Mixed-race people account for around one in six of all ethnic minorities in Britain today. They belong to an ethnic group that is not only the fastest-growing in Britain today, but also has the youngest average age and the greatest amount of diversity. It is also perhaps the least well understood.

Our ambition is that all children and young people achieve the 5 ‘Every Child Matters’ outcomes – we want them to: Be Healthy, Stay Safe, Enjoy and Achieve, Make a Positive Contribution and Achieve Economic Well-being. Currently, however, the outcomes achieved by some of our young people fall short of this aim. This is particularly true for teenage parents and their children. Like all parents, teenage mothers and young fathers want the best for their children and some manage very well. But the demands of caring for a baby at a time when young people themselves are making the difficult transition from adolescence to adulthood are significant. That is why teenage mothers and young fathers need additional support – from family, partners and services – if they and their children are to avoid the poor outcomes that many of them currently experience.

To date, most health care preparedness planning efforts have been focused on hospital and first responder preparedness. Nevertheless, the elderly are particularly vulnerable to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies due to their complex physical, medical, and psychological needs. The potential role and question of preparedness on the part of nursing homes has emerged in local and national preparedness discussions. However, little is known about the extent to which nursing homes have planned for and/or been incorporated into regional planning efforts. To address this issue, a series of focus groups was conducted to collect information about disaster- and bioterrorism-related planning activities among nursing homes in five States—North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Utah—and southern California.

Youth crime in the United States remains near the lowest levels seen in the past three decades, yet public concern and media coverage of gang activity has skyrocketed since 2000. Fear has spread from neighborhoods with longstanding gang problems to communities with historically low levels of crime, and some policy makers have declared the arrival of a national gang “crisis.” Yet many questions remain unanswered. How can communities and policy makers differentiate between perceived threats and actual challenges presented by gangs? Which communities are most affected by gangs, and what is the nature of that impact? How much of the crime that plagues poor urban neighborhoods is attributable to gangs? And what approaches work to promote public safety?

Over the last ten years, many researchers have conducted studies to find out whether lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“LGBT”) people face sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace. These studies include surveys of LGBT individuals’ workplace experiences, wage comparisons between LGB and heterosexual persons, analyses of discrimination complaints filed with administrative agencies, and testing studies and controlled experiments. This report summarizes findings from these studies.

In total, 22,224 people were receiving methadone treatment for drug misuse in Scotland, 1,093 of which were in the care of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS). The latest published estimated figures, which exclude the SPS, indicate that in 2004 there were 19,227 people receiving prescriptions for methadone in Scotland. This represents an increase of 1,904 people since 2004 (excluding SPS). However it should be noted that the data did not necessarily cover the same time period.

• Parental engagement is viewed as a ‘good thing’ by teachers, parents and students although interpretations of the term vary. Parents view parental engagement as offering support to students while teachers tend to view it as a means to improved behaviour Students view parental engagement as being primarily about moral
support and interest in their progress.
• Schools that successfully engage parents in learning, consistently reinforce the fact that ‘parents matter’. They develop a two way relationship with parents based on mutual trust, respect and a commitment to improving learning outcomes.
• Parents who are viewed as ‘hard to reach’ often see the school as ‘hard to reach’.

Trauma‑focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF‑CBT) is an evidence‑based treatment approach shown to help children, adolescents, and their caretakers overcome trauma‑related difficulties. It is designed to reduce negative emotional and behavioral responses following child sexual abuse and other traumatic events. The treatment—based on learning and cognitive theories— addresses distorted beliefs and attributions related to the abuse and provides a supportive environment in which children are encouraged to talk about their traumatic experience. TF‑CBT also helps parents who were not abusive to cope effectively with their own emotional distress and develop skills that support their children. This issue brief is intended to build a better understanding of the characteristics and benefits of TF‑CBT. It was written primarily to help child welfare caseworkers and other professionals who work with at‑risk families make more informed decisions about when to refer children and their parents and caregivers to TF‑CBT programs. This information also may help biological parents, foster parents, and other caregivers understand what they and their children can gain from TF‑CBT and what to expect during treatment. In addition, this issue brief may be useful to others with an interest in implementing or participating in effective strategies for the treatment of children who have suffered from sexual abuse or other childhood traumas.

