Despite the long-standing political prominence of the problem, relatively coherent strategies and substantial investment, the United Kingdom remains at the top of the European ladder for drug use and drug dependence. This study by Professor Peter Reuter of the University of Maryland, USA, and Alex Stevens of the University of Kent, England, assesses the evidence relating to the UK drug problem and analyses the impact of current policies.

Lending in lower-income markets has radically transformed in recent decades, highlighted by a dramatic increase in the supply of credit. However, little is known about lending variations across different lower-income markets, nor the underlying forces affecting borrowing patterns. Using Federal Reserve data and a unique database of over 14 million anonymous credit reports supplied by TransUnion, this paper examines the nation’s lower-income credit and lending markets and finds: Over 55 percent of lower-income households held debt in 2004, a 10 percent increase since 1989. Total debt held by these households increased by 308 percent during this period, now adding up to over $481 billion. Most of this debt is for mortgages and home-related installment trades. Over 32 percent of lower-income borrowers struggle to pay bills on time; about 27 percent now spend more than 40 percent of their income servicing debt.

This paper is designed to assist states and localities in identifying innovative strategies to promote stable employment and wage growth among low-income populations. It distills key lessons from the body of research undertaken to date and identifies innovative approaches and programs for improving the employment prospects of low-income families. The paper presents a typology of four relatively broad employment strategies, and within each, a number of “innovative” approaches and several programs that exemplify each approach. Overall, the paper identifies and profiles 12 innovative approaches and 51 programs for improving the economic success of low-income parents. The paper discusses why the approach is innovative and provides a description of the key components of each.

What do consumers value and why? Researchers on privacy remain stumped by a "privacy paradox." Consumers declare that they value privacy highly, yet do not take steps to guard it during transactions. At the same time, consumers feel unable to enact their preferences on privacy. Clearly, scholars need a more nuanced understanding of how consumers treat information privacy in complex situations. To test the hypothesis that there is a homo economicus behind privacy concerns, not just primal fear, Wathieu and Friedman conducted an experiment based on a real-world situation about the transmission of personal information in the context of car insurance. Their experiment was based on a previous case study about marketing processes that use membership databases of trusted associations (such as alumni associations) to channel targeted deals to members through a blend of direct mail and telemarketing.

Science and technology are key to tackling poverty and promoting better well-being in the modern world, as the Millennium Development Goals and the Commission for Africa’s findings underline.
But how can scientific and technological advances – often played out on a global or corporate stage – translate into innovations that will meet poor people’s needs and concerns at a local level? How do rapid scientific advances and new technologies engage with issues of participation and accountability? And in what ways do these rapid changes challenge notions of citizenship and identity? Based on work undertaken by the Science and Citizens programme of the Citizenship, Participation and Accountability Development Research Centre, this IDS Policy Briefing argues that public engagement in scientific debates and policy processes is necessary to address how research agendas are framed and the social

This study of neighbourhood housing markets in England in the 1990s and early 2000s describes and explains patterns of change in housing market performance, with a particular focus on the impact of new investment. It draws on extensive secondary data, as well as six local case studies. The level of deprivation in a neighbourhood appears to be the most significant factor affecting house price differences, and other measures of demand, between neighbourhoods. The effect is less clear-cut in London.

This fact-sheet provides information on the up-to-date official statistics published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) from the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) dataset. It provides details on the estimates for individuals, children, adults of working age and pensioners living on low income in Scotland and seeks to clarify some of the definitions used and minor changes to the methodology introduced this year. It also looks at material deprivation and household debt and provides some background to the work being undertaken by the Scottish Executive to address the issue of low income.

This is the United States Sentencing Commission’s fourth report to Congress on the subject of federal cocaine sentencing policy.1 The Commission submits this update pursuant to both its general statutory authority under 28 U.S.C. §§ 994-95 and its specific responsibility to advise Congress on sentencing policy under 28 U.S.C. § 995(a)(20).2 Congress has not acted on any of the various statutory recommendations set forth in the Commission’s prior reports and expressly disapproved the Commission’s guideline amendment addressing crack cocaine penalties submitted on May 1, 1995. Against a backdrop of renewed congressional interest in federal cocaine sentencing policy,3 the need to update the Commission’s prior reports has become more important. The Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Booker4 has given rise to litigation and resulted in differences among federal courts on the issue of whether, and how, sentencing courts should consider the 100-to-1 drug quantity ratio.

Corporate brands and retailers have long been the subject of campaigns by NGOs and trade unions for poor working conditions in their global supply base. In response, a large number of global buyers and retailers have introduced codes of labour practice to ensure their suppliers observe minimum international labour standards. But codes implemented through global value chains are often failing to reach casual, migrant and contract workers. This Policy Briefing asks whether and how codes of labour practice can help improve conditions for more vulnerable workers. It argues that global buyers need to better integrate the principles of ethical sourcing into their own business practices if sustainable benefits are to reach all workers in global production.

Patient registries represent a useful tool for a number of purposes. Their ideal use and their role in evidence development, design, operations, and evaluation resemble but differ from clinical trials in a number of substantive ways, and therefore they should not be evaluated with the same constructs. This handbook presents what the contributors and reviewers consider to be good registry practices. Many registries today may not meet even the basic practices described. On the whole, registry science is in an active state of development. This document is an important step in developing this field. This book is divided into three sections: Creating, Operating, and Evaluating Registries.

The federal government spent $92 billion in direct and indirect subsidies to businesses and private-sector corporate entities— expenditures commonly referred to as “corporate welfare”—in fiscal year 2006. The definition of business subsidies used in this report is broader than that used by the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, which recently put the costs of direct business subsidies at $57 billion in 2005. For the purposes of this study, “corporate welfare” is defined as any federal spending program that provides payments or unique benefits and advantages to specific companies or industries.

This guidance covers the fitness to teach standards and the responsibilities of employers and initial teacher training providers under the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. It sets out the procedures for making teacher assessments, including the role of medical advisers and occupational health advisers.

Employment, housing and a strong social network are as important to a person’s mental health as the treatment they receive. Louis Appleby, the National Director for Mental Health, explains why we have to continue to improve community care and break down the barriers that can prevent people from rebuilding their lives.

- Among adults aged 18 to 64 who were currently employed full time, 29.1 percent smoked cigarettes during the past month
- Females aged 18 to 64 who were employed full time were more likely to have missed at least 1 day of work in the past month due to illness or injury than their male counterparts
- Among adults aged 18 to 64 who were employed full time, past month cigarette smokers were more likely to have missed work on 5 or more days in the past month due to illness or injury than those who did not smoke cigarettes in the past month (4.2 vs. 3.0 percent)

The Cabinet Office Social Exclusion Taskforce report shows that the Government's continued commitment towards better public services and successful economic policies, such as the minimum wage and through the tax and benefit system, has enabled people to prosper, increase their quality of life and secure better outcomes for the most disadvantaged groups and their children. It is precisely because such progress has been made that the minority who have not benefited and who are caught in a cycle of disadvantage stand out more starkly. The Government can now focus on social exclusion in a much more specific and targeted way. The Government has a responsibility to provide targeted help and support to the most vulnerable families and children facing the most complex problems and barriers. Equally, those to whom such support is offered have a responsibility to take provision up – and stick with it.

