that the trying out of new ideas plays in the advancement of science, our results buttress the importance of funding scientific work by young researchers.

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

Download full pdf publication | Read Abstract at NBER

Richard Nixon-Frank Gannon Interviews Transcribed and Searchable Online

Description:

The Richard Nixon-Frank Gannon Interviews consist of more than 30 hours of a videotaped oral history with former president Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups of two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed included Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policy, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, a former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview. The interviews were donated by Jesse Raiford, president of Raiford Communications.

All interviews are viewable with synchronized and searchable transcripts and subject indexes via the OHMS Viewer.

Source:University of Georgia Special Collections
 Access the Richard Nixon-Frank Gannon Interviews

Lessons from the Local Level: DACA's Implementation and Impact on Education and Training Success

Since its launch in 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has brought together immigration policy and the education and career-training fields in an unprecedented manner. Applicants for DACA must meet the program's educational requirements in order to qualify for relief from deportation and work authorization, relying on schools to furnish transcripts as evidence. For those who lack a high school diploma or equivalent, DACA carves out a role for adult education programs to help unauthorized immigrants meet the educational requirements to qualify for protection. And schools at K-12, adult education, and postsecondary levels have played an important role in outreach and sharing of information about DACA. Furthermore, college completion is particularly important for this group, as future DREAM Act-type legislation could be predicated on a postsecondary education requirement.

This report examines the ways in which local educational institutions, legal service providers, and immigrant youth advocates have responded to the first phase of DACA. Based on extensive interviews with stakeholders in seven states—California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Texas—the report identifies initiatives undertaken by educational institutions and other community stakeholders to support DACA youth’s education and training success, and examine the impact of deferred action on grantees’ academic and career pursuits. It provides examples of promising practices, additional challenges, and key takeaways at the high school, postsecondary, and adult education levels, as well as an exploration of the nature and scope of DACA legal outreach initiatives.

Source: Migration Policy Institute

Download full pdf publication | View online overview

Raising The Global Ambition for Girls' Education

Introduction:

In 1948, the world’s nations came together and agreed that “everyone has a right to education,” boys and girls and rich and poor alike. This vision set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been reinforced over the decades and today the girls who still fight to be educated are not cases for charity but actively pursuing what is rightfully theirs. In recent years, girls’ education has also received attention because, in the words of the United Nations, “education is not only a right but a passport to human development.” Evidence has been mounting on the pivotal role that educating a girl or a woman plays in improving health, social, and economic outcomes, not only for herself but her children, family, and community. Educating girls helps improve health: one study published in The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal, found that increasing girls’ education was responsible for more than half of the reduction in child mortality between 1970 and 2009. The economic benefits are clear: former chief economist at the World Bank and United States Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers concluded that girls’ education “may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world” due to the benefits women, their families and societies reap. And because women make up a large share of the world’s farmers, improvements in girls’ education also lead to increased agricultural output and productivity.

Source: Brookings Institution

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Health Reform Not Causing Significant Shift to Part-Time Work; But Raising Threshold to 40 Hours a Week Would Make a Sizeable Shift Likely

Recent data provide scant evidence that health reform is causing a significant shift toward part-time work, contrary to the claims of critics.  The number of part-time workers who would rather be working full time is shrinking.  And there’s every reason to believe that health reform will have only a small effect on the part-time share of total employment. 

More important, raising the law’s threshold from 30 hours a week to 40 hours would make a shift toward part-time employment much more likely — not less so.  That’s because only a small share of workers today — 7 percent — work 30 to 34 hours a week and thus are most at risk of having their hours cut below health reform’s threshold.  In comparison, 44 percent of employees work 40 hours a week, and another several percent work 41 to 44 hours a week.  Thus, raising the threshold to 40 hours would place many more workers at risk of having their hours reduced.  In short, it’s the present legislation, not health reform, that threatens the traditional 40-hour work week the legislation’s sponsors say they want to protect.

Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

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'Competitiveness' Has Nothing to Do With It

Abstract:

The recent wave of corporate tax inversions has triggered interest in what motivates these tax-driven transactions now. Corporate executives have argued that inversions are explained by an "anti-competitive" U.S. tax environment, as evidenced by the federal corporate tax statutory rate, which is high by international standards, and by its "worldwide" tax base. This paper explains why this competitiveness narrative is largely fact-free, in part by using one recent articulation of that narrative (by Emerson Electric Co.’s former vice-chairman) as a case study.

The recent surge in interest in inversion transactions is explained primarily by U.S. based multinational firms’ increasingly desperate efforts to find a use for their stockpiles of offshore cash (now totaling around $1 trillion), and by a desire to "strip" income from the U.S. domestic tax base through intragroup interest payments to a new parent company located in a lower-taxed foreign jurisdiction. These motives play out against a backdrop of corporate existential despair over the political prospects for tax reform, or for a second "repatriation tax holiday" of the sort offered by Congress in 2004.

Source: Social Science Research Network

View abstract at SSRN | Download full pdf publication 

Smithsonian’s First Complete Digitized Collection Available for Public Use

Open F|S, the complete digitized collections of the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the Freer Study Collection. With more than 40,000 works being made available for high-resolution download—expanding regularly with our new acquisitions—you can explore the Smithsonian's museums of Asian art from anywhere in the world, whenever you like. Images can be used for all non-commercial purposes, from desktop wallpapers to artistic gifts for family and friends.

Accessible via Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Open F|S

Opening the Curriculum: Open Education Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2014

This report, funded by a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation with additional support from Pearson, examines the attitudes, opinions, and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) among teaching faculty in U.S. higher education. Some of the key findings:

• Faculty are not very aware of open educational resources. Depending on the strictness of the awareness measure, between two-thirds and three-quarters of all faculty classify themselves as unaware on OER.
• Faculty appreciate the concepts of OER. When presented with the concept of OER, most faculty say that they are willing to give it a try.
• Awareness of OER is not a requirement for adoption of OER. More faculty are using OER than report that they were aware of the term OER. Resource adoption decisions are often made without any awareness of the specific licensing of the material, or its OER status.
• Faculty judge the quality of OER to be roughly equivalent to that of traditional educational resources. Among faculty who do offer an opinion, three-quarters rank OER quality as the same as or better than traditional resources.
• The most significant barrier to wider adoption of OER remains a faculty perception of the time and effort required to find and evaluate it. The top three cited barriers among faculty members for OER adoption all concern the discovery and evalua- tion of OER materials.
• Faculty are the key decision makers for OER adop- tion. Faculty are almost always involved in an adoption decision and — except for rare instances — have the primary role. The only exceptions are in a minority of two-year and for-profit institutions, where the administration takes the lead.

Source: Babson Survey Research Group

• PDF version: Opening the Curriculum: Open Education Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2014 (pdf)
• e-Book version for Kindle (.mobi format): Opening the Curriculum (.mobi)
• e-Book version for iPad or Nook (.epub format): Opening the Curriculum (.epub)
• Infographic: Opening the Curriculum Infographic

Financial Crisis and Increase in Income Inequality Across Cities

This paper investigates why the level of income inequality differs across U.S. cities. We also explore why some cities experienced faster increases in the level of inequality than others. Using the Decennial Census and the American Community Survey (ACS) from 1980 to 2011, we explore whether the disparities in the level and the changes in the level of inequality can be explained by MSA characteristics, including labor market conditions, skill distribution, residential mobility, racial concentration, industrial composition and unionization. We also examine how state level policies such as unemployment insurance benefits and minimum wage level is associated with income inequality.

Our findings shows that negative labor market conditions, concentration of skilled workers and racial segregation are positively associated with the level of income inequality. The level of inequality in these cities also tends to rise grow at a faster pace. While the minimum wage do not seem to have any association with income inequality, we find some evidence that the unemployment insurance benefit and percent of union members lower the increase in the income inequality.

Source: Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management

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Why Has Urban Inequality Increased?