The objective of this paper is to discuss some obstacles and opportunities presented by population processes in order to prioritize areas for investment and analytical work as background information for the 2007 HNP Sector Strategy. Within HNP, two areas fall within population: (1) reproductive, maternal, and sexual health issues, and the health services that address them; and (2) levels and trends in births, deaths, and migration that determine population growth and age structure. Many of the aspects of delivery of sexual and reproductive health services are addressed in the overall sector strategy. This paper, therefore, focuses on the determinants and consequences of demographic change, and on policies and interventions that pertain to fertility and family planning. Fertility has declined in most of the low- and middle-income countries, with TFRs converging toward replacement level, except in 35 countries, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where a broad-based decline in fertility has not occurred. As the priorities of donors and development agencies have shifted toward other issues, and global funds and initiatives have largely bypassed funding of family planning, less attention is being focused on the consequences of high fertility. Reproductive health is conspicuously absent from the MDGs, and assistance to countries to meet the demand for family planning and related services is insufficient.

Current proposed legislation would change certain existing federal hate crime laws to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories. Sexual orientation and gender identity are important categories for inclusion in federal law because members of these groups are just as likely to be victimized as members of other groups that are already covered, such as those based on race, religion, or national origin. A close analysis of hate crime rates demonstrates that groups that are already covered by hate crime laws, such as African Americans, Muslims, and Jews, report similar rates of hate crime victimization as lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, who are not currently federally protected.

The project group unanimously agreed that methadone replacement prescribing remains the main treatment for opiate dependency that should be available within the framework of services across all areas in Scotland. This reflects the overwhelming evidence base which supports its effectiveness in the face of little current credible evidence to support other approaches. The group also agreed that methadone replacement prescribing in Scotland can be improved significantly in terms of consistency and quality of practice and process of care delivery. This is supported strongly by user/carer opinion. The following actions reflect changes which will improve our ability to objectively evaluate treatment delivered by Scottish services and will also address specific concerns regarding delivery and effectiveness.

This report presents an assessment of the performance of New York City's child welfare system in meeting its responsibilities to investigate and respond to reports of child abuse and neglect; provide services to children and families to prevent children’s entry into foster care whenever possible; provide services to children while in foster care; and ensure that children in foster care exit care in a timely fashion to grow up in permanent families. These are the essential functions of a public child welfare agency. In New York City, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) is the public child welfare agency responsible for these functions, in conjunction with the New York City Family Court. The child welfare system is funded with a combination of federal, state and local funding. In addition to the state’s role in providing funding, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) is responsible for regulating and monitoring the quality of child welfare services statewide and ensuring compliance with federal law. OCFS is also responsible for CONNECTIONS, the automated information system that tracks key data on all children and families served, and runs the hotline that accepts reports of child abuse and neglect.

The tracker provides local, regional, and national information about Medicare Advantage plans, including HMOs, regional and local PPOs, private fee-for-service plans, and special needs plans, which can be used to examine historical trends. It also has data about Medicare stand-alone prescription drug plans.

Federal policies offer incentives to retire both earlier and later than Social Security’s full retirement age depending on a worker’s circumstances. The availability of reduced Social Security benefits at age 62 provides an incentive to retire well before the program’s age requirement for full retirement benefits; however, the gradual increase in this age from 65 to 67 provides an incentive to wait in order to secure full benefits. The elimination of the Social Security earnings test in 2000 for those at or above their full retirement age also provides an incentive to work. Medicare’s eligibility age of 65 continues to provide a strong incentive for those without retiree health insurance to wait until then to retire, but it can also be an incentive to retire before the full retirement age. Meanwhile, federal tax policy creates incentives to retire earlier, albeit indirectly, by setting broad parameters for the ages at which retirement funds can be withdrawn from pensions without tax penalties.

Two trends in international migration flows have attracted much attention recently: (i) the growing feminisation of migration flows; and (ii) the increasing selectivity of migration towards the highly skilled, which in turn has given rise to renewed concerns about the “brain drain” consequences for the sending countries. The two issues have not been considered jointly, however, mainly due to the lack of relevant data. This paper addresses this shortcoming by looking at the gender dimension of the brain drain, based on a new comparable data set that has been collected by the OECD and which allows us to identify people by country of residence, place of birth, gender and level of education. The evidence summarized in this paper shows that female migration to OECD countries has been increasing significantly in recent decades, so that migrant stocks are now more or less gender-balanced. A more surprising result is that this is also true for the highly skilled. Taking into account the fact that women still face an unequal access to tertiary education in many less developed countries, it appears that women are over-represented in the brain drain. This result is reinforced by econometric estimates showing that emigration of highly skilled women is higher, the poorer is their country of origin. This effect is also observed for men but to a lesser extent. It is not observed, however, at lower educational levels, where the traditional migration hump is identifiable. Econometric estimates also report a negative impact of emigration of highly skilled women on three key education and health indicators: infant mortality, under-5 mortality and secondary school enrolment rate by gender. These results raise concerns about a potentially significant negative impact of the female brain drain on the poorest countries.