Working without pay and often putting in long hours over many months or years, family caregivers improve the lives of many frail older Americans. The help they provide saves the public billions of dollars a year in nursing home and paid home care costs. Yet care responsibilities often create serious burdens for caregivers, especially those balancing elder care duties with paid employment and childcare. More public funds are needed to support their work.

In the United States, HIV infection and AIDS have had a tremendous effect on men who have sex with men (MSM). MSM accounted for 72% of all HIV infections among male adults and adolescents in 2005 (based on data from 33 states with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting), even though only about 5% to 7% of male adults and adolescents in the United States identify themselves as MSM.

The nation’s minority population reached 100.7 million, according to the national and state estimates by race, Hispanic origin, sex and age released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. A year ago, the minority population totaled 98.3 million. “About one in three U.S. residents is a minority,” said Census Bureau Director Louis Kincannon. “To put this into perspective, there are more minorities in this country today than there were people in the United States in 1910. In fact, the minority population in the U.S. is larger than the total population of all but 11 countries.” The population in 1910 was 92.2 million. On Oct. 17, 2006, the Census Bureau reported that the overall population had topped 300 million. California had a minority population of 20.7 million — 21 percent of the nation’s total. Texas had a minority population of 12.2 million — 12 percent of the U.S. total.

Californians are living longer than ever before. A Californian who reaches age 65 looks forward to an average of 20.4 more years of life. The quality of those years is as important as their number. This policy brief profiles Californians age 65 and over who may experience a compromised quality of life due to falls, disability or food insecurity. This information can be used to improve policies and programs that can prevent these problems and better support older adults who already face them.

Core data to be collected on the social services workforce in Scotland.

This article analyzes legislation and policies that limit prisoners' sexual expression and autonomy. The article juxtaposes prisoners interest in sexual expression against the interests of the state in regulating sex by and between prisoners. The article concludes that the state has an interest in regulating sex between inmates and staff and in regulating coerced or forced sex between inmates. In other instances prisons could accommodate prisoners' interest in sexual expression and achieve important goals such as better decisionmaking; improved relations with family and partners to aid community reentry; reduction of prison rape; and as inmate management.

Among the many, often inter-related, aspects of life that are important to human wellbeing are good health, good family relationships and engagements with wider social networks, good educational opportunities and outcomes, suitable employment, a decent income and freedom from financial stress, a decent and affordable place to live, feeling safe and secure, and having access to suitable transport. There is increasing recognition that many social phenomena are inter-related and social policy is becoming less sectoral as a consequence. In 2006, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) conducted the second General Social Survey (GSS), a multi-dimensional social survey that ranges across all of these aspects of life to enable analysis of the interrelationships in social circumstances and outcomes, including the exploration of multiple advantage and disadvantage.

In commemoration of Mother’s Day, Save the Children is publishing its eighth annual State of the World’s Mothers report. The focus is on the 28,000 children under age 5 who die every day from easily preventable or treatable causes and the tragic fact that basic, lifesaving remedies still are not reaching millions of mothers and children in need. This report helps to bring attention to low-cost solutions that have the greatest potential to save lives. It also identifies countries that are succeeding in tackling this problem, showing that effective solutions to this challenge are affordable – even in the world’s poorest countries.

In 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there were 14 million Asians in the United States, a number expected to triple in the next 50 years. In fact, between 2000 and 2003, the Asian American population grew by 12.5 percent, nearly four times the growth rate of the total U.S. population (3.3 percent) and second only to the nation’s Hispanic and Latino/a population. Despite this significant growth, there have been few attempts to collect quantitative, socio-demographic data specifically on Asian and Pacific Islander (API) Americans who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). Since 2005, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (the Task Force) Policy Institute collaborated with more than a dozen API LGBT community organizations to administer a survey nationwide designed to collect basic demographic data on API LGBT Americans and quantitatively analyze the effect of multiple minority identities on their experiences of discrimination and harassment, as well as their political and civic participation.

Divorce law changes made in the 1970s affected marital formation, dissolution, and bargaining within marriage. By altering the terms of the marital contract these legal changes impacted the incentives for women to enter and remain in the labor force. Whereas earlier work had suggested that the impact of unilateral divorce on female employment depended critically on laws governing property division, I show that these results are not robust to alternative specifications and controls. I find instead that unilateral divorce led to an increase in both married and unmarried female labor force participation, regardless of the underlying property laws.

This is one of five sets of training materials to support the implementation of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. It is designed to be used as the basis for training sessions for staff who are working with people whose capacity to make particular decisions may be uncertain or questionable.

Millions of people emigrate every year in search of better economic and social opportunities. Anecdotal evidence suggests that emigrants may have over-optimistic expectations about the incomes they can earn abroad, resulting in excessive migration pressure, and in disappointment amongst those who do migrate. Yet there is almost no statistical evidence on how accurately these emigrants predict the incomes that they will earn working abroad. In this paper we combine a natural emigration experiment with unique survey data on would-be emigrants' probabilistic expectations about employment and incomes in the migration destination. Our procedure enables us to obtain moments and quantiles of the subjective distribution of expected earnings in the destination country. We find a significant underestimation of both unconditional and conditional labor earnings at all points in the distribution. This under-estimation appears driven in part by potential migrants placing too much weight on the negative employment experiences of some migrants, and by inaccurate information flows from extended family, who may be trying to moderate remittance demands by understating incomes.

Families have a significant role to play in reducing the impact of drugs and alcohol on young people, not only in conveying vital information to them, but in promoting the factors that protect young people from the risks of drug and alcohol misuse (Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs [ACMD], 2006; Velleman et al, 2000). Good practice recommends that families become involved in drug and alcohol prevention programmes. There is a lack of research however, relating to the ways this should be done and the impact of diversity and vulnerability in families on drug and alcohol prevention (Velleman et al, 2000). The Bouncing Back! programme funded six projects across the country to address these issues, developing innovative practice for engaging diverse and vulnerable families in drug and alcohol prevention work. . . . The Bouncing Back! programme concluded that drug and alcohol prevention programmes can effectively engage the most vulnerable of adults and young people. However, these programmes need to be planned and developed according to diverse needs and interests. To be effective, programmes should explore issues relating to parenting, drugs and alcohol and family diversity, employing innovative methods to fully engage, involve and empower the most vulnerable and diverse of families.

Conflict of interest, even the appearance of potential conflict, has long been a concern for physicians and scientists. Conflict of interest arises when an activity is accompanied by a divergence between personal or institutional benefit when compared to the responsibilities to patients and to society; it arises in the context of research, purchasing, leadership, and investments. Conflict of interest is of concern because it compromises the trust of the patient and of society in the individual physician or the medical center.

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, this study examines the relationship between several outcomes in early adulthood (e.g., education, inactivity, earnings, and health) and being born to a teenage mother. Besides standard cross-sectional multivariate regression estimates, we also present evidence from nonparametric estimates and from estimates that account for unmeasured family background heterogeneity by comparing siblings born to the same mother who timed their births at different ages. Regardless of the econometric technique, being born to a teenage mother is usually associated with worse outcomes. An important channel of transmission of this adverse effect is childhood family structure, which plays a more powerful role than childhood family poverty. Albeit smaller, some of the detrimental effects are also found for children of mothers who gave birth in their early twenties.