The increase in wage inequality since 1980 in the United States has been more pronounced in larger cities, even after accounting for differences in the composition of the workforce across locations. Using Census of Population and Census of Manufacturers data aggregated to the local labor market level, this paper examines the importance of changes in the factor bias of agglomeration economies, capital-skill complementarity, changes in the relative supply of skilled labor, and mutual interactions for understanding the more rapid increases in wage inequality in larger cities between 1980 and 2007. Parameter estimates of a production function that incorporates each of these mechanisms indicate strong evidence of capital-skill complementarity, increasing skill bias of agglomeration economies and declining capital bias of agglomeration economies. Immigration shocks serve as a source of exogenous variation across metropolitan areas in changes to the relative supply of skilled labor versus unskilled labor. The direct relative demand effects of the changing factor biases of agglomeration economies rationalize 77-82 percent of the more rapid increases in wage inequality in more populous local labor markets. Interactions between capital-skill complementarity and changes in the factor bias of agglomeration economies have generated outward and inward shifts in the relative demand for skilled labor in larger cities that approximately offset.

Source: Brown University (and others)

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Migration of Professionals to the U.S.; Evidence from LinkedIn data

We investigate trends in the international migration of professional workers by analyzing a dataset of millions of geolocated career histories provided by LinkedIn, the largest online platform for professionals. The new dataset confirms that the United States is, in absolute terms, the top destination for international migrants. However, we observe a decrease, from 2000 to 2012, in the percentage of professional migrants, worldwide, who have the United States as their country of destination. The pattern holds for persons with Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD degrees alike, and for individuals with degrees from highly-ranked worldwide universities. Our analysis also reveals the growth of Asia as a major professional migration destination during the past twelve years. Although we see a decline in the share of employment-based migrants going to the United States, our results show a recent rebound in the percentage of international students who choose the United States as their destination.

Source: LinkedIn

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Major administrative datasets of the U.S. government — all in one place

From the description:

An immense number of U.S. government agencies play a central role in the collection of a wide array of public data — vital statistics on health, transportation, commerce, finance, agriculture, and more. Much of this information is gathered by the 13 principal statistical agencies, but smaller organizations — for example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Army Corps of Engineers and USAID — also gather important information.

...links to data sources and tools from a broad range of federal agencies, courtesy of Katherine R. Smith, executive director of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics (COPAFS).

Source: Journalist’s Resource

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Faith on the Hill: The Religious Composition of the 114th Congress

Introduction:

When the new, 114th Congress is sworn in on Jan. 6, 2015, Republicans will control both chambers of the legislative body for the first time since the 109th Congress (2005-2006). Yet, despite the sea change in party control, there is relatively little change in the overall religious makeup of Congress, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. More than nine-in-ten members of the House and Senate (92%) are Christian, and about 57% are Protestant, roughly the same as in the 113th Congress (90% and 56%, respectively). About three-in-ten members (31%) are Catholic, the same as in the previous Congress.

Source: Pew Research Religion and Public Life Project

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U.S. Departments of Education and Justice Release Joint Guidance to Ensure English Learner Students Have Equal Access to High-Quality Education

From the Press Release:

The U.S. Departments of Education (ED) and Justice (DOJ) today released joint guidance reminding states, school districts and schools of their obligations under federal law to ensure that English learner students have equal access to a high-quality education and the opportunity to achieve their full academic potential.

• A fact sheet in English and in other languages about schools' obligations under federal law to ensure that English learner students can participate meaningfully and equally in school.
• A fact sheet in English and in other languages about schools' obligations under federal law to communicate information to limited English proficient parents in a language they can understand.
• A toolkit to help school districts identify English learner students, prepared by the Education Department's Office of English Language Acquisition. This is the first chapter in a series of chapters to help state education agencies and school districts meet their obligations to English learner students.

This is the first time that a single piece of guidance has addressed the array of federal laws that govern schools' obligations to English learners. The guidance recognizes the recent milestone 40th anniversaries of Lau v. Nichols and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA), as well as the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. The EEOA, similar to Lau, requires public schools to take appropriate action to help English learner students overcome language barriers and ensure their ability to participate equally in school.

Source:  The U.S. Departments of Education (ED) and Justice (DOJ)