In theory, improvements in healthy life expectancy should generate increases in the average age of retirement, with little effect on savings rates. In many countries, however, retirement incentives in social security programs prevent retirement ages from keeping pace with changes in life expectancy, leading to an increased need for life-cycle savings. Analyzing a cross-country panel of macroeconomic data, we find that increased longevity raises aggregate savings rates in countries with universal pension coverage and retirement incentives, though the effect disappears in countries with pay-as-you-go systems and high replacement rates.

Obesity has become a major health issue. Research in economics has provided important insights as to how technological progress reduced the relative price of food and contributed to the increase in obesity. However, the increased availability of food might well have overstrained will power and led to suboptimal consumption decisions relative to people’s own standards. We propose the economics of happiness as an approach to study the phenomenon. Based on proxy measures for experienced utility, it is possible to directly address whether certain observed behavior is suboptimal and therefore reduces a person’s well-being. It is found that obesity decreases the well-being of individuals who report limited self-control, but not otherwise.

The demographic transition creates a window of opportunity during which economies may benefit from a temporary increase in the working age share of the population. While many economies have already enjoyed these benefits, they remain a promising opportunity for much of Sub-Saharan Africa. We show in this paper that Sub-Saharan Africa adheres to the same principles as the rest of the world with respect to the determinants of economic growth, including particularly the effects of demographic change. Assuming a policy and institutional context that is conducive to economic growth, most Sub-Saharan countries have the potential to reap a sizable demographic dividend.

This fourth annual review from the European Working Conditions Observatory puts the spotlight on four key dimensions of working conditions and quality of work and employment: career and employment, health and well-being at work, skills development and work–life balance. The report outlines relevant legislative and policy developments, and examines trends in the workplace.

Data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2007 KIDS COUNT Data Book are now available in our easy-to-use, powerful online database, "State Level Data Online", that allows you to generate custom graphs, maps, ranked lists, and state-by-state profiles; or, download the entire data set as delimited text files. The pull-down menus to the left also allow you to read the book online or view the book in PDF format.

Jordan’s case illustrates one of several areas where the formulation of better federal child and family service funding policy for First Nations children and young people, could go a long way toward improving the lives of First Nation children on reserve.

This brief discusses the signs and symptoms of alcohol and drug use and provides recommendations to assess substance use among youth in your program. It is not uncommon for adolescents to experiment with different substances such as alcohol or cigarettes, but this can lead to heavy and continued use, which is dangerous and may put their health at risk. Additionally, individuals who drink and smoke are more likely to participate in other risky behaviors, including using other drugs or driving after drinking. Adolescents may turn to substance use when they are under stress at home or at school, or when their friends are smoking or drinking.

Periodically not having enough to eat, having a diet that is inadequate, and worrying about being able to afford the amount and type of food that a household needs are all markers of food insecurity. Food insecurity persists across many households with young children and may have negative consequences for the health and well-being of infants and toddlers, who are at an especially vulnerable period in life. Overweight, paradoxically perhaps, is one of the negative consequences that may result when very young children experience food insecurity, though research findings have been inconsistent and inconclusive. This Research Brief draws on recently released data from the 9-month and 24-month waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) to present a portrait of food insecurity among households with very young children in the United States. The brief also examines the indirect links through which food insecurity may affect overweight for infants and toddlers.

The Scottish Household Survey ( SHS) is a continuous sample survey of the population in private residences in Scotland. The survey, started in 1999, is financed by the Scottish Executive. From 1999 to 2006, it was undertaken by a partnership of TNS System Three and Ipsos- MORI Scotland. From 2007 the partnership included the Scottish Centre for Social Research. The aim of the survey is to provide representative information about the composition, characteristics and behaviour of Scottish households, nationally and at Local Authority level. There are no geographical exclusions from the survey; it covers all parts of Scotland, including the Highlands and Islands.

The National Conference of State Legislatures was founded in 1975 with the conviction that legislative service is one of democracy's worthiest pursuits. NCSL is a bipartisan organization that serves the legislators and staffs of the nation's 50 states, its commonwealths and territories.