The employment of wives and mothers rose dramatically from 1960 to about 1990, and
thereafter has leveled off. There was a small dip from 2000 to 2004, but employment rates had inched back to 2000 levels by 2006, the latest figures available. Contrary to recent press accounts, there has not been an "op-out" revolution. Rather than a strong downward trend, there has been a flattening out of the trend line, so that mothers' employment has stabilized, with a majority employed. This strong upward thrust followed by a flattening of the trend holds for most groups of women. Well educated women are especially likely to be employed, despite the fact that they generally have well educated, and thus high earning, husbands. Surprisingly, the percentage of married moms staying home doesn't go up consistently as husbands' earnings go up. In fact, it is women with the poorest husbands (in the bottom quarter of male earnings) who are most likely to stay home, followed by women with the very richest husbands (those in the top 5 percent of male earners).

There are approximately 25 million veterans in the United States and 5 million veterans who receive care within VHA. Based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data indicating suicide rates in men between the ages of 20 and 65 approximating 20 per 100,000 persons per year, VHA mental health officials estimate 1,000 suicides per year among veterans receiving care within VHA and as many as 5,000 per year among all living veterans. To better understand the characteristics of suicide in veterans, we reviewed studies on suicide in the general population.

Murder rates in the Caribbean are higher than in any other region of the world, and assault rates are significantly above the world average. Narcotics trafficking is at the core of these high rates. Narcotics trafficking diverts criminal justice resources from other important activities, increases and embeds violence, undermines social cohesion and contributes to the widespread availability of firearms in the region. “The report clearly shows that crime and violence are development issues. Donors and OECD countries need to work together with Caribbean countries to reduce the current levels in the region,” said Caroline Anstey, World Bank Director for the Caribbean. “Some of the factors that make the Caribbean most vulnerable to crime and violence, mainly the drug trade and trafficking of weapons, require a response that transcends national and even regional boundaries.”

States reported in our survey that inadequate levels of mental health and substance abuse services, the high average number of child welfare cases per worker, and the difficulty finding homes for children with special needs were the most important challenges to resolve in order to improve outcomes for children under states’ care. Child welfare officials cited various reasons these challenges existed in their states, such as a lack of funding for family support services and a lack of caseload standards. Over the next 5 years, major challenges for state child welfare systems were cited as serving a growing population of children with special needs or who have been exposed to illegal drugs, and changing demographic trends that will require greater multicultural sensitivity in providing services to some groups of children and their families.

• Currently, federal tax credits for higher education are largely unavailable to low-income students and are also unavailable to many moderateincome students.
• This limitation substantially reduces the credits’ effectiveness in encouraging students who would not otherwise attend college to do so.
• Low-income students who do attend college frequently face high costs of attendance, even after taking into account governmental and
institutional aid. According to Department of Education statistics, 85 percent of undergraduates from families with incomes below
$20,000 had unmet financial need in 2003-2004 that averaged thousands of dollars per student.
• Making the higher education tax credits available to low- and moderate-income students would require making the credits refundable. About a third of all households, and almost half of families with children, have no federal income tax liability. Very few of these households can benefit in full from the current, nonrefundable tax credits, and many cannot benefit at all.

This study presents evidence of recruitment discrimination against obese individuals in Sweden by sending fictitious applications to real job openings. Otherwise identical applications were randomly assigned a portrait photograph of an obese or a normalweight job applicant. Applications with an obese applicant receive twenty percent fewer callbacks for an interview. It is also found that discrimination is the same against men and women and that it varies across occupations in a systematic way in that firms hiring employees in occupations with more customer contact discriminate more. The tentative conclusion is that customer discrimination and/or statistical discrimination based on the correlation between job performance and being obese is the explanation. Also, opposite to what is expected, register data show that the share of obese employees is higher in occupations were discrimination is found to be higher.

In 1966, with the passage of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the federal government defined what the public has a right to know, and how they can exercise that right to obtain government-held information. This was followed by passage of the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 and the Sunshine Act of 1976, both of which focused on public access to government meetings. Pursuant to the federal example, all 50 states, the District of Columbia and some local governments passed similar laws. These laws are often known as “sunshine” laws or public access laws. Although each law is different, they generally declare that all records and meetings are open unless certain specified exemptions apply. “Sunshine” or openness in government refers to two distinct areas: access to public records and access to public meetings. This publication focuses on the latter.

Over one fifth of all U.S. children have at least one immigrant parent. Social service systems are encountering increasing numbers of these children, but few hard data exist. Three briefs in the Identifying Immigrant Families Involved with Child Welfare Systems series provide some of the first data on Latin American immigrant children in out-of-home care in Texas. Key findings include:
- Placement type: only 8 percent of Latin American immigrant children in out-of-home care are living with relatives compared with 20-28 percent of U.S.-born children.
- Removal reason: Latin American immigrants are three times more likely to be removed because of sexual abuse than children of U.S.-born parents.
- Title IV-E eligibility: only 5 percent of Latin American immigrants in out-of-home care are eligible for reimbursement compared with over half of U.S.-born children.

This paper accounts for the value of children and future generations in the evaluation of health policies. This is achieved through the incorporation of altruism and fertility in a “value of life” type of framework. We are able to express adults’ willingness to pay for changes in child mortality and also to incorporate the welfare of future generations in the evaluation of current policies. Our model clarifies a series of puzzles from the literature on the “value of life” and on intergenerational welfare comparisons. We show that, by incorporating altruism and fertility into the analysis, the estimated welfare gain from recent reductions in mortality in the U.S. easily doubles.

This First Look presents findings from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) spring 2006 data collection, which included four components: Student Financial Aid for full-time, first-time, degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students for the 2004-05 academic year; Enrollment for fall 2005 and 12-month counts for 2004-05; Graduation Rates for full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students beginning college in 1999 at 4-year institutions or in 2002 at less-than-4-year institutions; and Finance for fiscal year 2005. These data were collected through the IPEDS web-based data collection system. Major findings: * Title IV institutions in the United States enrolled 18 million students in fall 2005; 61 percent were enrolled in 4-year institutions, 37 percent were enrolled in 2-year institutions, and 2 percent were enrolled in less-than-2-year institutions. * Overall graduation rates at 4-year institutions were higher than at 2-year institutions (56 percent and 33 percent, respectively). * During 2004-05, nearly 75 percent of the 2.6 million full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduates attending Title IV institutions located in the United States received financial aid. Among full-time, first time undergraduates, the proportion of students receiving financial aid varied by sector of institution: 76 percent of those attending public 4-year institutions; 80 percent of those attending private for-profit 4-year institutions; and 85 percent of those attending private not-for-profit 4-year institutions.

The survey found that:
- Of the 73 to 76 percent of those surveyed who purchased prescription drugs within the past year, 41 percent of Hispanics and 38 percent of African Americans had a problem paying for them.
- Among all respondents, 61 percent of Hispanics and 68 percent of African Americans expressed concern about their ability to pay for prescription medications over the next two years.

This factsheet looks at the existing evidence of young people's drinking in the United Kingdom showing the prevalence of drinking, the trends and highlights alcohol-related problems that are specific to young people

In 2006, the share of families with an unemployed member declined to
6.4 percent from 7.0 percent in the prior year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. The proportion of families with an unemployed member has declined each year since 2003, when it was 8.1 percent. Of the nation’s 77.0 million families, 82.4 percent had at least one employed member in 2006, essentially unchanged from 2005. These data on employment, unemployment, and family relationships are collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of approximately 60,000 households. Families include married-couple families, as well as families maintained by a man or woman with no spouse present; some families have children while others do not.

The convergence of four key factors drives how Boomers will impact U.S. health care:
1. There are significantly more of them and, as they age, they will
require more health care services than any other generation of
Americans.
2. The prevalence of chronic diseases is increasing among Boomers.
3. They have different needs and expectations than past generations.
4. More medical services and technologies are available to them
than ever before.

Since the 1960s, it has been understood that family background characteristics are a primary determinant of student achievement, accounting for as much as 93 percent of the variance in student achievement, according to one study.b However, recent research has reclaimed the centrality of the school and neighborhood with new results derived from better quality data about students’ classrooms and communities. Although there is no consensus on the exact contribution of family, school, and neighborhood to student performance, this research shows that school and family factors contribute equally to average test scores, with neighborhood conditions explaining a smaller, but third-largest portion of student performance.c Family members influence children through their attitudes towards education and work, as well as through the resources they provide for their children’s safety, security, and well-being.d At school, teaching methods, how children are grouped together in classes, and curricular content all affect what children learn. Finally, neighborhoods can affect children by influencing the extent to which children have access to adults who serve as role models or who monitor the neighborhood and the extent to which they are exposed to violence and environmental conditions that can affect health and learning. Neighborhoods also influence children’s peer groups.

We document key facts about marriage and divorce, comparing trends through the past 150 years and outcomes across demographic groups and countries. While divorce rates have risen over the past 150 years, they have been falling for the past quarter century. Marriage rates have also been falling, but more strikingly, the importance of marriage at different points in the life cycle has changed, reflecting rising age at first marriage, rising divorce followed by high remarriage rates, and a combination of increased longevity with a declining age gap between husbands and wives. Cohabitation has also become increasingly important, emerging as a widely used step on the path to marriage. Out-of-wedlock fertility has also risen, consistent with declining “shotgun marriages”. Compared with other countries, marriage maintains a central role in American life. We present evidence on some of the driving forces causing these changes in the marriage market: the rise of the birth control pill and women’s control over their own fertility; sharp changes in wage structure, including a rise in inequality and partial closing of the gender wage gap; dramatic changes in home production technologies; and the emergence of the internet as a new matching technology. We note that recent changes in family forms demand a reassessment of theories of the family and argue that consumption complementarities may be an increasingly important component of marriage. Finally, we discuss the welfare implications of these changes.

We document key facts about marriage and divorce, comparing trends through the past 150 years and outcomes across demographic groups and countries. While divorce rates have risen over the past 150 years, they have been falling for the past quarter century. Marriage rates have also been falling, but more strikingly, the importance of marriage at different points in the life cycle has changed, reflecting rising age at first marriage, rising divorce followed by high remarriage rates, and a combination of increased longevity with a declining age gap between husbands and wives. Cohabitation has also become increasingly important, emerging as a widely used step on the path to marriage. Out-of-wedlock fertility has also risen, consistent with declining “shotgun marriages”. Compared with other countries, marriage maintains a central role in American life. We present evidence on some of the driving forces causing these changes in the marriage market: the rise of the birth control pill and women’s control over their own fertility; sharp changes in wage structure, including a rise in inequality and partial closing of the gender wage gap; dramatic changes in home production technologies; and the emergence of the internet as a new matching technology. We note that recent changes in family forms demand a reassessment of theories of the family and argue that consumption complementarities may be an increasingly important component of marriage. Finally, we discuss the welfare implications of these changes.

Women face major challenges in being able to live with independence and dignity as they age. With longer lives, higher rates of disability and chronic health problems, and lower incomes than men on average, many women need long-term care services without having the resources to pay for them. Women are also the primary providers of long-term care, as the vast majority of both paid formal long-term care workers and unpaid informal caregivers are women.

Our Nation has made great strides in recent years in achieving recovery for persons with mental illnesses. We know much more about how to deliver recovery-oriented mental health care, improve service quality, achieve desired improvements in quality of life outcomes, and implement needed care systems in each community in America. Our goal is a healthy life in the community for everyone. Current efforts, however, are far from complete. Many individuals find the services they need to be inaccessible owing to distance, cost, or coverage limitations. Others are able to access services, but the services may not be fully evidence based; of the highest quality; respectful of the recipient’s culture, race, and ethnicity; or recovery oriented. . . . Mental Health, United States, 2004 adds to our knowledge base, helps guide our program and policy direction, and helps us identify where we need to correct our course toward system transformation in mental health care. We hope you will find many uses for the information contained in this volume and that you will join in our goal of helping all Americans with mental illnesses realize healthy, contributing lives in their communities nationwide

The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) assessed the English literacy skills of a nationally representative sample of more than 19,000 U.S. adults (age 16 and older) residing in households and prisons. NAAL is the first national assessment of adult literacy since the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey. Three types of literacy were measured: Prose, Document, and Quantitative. Results were reported in terms of scale scores (on a 500-point scale) and in terms of four literacy levels—Below Basic, Basic, Intermediate, and Proficient. This report, Literacy in Everyday Life, presents findings from the 2003 assessment. It examines changes in literacy levels for the total adult population of the United States, as well as for adults with different demographic characteristics (gender, race, age, and ethnicity). Changes in literacy levels are reported for 2003 as well as between 1992 and 2003. In addition, the report describes how American adults age 16 and older at varying literacy levels use written information in their everyday lives. Specifically, this report describes the relationship between literacy and a number of self-reported background characteristics including education, employment, earnings, job training, family literacy practices, civics activities, and computer usage. It examines the relationship between educational attainment and literacy and reports changes between 1992 and 2003. In addition, the relationship between literacy and adult education, including basic skills classes, English as a second language classes, and information technology certification is reported. The findings discuss the relationship between literacy and employment status, occupation, weekly wage or salary, job training, and participation in public assistance programs. Moreover, the report examines how parents, grandparents, and guardians at different literacy levels interact with the children living in their homes around issues related to literacy and school. Finally, the report discusses how adults at different literacy levels participate in government and community affairs by voting, staying informed, and volunteering.

The findings and analysis of the survey, which appear in this report, are based on responses from 671 departments in 476 institutions that reported having a tenure system: 324 of the 331 responding English departments and 347 of the 355 foreign language or combined departments. While these departments and institutions do not constitute a sample representative of all four-year United States colleges and universities, their answers nonetheless afford insight into practices and standards for tenure in English and other modern language departments across a significant swath of United States higher education.