American workers are experiencing a long-term decline in the quality and quantity of retirement income security despite the enactment of dozens of tax laws supporting private pensions, hundreds of tax rules, and billions in lost tax revenue for over 40 years. Why is pension security eroding, and why is retirement income policy ineffective? I argue that the system of tax laws and institutions governing private pensions both directs political change as well as responses to such change in a way that is shifting risk onto workers. This paper grounds its review in the structure of pension law as found in the tax code. I first review general trends regarding retirement and retirement plans as well as the general pattern of tax legislation affecting pensions. In particular, I note the rise of the 401(k) plan, which has become the major type of private pension program in the United States. The combination of a diffuse set of tax laws governing pensions and the fragmented nature of key stakeholders creates an game-like environment in which each group and subgroup compete for changes in tax legislation at the expense of others. The paper concludes with an attempt to bridge fiscal sociology with the sociology of risk in the context of retirement policy.

The Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 (P.L. 106-169) and the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA, P.L. 109-171) have provided unique opportunities for states to extend Medicaid coverage for youth who have aged out of foster care. This report is intended to provide state child welfare and Medicaid officials and state legislatures with data on how these legislative changes are being and can be used to cover youth that continue to need support after leaving state custody. APHSA, in conjunction with the National Association of State Medicaid Directors (NASMD), and the National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators (NAPCWA), surveyed states on several key areas to develop this report. This report covers the following:
- Current Medicaid programs that are being used to cover foster youth who have aged out of the system.
- Cost estimates associated with providing this coverage.
- How the newly enacted DRA can be used to create a program to cover these youth.

We offer a rationale for the decision to extend the franchise to women within a politicoeconomic model where men are richer than women, women display a higher preference for public goods, and women’s disenfranchisement carries a societal cost.

Changes in cohort adult height over time in Sub-Saharan Africa are related to changes childhood health and nutrition, though variation across countries appears to be determined mainly by unexplained fixed factors.

The secondary national strategy's pilot programme, Developing Social, Emotional and Behavioural Skills, was introduced to 54 schools in five local authorities in the summer term of 2005 and to a sixth authority one term later. Ofsted evaluated the pilot programme over five terms in 11 schools. This document gives the results of the research.

Michelle Kitchman Strollo, Dr.P.H., principal policy analyst, Kaiser Family Foundation, presents an overview of the Medicare Advantage program in this narrated slide tutorial. The tutorial reviews the basics of Medicare Advantage and the different types of Medicare Advantage plans available. Trends in Medicare Advantage plan participation and enrollment as well as characteristics of Medicare Advantage enrollees are presented. Key policy issues such as the payment system, plan benefits and the impact of Medicare Advantage plans on the traditional Medicare program are also discussed.

Drawing on a variety of national and international sources, the project seeks to document how children are faring in each country and across North America; develop a baseline against which to measure and monitor their well-being over time; and build capacity in and across the three nations to continue the important work of measuring and monitoring the well-being of children.

The Mockingbird Family Model (MFM) has been developed and implemented as an innovative design to overcome several shortcomings of the current foster care system. These include multiple and ill-planned disruptions in placements, siblings not being placed together, and the lack of support for foster parents/caregivers who are often caring for children with challenging behavioral and emotional disorders. The MFM was developed by the Mockingbird Society Executive Director to address the needs of foster children for improved outcomes and increased placement stability. The MFM has offered caregiver support, connections for youth to their siblings and to the culture they identify with, and continuity for youth to remain in a Constellation in a familiar community.

This publication presents analysis on the labour market, education and training. Results are presented for Scotland, Local Authority Areas, Deprived Areas and Urban/Rural Areas

The role of health in economic development is analyzed via two channels: the direct labor productivity e¤ect and the indirect incentive e¤ect. The labor productivity hypothesis asserts that individuals who are healthier have higher returns to labor input. This is well tested in the empirical literature with mixed conclusions. The incentive e¤ect is borne of the theoretical literature, and individuals who are healthier and have a greater life expectancy will have the incentive to invest in education as the time horizon over which returns can be earned is extended. Education is the driver of economic growth, and thus health plays an indirect role. Accounting for the simultaneous determination of the key variables –growth, education, fertility –the results show that the indirect e¤ect of health is positive and signi…cant. Without recognition of the indirect role of health the economic benefits of health improvements are underestimated.

Low-income families in Alaska, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont received more than $4,000 in work supports per person in 2005, more than double what their counterparts in Idaho, Nevada, and Utah received, an Urban Institute analysis of data for 44 states reveals. Nationally, federal and state governments spent $3,264 per person on the core work-support programs, which help nonworking parents get jobs and stay employed: Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Food Stamps, child-care subsidies, and the federal and state earned income tax credits (EITC). Medicaid, SCHIP, and food stamps are available to low-income families regardless of work status; child-care subsidies and the EITC specifically help working families.

In this short essay, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: I've got nothing to hide. According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.

America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2007 is one in a series of annual reports to the Nation on the condition of children in America. In this restructured report, three background measures describe the changing population of children and provide demographic context and 38 indicators depict the well-being of children in the areas of family and social environment, economic circumstances, health care, physical environment and safety, behavior, education, and health. . . . In 2006, there were 73.7 million children ages 0–17 in the United States, or 25 percent of the population, down from a peak of 36 percent at the end of the “baby boom” (1964). Children are projected to compose 24 percent of the population in 2020.

In 2008, the world reaches an invisible but momentous milestone: For the first time in history, more than half its human population, 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost 5 billion. Many of the new urbanites will be poor. Their future, the future of cities in developing countries, the future of humanity itself, all depend very much on decisions made now in preparation for this growth. While the world’s urban population grew very rapidly (from 220 million to 2.8 billion) over the 20th century, the next few decades will see an unprecedented scale
of urban growth in the developing world. This will be particularly notable in Africa and Asia where the urban population will double between 2000 and 2030: That is, the accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be duplicated in a single generation. By 2030, the towns and cities of the developing world will make up 80 per cent of urban humanity.

These statistics provide updated outcome data for 16 and 17 year olds in education or work-based learning for 2005 and fixed term exclusions for 2005-06 for secondary schools only.

Unregulated Work in the Global City was motivated by a simple premise: the many laws on the books to protect the working poor mean little if they are not enforced. Over three years of intensive research, the Brennan Center documented a city where jobs pay less than the minimum wage, and sometimes nothing at all; where employers do not pay overtime for 60-hour weeks, and deny meal breaks that are required by law; where vital health and safety regulations are routinely ignored, even after injuries occur; and where workers are subject to blatant discrimination, and retaliated against for speaking up or trying to organize. Our research suggests that unregulated work is not confined to isolated, short-lived cases of exploitation at the fringe of the city’s economy. Instead, the report finds that the systematic violation of federal, state and local law is threatening to become a way of doing business in major low-wage industries. It identifies the types of laws that employers are violating, the business strategies that result in violations, the workers who are most affected, and the policy changes that are needed to renew the promise of workplace protections. The report focuses on New York City, but we are convinced that the conditions it describes exist throughout the American economy.

The number of hungry people in the 70 lower income countries covered in this report rose between 2005 and 2006, from 804 million to 849 million. However, the food distribution gap—an indicator of food access—declined, which means that, although more people are vulnerable to food insecurity, the intensity was less in 2006 than in 2005. By 2016, the number of hungry people is projected to decline in all regions, except Sub-Saharan Africa. The average nutrition gap, the indicator of food availability, was 13.5 million tons (grain equivalent) in 2006 and is expected to increase to 14 million tons by 2016. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 85 percent of this gap, the low-income countries of Asia for only 14 percent, and the low-income countries of Latin America and the Caribbean for the remaining 1 percent. The average nutrition gap was much smaller than the distribution gap, which takes into account unequal purchasing power within countries. The distribution gap was an estimated 27 million tons in 2006 for all 70 countries, decreasing to close to 26 million tons by 2016.

Historically, domestic violence, sexual assaults, and stalking incidents have often been ignored by society and treated as private family matters. However, in 1984, Congress passed and the President signed the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA) to, among other things, help prevent domestic violence and provide shelter and related assistance for victims.1 Grants funded under the act are administered by the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Administration for Children and Families and are available to states, Indian tribal governments and organizations, state domestic violence coalitions, and public and private nonprofit entities. In response to continued concerns about domestic violence as well as sexual assault and stalking incidents, Congress passed and the President signed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994.2 VAWA created new federal criminal laws and established additional grant programs within HHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ) for state, local, and Indian tribal governments and nonprofit organizations. These grant programs have various purposes, such as providing funding for direct services including emergency shelter, counseling, and legal services for victims of domestic violence, sexual assaults, and stalking across all segments of the population.