Transparency through public reporting of quality data is key to achieving the Institute of Medicine's vision for 21st century health care. This article reviews the status of states' voluntary public reporting of Medicaid managed care quality data. Twenty-one states have made plan-level data publicly available online, although the data are sometimes thin, with few measures reported, hard to access, and old. Although use of Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS) and Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) data has promoted more standardization in quality measurement across states, the authors conclude that CMS could do more to leverage the power of public reporting to improve the Medicaid program nationally by increasing the visibility of HEDIS data already being collected.

In this first decade of the twenty‐first century, when the attention of so many faces outward toward the international world, Americans find themselves confronting a dire crisis right here at home. With four out of every five families making their home in a metropolitan area, the persistent unequal distribution of residential opportunities within our cities constitutes a grave injustice that lies, quite literally, at our doorsteps. Contrary to the rosy portraits painted by some who extol America as a land of unbridled opportunity, the facts are unequivocal: our cities remain segregated—indeed hypersegregated—thanks in large part to individual and systemic racial discrimination in our nation’s housing markets. This report documents the forms and extent of housing discrimination in America, the ways in which discrimination causes and perpetuates residential segregation, and the costs to all of us—along the dimensions of home equity, public health, educational attainment, and job prospects—associated with our national failure to integrate our neighborhoods.

This study uses a relative income measure adjusted for household size, the standard measure of poverty in Great Britain since at least the late 1990s. A household is defined as in 'income poverty' if its income is less than 60% of the contemporary Great Britain median household income. In 2004/05, this was worth:
- £100 per week for a single adult with no dependent children;
- £183 per week for a couple with no dependent children;
- £186 for a lone parent with two dependent children; and
- £268 per week for a couple with two dependent children.
These sums are measured after deducting income tax, council tax and housing costs (including rents, mortgage interest, buildings insurance and water charges). The money left over is therefore what the household has available to spend on everything else it needs, from food and heating to travel and entertainment.

Increasing participation in higher education is a key government goal and South Asian women have raised their involvement dramatically during the last ten years. Yet there is considerable diversity between South Asian ethnic groups in the numbers of women going to university. This research, by Paul Bagguley and Yasmin Hussain at the University of Leeds, examines barriers to higher education, individual and institutional strategies for higher education success and young South Asian women’s experiences of going to university. The study interviewed women of Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani origin in sixth forms, universities and after graduation.

In order to obtain a picture of EU citizens’ alcohol drinking habits and their attitudes towards measures potentially influencing alcohol related harm, the Health and Consumer Protection Directorate-General of the European Commission commissioned a poll on these issues. Interviews were conducted face-to-face in peoples’ homes, in their national language, between the 6th of October and the 8th of November 2006. The countries surveyed include the twenty-five Member States of the European Union, the two acceding countries (Bulgaria and Romania), one of the two candidate countries (Croatia) as well as the Turkish Cypriot Community (TCC). The methodology used is that of the Standard Eurobarometer polls, managed by the Commission’s Directorate-General for Communication (Unit: “Opinion polls and Media Monitoring”). In the annex, a technical note details the interview techniques used by the institutes of the TNS Opinion & Social network, as well as statistical levels of confidence. In this report, we will analyse first EU citizens’ alcohol drinking habits in terms of frequency and the amount consumed. Secondly, we will explore respondents’ estimations of the role of individual/public responsibility in the prevention of harmful consequences, and the influence of the price factor on alcohol consumption. Finally, we will look at citizens’ attitudes towards certain legal concepts which aim to prevent alcohol-related harm affecting vulnerable groups on the one hand, and also to alcohol related road accidents on the other hand.

- Outpatient treatment completers who reported stimulants as their primary substance of abuse had the longest median length of stay (137 days)
- The median length of stay among outpatient treatment completers in 2004 was longest among Hispanic discharges (126 days) and shortest among American Indians/Alaska Natives (84 days)
- Clients referred to treatment through the criminal justice system had a longer median length of stay (107 days) than clients referred through other sources

The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) included the first assessment of the English literacy of incarcerated adults since 1992. The assessment was administered to approximately 1,200 adults (age 16 and older) incarcerated in state and federal prisons, as well as approximately 18,000 adults living in households. Three types of literacy were measured: Prose, Document, and Quantitative. Results were reported in terms of scale scores (on a 500-point scale) and four literacy levels—Below Basic, Basic, Intermediate, and Proficient. The findings in this report—Literacy Behind Bars—indicate the changes in literacy among incarcerated adults between 1992 and 2003. The report also compares the literacy of adults in the prison and household populations and across groups of prison inmates with different characteristics, including race/ethnicity, gender, educational attainment, age, language spoken before starting school, and parents’ educational attainment. The report looks at the relationship between literacy, education, and job training, including traditional academic education, vocational education, and skill certification. Additionally, the report examines the relationship between literacy and experiences in prison other than education, including prison work assignments, library use, computer use, and reading frequency. Finally, the report looks at the relationship between literacy, criminal history, and current offense. The results show how the relationship between literacy, type of offense, expected length of incarceration, expected date of release, and previous criminal history has changed since 1992.

The research evidence strongly indicates that SCHIP has been a success, leading to improvements in insurance coverage and access to care among low-income children, without crowding out employer coverage on a large scale. The research also clearly indicates that reductions in program funding or eligibility, either to children or their parents, would have adverse effects on the health and well-being of children.

The Opening Doors demonstration at two community colleges in Ohio provided enhanced student services and a modest scholarship to low-income students to encourage them to stay in school and earn credentials. Early results from MDRC’s evaluation of Opening Doors in Ohio can be found in two reports — one on the program at Lorain County Community College in Elyria and the other on the program at Owens Community College in Toledo.

The study used individual records from the 1991 and 2001 Censuses, supplemented with more recent data from the Labour Force Survey. It focused on the following ethnic groups: white, Black Caribbean, Black African, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Chinese. It also examined differences by gender and investigated three main labour market outcomes:
- Employment rates excluding students. Employment is a key determinant of individual and household welfare. Students were excluded from calculation of the rates to give a more accurate measure of the labour market status of the various ethnic groups;
- Self-employment rates. Self-employment is an important form of activity for some ethnic minorities in Britain;
- Occupational attainment and earnings. These were analysed to find out what happens to individuals from ethnic minorities once they find jobs.

With the current demographic changes in society, any policy with the power to reduce the costs of health and social care for older and disabled people and enable resources to serve more people must be of interest to Government. If the policy also produces improved quality of life outcomes, it will be all the more welcome. The Audit Commission and other bodies have asserted that increased investment in housing adaptations and equipment would bring significant savings to the National Health Service and to social services budgets, but funding and structures, compounded by the lack of clear evidence, have created barriers to such investment. To tackle one part of this problem, this report has gathered the evidence together through a search of the international literature, in the disciplines of medicine, housing studies, ageing studies, economics, health-economics and occupational therapy, and through use of case studies from the grey literature.

The year 2006 marked the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Health and Human Services, 20th anniversary of the False Claims Amendments Act of 1986, and 10th anniversary of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). “Protecting Public Health and Human Services Programs: A 30-Year Retrospective,” commemorates these important anniversaries by reflecting on highlights of OIG activities between 1976 and 2006 to help us and those affected by our work better understand our direction for the future. This publication focuses on OIG results in the areas of health care integrity, quality of care, compliance/outreach, grants management, and child support enforcement. The Retrospective also identifies the critical roles that the False Claims Amendments Act and HIPAA have played in providing OIG with the statutory foundations and financial support upon which much of this work is based.

Summer is an exciting time of year for American families, often bringing vacations, barbecues, picnics and time away from work and school. Yet summer is also known as “trauma season” among public health and medical professionals in the United States because unintentional deaths and serious injuries increase dramatically among children. Unfortunately, summer injuries aren’t limited to skinned knees and scraped elbows; they include paralysis, brain damage and even death. During the summer of 2004, more than 2.4 million emergency room visits by children 14 and younger in the United States were due to unintentional injury,1 and 2,143 children died. A child’s death or injury is a personal and terrible tragedy for the family and the community. Perhaps less wellknown is the economic toll unintentional injury exacts on society. In 2000, unintentional injuries and deaths of children ages 0 to 14 cost society $58 billion3 in medical bills, in lost wages of the children’s caregivers and in the future productivity of the children who died prematurely.

An overriding preoccupation with ensuring ‘harmony’ and ‘stability’ has featured heavily in China’s preparations for hosting major events including the Olympic Games in August 2008. As the statement above also illustrates, several senior Chinese officials appear to continue to equate such principles with a need to ‘strike hard’ against those perceived to be jeopardizing such an environment. While the statement refers to ‘violent terrorism’, it also includes groups or activists who may be engaged in peaceful activities, such as Falun Gong practitioners, ‘religious extremists’ or ‘ethnic separatists.’

The Housing Partnership Network (HPN) is a peer network composed of 87 nonprofit organizations involved in affordable housing as developers, lenders, managers, and providers of services to their residents. The members most commonly produce rental housing for low-income people, operating at large scale and on a regional rather than neighborhood level, and aiming for a high degree of financial self-sufficiency. In aggregate, they form a significant portion of the nonprofit industry in their fields of work. This study reports for the first time on their substantial productivity, the ways they do business to achieve their results, and the policy issues facing them as they grow.

This page on the Supporting People website gives links to information about the outcomes framework for the Supporting People programme.

Problems in mental health affect about 4 million children and youth in the U.S. Only about 1 in 5 of these children, however, actually receive mental health services (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999). Up to 80% of children who enter foster care have serious problems with mental health (Simms, Dubowitz, & Szilagyi, 2000). The most common entry point into the mental health system is through schools. However, restrictions within legislations such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) may prevent some children in need from receiving services. Unfortunately, many youth do not receive mental health services until they enter the juvenile justice system. Limited access to and delivery of mental health services continues to be a pervasive problem. This information packet presents facts and statistics, a review of policies and legislation, best practice tips and identification of model programs, helpful web sites, and a current bibliography. It will be useful for mental health providers, policy analysts, and families of children who use mental health services.

Under international law, employers cannot mount aggressive and coercive anti-union campaigns that interfere with worker organizing or retaliate against workers for supporting a union. International law requires countries to outlaw such conduct, sanction violators with meaningful and dissuasive penalties, and enforce the prohibitions. US labor law and practice do not meet these international norms. US laws permit a wide range of employer tactics that interfere with worker organizing. They provide penalties too weak to adequately deter employers from breaking the laws, only requiring offenders to restore the status quo ante and imposing few, if any, economic consequences. The endemic extensive delays in enforcement further undermine the efficacy of the already weak laws. The United States’ failure to uphold its international law duty to protect workers’ rights has opened the door for employers to breach their own obligation to respect workers’ rights. It has allowed them, instead, to violate their employees’ basic rights with virtual impunity. And Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (Wal-Mart), takes full advantage.

This study explored the relationship between long-term health conditions and poverty across a diverse population. Poverty was broadly conceived and covered three domains: financial hardship, lack of participation in employment and limited social participation. Combining investigation of large-scale nationally representative surveys with in-depth qualitative work in a deprived area of London, the study explored people's experiences of long-term ill health and how they managed this, and its relationship with poverty and identity. The study included individuals with a range of health conditions, and concentrated on working-age individuals who had acquired their condition during adult life and who identified themselves as belonging to one of four ethnic groups: Pakistani, Ghanaian, Bangladeshi and white English. The research highlighted respondents' various understandings of and reactions to living with long-term ill health as well as looking at the impact of ill health on the three areas of poverty. It explored both constraints and coping strategies and identified points of similarity and difference across the four ethnic groups.

These detailed tables show statistics on self-reported, work-related illness and workplace injuries in 2005-06, broken down by illness, injury and region.

This survey of the prison health partnerships was commissioned by the national Prison Health team in order to inform both its review of the process of transferring prison health services to the NHS in public sector prisons, and its assessment of the progress of individual partnerships.

The DDI measures:
(1) Use of nine discipline techniques such as corporal punishment and reward.
(2) Parents' approval-disapproval of each of the nine discipline techniques.
(3)Ten aspects of the mode of implementing discipline (such as impulsivity) and the context (such as agreement-disagreement between parents on discipline).

Despite the broad coverage, the DDI is brief - 10 to 20 minutes, average time 15 minutes.

As more young women enter the academic marketplace during their prime childbearing years, and as large numbers of faculty enter their 60’s, colleges and universities are exploring ways to negotiate these unprecedented work force changes. This report, based on research undertaken with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, explores why as many as half of all colleges and universities now offer flexible employment options.
New data from a federal survey of faculty shows that just over half – 50.3% – of all faculty hired in the 5 years preceding 2004 were female. And the mean age of all faculty, who are now free to choose when they retire, has increased from 46 to 49 since 1988. Consequently, more support is being developed for young faculty with families and early retirement, phased retirement, and retirement incentives are helping older faculty step away from careers as they approach traditional retirement age.

Parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) is a family-centered treatment approach proven effective for abused and at-risk children ages 2½ to 12 and their biological or foster caregivers. During PCIT, therapists coach parents while they interact with their children. Sitting behind a one-way mirror and coaching the parent through an “ear bug” audio device, therapists guide parents through strategies that reinforce their children’s positive behavior. Research has shown that as a result of PCIT, parents learn more effective parenting techniques, the behavior problems of children decrease, and the quality of the parent-child relationship improves. This issue brief is intended to build a better understanding of the characteristics and benefits of PCIT.

- Major depressive episodes in lifetime or past year were assessed in SAMHSA's National Survey on Drug Use and Health among youth aged 12 to 17. A major depressive episode was defined using the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria which specifies a period of two weeks or longer during which there is either depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure and at least four other symptoms that reflect a change in functioning (such as problems with sleeping, eating, energy, concentration, and self image).
- Data from SAMHSA's 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health were used to examine the following in the past year: major depressive episode, initiation of alcohol or illicit drug use, and the association between such new alcohol and/or illicit drug use and major depressive episode.
- In 2005, 8.8% of youth (about 2.2 million youth) had experienced at least one major depressive episode during the past year. Rates of major depressive episode varied by gender and age.
- About 2.7 million youth (15.4% of the youth who had not used alcohol previously) used alcohol for the first time in the past year.

Good afternoon. My name is Gordon Berlin, and I am President of MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education and social policy research organization that is dedicated to learning what works to improve policies and programs that affect the poor. Founded in 1974, MDRC evaluates existing programs and tries out new solutions to some of the nation’s most pressing social problems, using rigorous random assignment research designs or near equivalents to assess their impact. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this Committee today to describe what research tells us about the best ways to alleviate poverty.

This May 2007 Kaiser Family Foundation report is the first of several that will track the progress and challenges facing people living in the New Orleans area in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. To conduct the study, a team of 41 interviewers visited 456 randomly selected census areas, documented the physical condition of nearly 17,000 housing locations and completed interviews with 1,504 randomly chosen adults living in the four parishes between September and November 2006. The survey’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points.

The review found that all identified minority groups had higher than average rates of poverty. Rates of poverty were highest for Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and Black Africans, reaching nearly two-thirds for Bangladeshis. Rates of poverty were also higher than average for Indian, Chinese and other minority group households. These differences were found, in roughly the same order, when sub-populations such as pensioners or children were considered. For example, Indian and Caribbean pensioners were poorer than white pensioners and Pakistani pensioners were poorer than Indian pensioners. Child poverty rates were greater than adult poverty rates across groups, so that children from minority groups were poorer than both white children and adults from their own ethnic groups. Around 70 per cent of Bangladeshi children were poor.

Educators and policymakers often point out that parents are children’s first and most enduring teachers. Indeed, no bond is more fundamental and life-defining than the one between parent and child. Children in foster care or out-of-home care, however, have had that crucial bond broken, frayed, or interrupted through no fault of their own. Traumatized first by the maltreatment, neglect, or abuse that brings them to the attention of the authorities, then by their removal
from their family, and possibly yet again by their experiences in the foster care system, these children are among our most vulnerable. For the 800,000 children and youth who are involved in the foster care system each year, a solid education is their best hope—in some cases, their only hope—of achieving independence and success in adulthood. A quality education builds on a foundation of educational continuity and school stability. Unfortunately, too many children in foster care
experience multiple placement changes, and each change in home placement frequently results in a change in school placement.

Research on women’s heart health is exploding. Nearly every week, it seems, the media report on new ways to prevent and treat heart disease in women—and it can be hard to keep track of it all. In this updated edition of “The Healthy Heart Handbook for Women,” we have put together all of this new knowledge in one easy-to-use handbook. This guide is part of The Heart Truth, a national public awareness campaign for women about heart disease sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and many other groups.

The future of disability in America will depend on how well this country prepares for and manages the demographic, fiscal, and technological developments that will unfold during the next two to three decades. Building upon two prior studies from the Institute of Medicine (the 1991 Institute of Medicine's report Disability in America and the 1997 report Enabling America), The Future of Disability in America examines both progress and concerns about continuing barriers that limit the independence, productivity, and participation in community life of people with disabilities. This book offers a comprehensive look at a wide range of issues, including the prevalence of disability across the lifespan; disability trends the role of assistive technology; barriers posed by health care and other facilities with inaccessible buildings, equipment, and information formats; the needs of young people moving from pediatric to adult health care and of adults experiencing premature aging and secondary health problems; selected issues in health care financing (e.g., risk adjusting payments to health plans, coverage of assistive technology); and the organizing and financing of disability-related research.

As humans we have the capacity to remember – and to forget. For millennia remembering was hard, and forgetting easy. By default, we would forget. Digital technology has inverted this. Today, with affordable storage, effortless retrieval and global access remembering has become the default, for us individually and for society as a whole. We store our digital photos irrespective of whether they are good or not - because even choosing which to throw away is too time-consuming, and keep different versions of the documents we work on, just in case we ever need to go back to an earlier one. Google saves every search query, and millions of video surveillance cameras retain our movements. In this article I analyze this shift and link it to technological innovation and information economics. Then I suggest why we may want to worry about the shift, and call for what I term data ecology. In contrast to others I do not call for comprehensive new laws or constitutional adjudication. Instead I propose a simple rule that reinstates the default of forgetting our societies have experienced for millennia, and I show how a combination of law and technology can achieve this shift.

The Ryan White CARE Act, now called “Title XXVI of the PHS Act as amended by the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act of 2006”, or “Ryan White Program”1,2 is the single largest federal program designed specifically for people with HIV/AIDS. First enacted in 1990, it provides care and support services to individuals and families affected by HIV/AIDS, functioning as the “payer of last resort”; that is, it fills the gaps in care for those who have no other source of coverage or face coverage limits. Federal Ryan White funding is provided to cities, states,3 and directly to providers and other organizations. The program was reauthorized in both 1996 and 2000, and was just reauthorized for the third time in December 2006. Whereas all prior authorizations were for five-year periods, the recent authorization extends for three years.

Welcome to the Aboriginal Canada Portal, your single window to Canadian Aboriginal on-line resources, contacts, information, and government programs and services. The portal offers ease of access and navigation to listings of Aboriginal associations, businesses, organizations, bands, communities, groups, news and peoples.

- In 2005, most youths aged 12 to 17 (92.4 percent) participated in at least one school-based, community-based, church- or faith-based, or other type of activity during the past year
- Regardless of family income, youths aged 12 to 17 who did not participate in any activities had higher rates of past month cigarette and illicit drug use than those who participated in four to six or seven or more activities
- Among youths aged 12 to 17 who participated in any activities, those with higher family incomes showed a consistent pattern of decreasing rates of past month cigarette, alcohol, and illicit drug use with increasing numbers of activities

The terms of reference for the review were:
- To review the current arrangements for promoting the contribution social care makes to the promotion of people’s independence, inclusion, health and well being
- To consider whether any action is required to improve the status of social care services and the social care workforce
- To propose recommendations and timetable on any next steps which will be required.

Headliners: The National Socialist Movement's rallies, including an appearance in the liberal college town of Madison, Wis., were among the year's notable extremist events.

Energized by the rancorous national debate on immigration and increasingly successful at penetrating mainstream political discourse, the number of hate groups in America continued to grow in 2006, rising 5% over the year before to 844 groups. That increase translated into a 40% jump in the number of groups since 2000, when there were 602 hate groups operating in America, according to research by the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Much of the expansion has been driven by hate groups' exploitation of the issue of illegal immigration, which most Americans see as a pressing concern.

As more information has become available on health care disparities, the focus of research has turned from documenting disparities to trying to understand their causes and developing interventions to alleviate them. This is not to say that documentation of the problem is no longer needed. Data are still limited for some racial and ethnic subgroups, and for individuals who self-identify with more than one racial group. As such, information that documents health care disparities is important to understanding where progress has been made and the challenges that remain. This version of Key Facts, where possible, highlights data that show whether health care disparities are narrowing, widening, or persisting for specific racial/ethnic groups and presents newly collected data for people who dentify with more than one racial group.

In October 2006, 65.8 percent of high school graduates from the class of 2006 were enrolled in colleges or universities, according to data released today by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since 2001, the college enrollment rate for recent high school graduates has been trending upward. . . . The college enrollment rate of young women, 66.0 percent, was about the same as that of young men, 65.5 percent. Asians were considerably more likely than whites, blacks, and Hispanics to be enrolled in college in the fall following their high school graduation.

According to the US Department of Justice, Native American and Alaska Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than women in the USA in general. The reasons why Indigenous women are at particular risk of sexual violence are varied and complex. Sexual violence against Indigenous women today is informed and conditioned by a legacy of widespread and egregious human rights abuses. It is compounded by the federal government's steady erosion of tribal government authority and its chronic under-resourcing of law enforcement agencies and service providers which should protect Indigenous women from sexual violence.

Over the past decade, federal, state, and local governments have made a concerted effort to simplify the process for application and recertification of eligibility for work supports (including food stamps, health insurance, and child care subsidies) — all in an attempt to increase take-up rates among those eligible. In some cases, such as Medicaid and the State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), these efforts have made some progress. But in the case of food stamps, take-up rates for working people have remained virtually unchanged since 1994, as the figure below illustrates. Although there have been slight fluctuations, working people received food stamps in 2004 (45.7 percent) at almost the same rate as 1994 (46.5 percent).

View image of Food Stamp Participation Rates Among Eligible Working Poor

The Government’s Green Paper, Care Matters: Transforming the Lives of Children and Young People in Care was published in October 2006. Since then, we have been talking to everyone who might have an opinion on the proposals in the paper. We’ve spoken to groups representing children, frontline staff, managers and to children themselves. More than 2000 individuals and groups responded to the written consultation, and many more at consultation events. Overall people have been supportive of the Green Paper, although there are concerns about the detail of some of the proposals and people emphasised the need to turn the many ideas into a coherent overall strategy. This paper summarises what they have told us.

Residential care is a community-based service. Residential treatment for children and adolescents with behavioral disorders is an integral part of a network of communitybased services. The vast majority of young people are receiving services in residential treatment programs within their own state (mean = 75.2%). Others are in treatment in out-of-state programs that work with referral sources from the home states. All residential treatment providers are working closely with local education agencies, school districts, and others to meet the educational needs of the young people in residence. Residential treatment programs serve young people who have serious and complex needs. The vast majority of the surveyed facilities treat youngsters who experience emotional disturbances (94.7% of surveyed facilities serve this population), learning disabilities (86.7% serve this population), or co-occurring disorders (77.3% serve this population).More than half (53.3%) of the surveyed facilities serve youngsters with forensic involvement. And significant numbers of programs serve young people with substance use conditions (48%), developmental disabilities or mental retardation (57.3%), or autism (45.3%). Most young people (60%) bring an individualized education program (IEP) to the residential treatment centers when they are admitted—an indication of the existence of a complex set of needs requiring special education.

An interactive web-based timeline of key HIV-related events and noteworthy activities from 1981 through today.

The National ADAP Monitoring Project Annual Report is based on a comprehensive survey of all state and territorial AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs), state-level1 programs that provide prescription drug medications to low-income people with HIV/AIDS. The
ADAP Monitoring Project is a more than 10-year effort of the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD) and the Kaiser Family Foundation (Kaiser). Each year, the project documents new developments and challenges facing ADAPs, assesses key trends over time, and provides the latest available data on the status of these programs. Data in the current report are from FY 2006 and June 2006, unless otherwise noted.

UNITED STATES SENATE
COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS
Hearing on Mental Health Issues
April 25, 2007

In November 2004, the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights was authorized by the Senate to examine and report upon Canada’s international obligations with regard to the rights and freedoms of children. From the outset, the Committee reviewed Canada’s international obligations with respect to children’s rights as a case study reflecting the broader implications of ensuring that domestic legislation and policies comply with Canada’s international human rights obligations, and in keeping with a broader mandate that began with this Committee’s first report in 2001, Promises to Keep: Implementing Canada’s Human Rights Obligations. The primary aim of this study was to assess whether the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has been implemented, whether Canadian children are benefiting from it, and whether the Convention has been used as a tool to address key problems of facing children in this country.

There have been continuous attempts in the EU over many years to ensure equality of opportunity in employment between men and women. These have focused in part on changing the attitudes as well as the practices which result in men and women doing different kinds of job. The latest evidence from the EU Labour Force Survey, examined below, shows not only that women remain more concentrated in a few sectors of activity than men but that this concentration seems to be increasing rather than falling. The evidence, in addition, shows that the degree of employment concentration in a limited number of occupations is also much higher among women than among men.

This publication covers a range of outcome indicators for children who have been continuously looked after for at least 12 months in England. The key points will cover:
- The number of children looked after continuously for at least 12 months
- Absences and exclusions
- Achievements at key stage 1, 2 and 3
- Year 11 children who obtained at least 1 GCSE (or equivalent)
- Year 11 children who obtained at least 5 GCSEs at A*-C (or equivalent)
- Employment status at end of Year 11
- Cautions and convictions
- Immunisations, dental checks and health assessments
- Substance misuse which has been collected for the first time

The latest analysis from the University of Mississippi's Potency Monitoring Project revealed that levels of THC—the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana—have reached the highest-ever levels since scientific analysis of the drug began in the late 1970's. According to the latest data on marijuana samples analyzed to date, the average amount of THC in seized samples has reached 8.5 percent. This compares to an average of just under 4 percent reported in 1983 and represents more than a doubling in the potency of the drug since that time.

NCVS reveals that almost all the survey respondents, who are demographically representative of American adults as a whole, can be categorized in one of three values groups – Orthodox, Progressive, and Independent – and these demarcations are based on their views on the role of religion in everyday life. The Orthodox, who represent just less than a third of American adults, are fundamentally religious in outlook. Virtually all the Orthodox believe in God, and they wish to see government policies reflect religious values. They see moral issues in black and white, right vs. wrong. One sixth of American adults, the Progressives, are fundamentally secular and are opposed to religious values in government. While 53 percent of Progressives say they believe in God, 33 percent – four times the national figure of 8 percent – say they do not believe in God. Progressives believe in situational ethics: they see moral issues in shades of gray. Nearly half of American adults, the Independents, do not fully accept either Orthodox or Progressive values.

This self-assessment tool is designed to assist PCTs and their partners in assessing their knowledge and capability to commission children's and young people's services. It reflects the importance of effective partnerships in commissioning the intergrated services, which are fundamental to the improved outcomes of services for children and young people.

Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding Donald Powell, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Alphonso Jackson and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator David Paulison announced coordinated, additional measures to further assist Gulf Coast hurricane victims. These actions are designed to provide longer-term permanent housing solutions to individuals displaced from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The decade old State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) covers six million children today. With the 28 million children covered by Medicaid, the SCHIP program has played a crucial role in helping reduce the rate of uninsured low-income children by one-third in the past ten years. The SCHIP program requires reauthorization by Congress this year, or no federal funds will be available and the program will expire.

The NICE anxiety clinical guideline covers the care of adults who have panic disorder (with or without agoraphobia) or generalised anxiety disorder. The recommendations address:
- diagnosis
- medication
- psychological treatments
- self-care

This video, about the role of the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), profiles several ADAP clients who receive HIV/AIDS drugs through the program and others who are on a waiting list. It features interviews with state officials in South Carolina and Michigan, highlighting the importance of ADAP for people with HIV/AIDS, as well as challenges the program faces.