Research on poverty dynamics in the UK has taken root since the 1990s. This study aimed to gather and reflect on existing poverty dynamics literature in order to:
- examine the different forms of poverty, how different social groups experience it, and how people enter and leave poverty;
- understand the implications for policy aimed at tackling poverty and disadvantage; and
- highlight priorities for further research.
The researchers conclude that the concept of ‘the poor’ given by point-in-time studies is misleading: poverty dynamics finds a broad population with diverse experiences of poverty, reveals who moves in and out of poverty and why, and sheds light on how life chances are stacked against certain individuals and families. However, there appears to be no clear understanding of poverty dynamics in current UK social policy. Progress to eradicate poverty has been held back by a failure to target persistent poverty and to safeguard against re-entry to poverty.

- SAMHSA's Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) provides information on significant primary sources of payment for substance abuse treatment admissions reported voluntarily by States that complete the TEDS Supplementary Data Set. This short report is based on data reported by the 27 States or jurisdictions with a response rate of 75% or higher on this data element in 2005.
- In SAMHSA's 2005 Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) there were almost 614,300 substance abuse treatment facilities with known primary source of payment in the States with sufficient data for analysis. Nearly 81,100 of these substance abuse treatment admissions (13%) reported Medicaid as their primary expected or actual source of payment. Other payment sources included: other government sources (35%), self pay (23%), Blue Cross/Blue Shield (2%), other health insurance companies (4%), Medicare (1%), worker's compensation (<1%), or other unspecified sources (10%). About 12% were no charge substance abuse treatment admissions (free, charity, special research/teaching).
- Compared to substance abuse treatment admissions paid for by non Medicaid sources, higher proportions of Medicaid-paid admissions in 2005 were young, female, Black, or "not in the labor force."
- Medicaid-paid substance abuse treatment admissions were more likely to report marijuana as their primary substance of abuse (26% vs. 17%) and less likely to report alcohol as their primary substance of abuse (28% vs. 42%).

It is important to find out why so many young people leave school with no or very few qualifications. Low achievement at age 16 is associated with disadvantage and also a variety of outcomes by gender and ethnic group. Existing policies and practices within the educational system do not always help.

What are the problems?
- As the population ages, demand for long-term care is growing. By 2050 there will be twice as many people aged over 85 and overall costs will increase fourfold.
- Current spending is too low to provide adequate levels of services.
- Without changes, older people increasingly will have to pay more from their own pockets.
- The present system of paying for care is riddled with inconsistencies in the rules determining who pays what.
- Although the system is designed to ensure support for the worst off, older people with few assets and on low incomes often have no choice over their care or are deprived of their dignity.

In this paper we test for the theory of deterrence. We exploit the natural experiment provided by the Collective Clemency Bill passed by the Italian Parliament in July 2006. As a consequence of the provisions of the bill, expected punishment to former inmates recommitting a crime can be considered as good as randomly assigned. Based on a unique data set on post-release behaviour of former inmates, we find that an additional month in expected sentence reduces the propensity to recommit a crime by 1.24 percent: this corroborates the general deterrence hypothesis. However, this effect depends on the time previously served in prison: the behavioural response to an additional month of expected sentence decreases with the length of the prison spell. This second result can be hardly reconciled with the specific deterrence hypothesis according to which a stronger past experience of punishment should increase the sensitivity to future expected sanctions.

This report presents the results of a literature review on predictive factors for drug use among young people. Both policy makers and practitioners are aware of the importance of risk factors but the evidence requires careful evaluation. The last substantive review by a British researcher highlighted the complex nature of the evidence (Lloyd, 1998 [4.361]) but concluded that there was evidence of a number of high-risk groups. These groups include the homeless, those looked after by local authorities, prostitutes, truants, those excluded from school, young offenders, children from families with substance abusing parents or siblings, and young people with conduct or depressive disorder. The review does not quantify the level of risk associated with being a member of these groups. Lloyd’s review cites very few studies that do not support the hypothesised links between risk factors and problem drug use.

While a large literature exists on the siting of controversial facilities, few theories about spatial location have been tested on large samples. Using a new dataset from Japan, this paper demonstrates that state agencies choose localities judged weakest in local civil society as host communities for controversial projects. In some cases, powerful politicians deliberately seek to have facilities such as nuclear power plants, dams, and airports placed in their home constituency. This paper then explores new territory: how demographic, political, and civil society factors impact the outcomes of siting attempts. It finds that the strength of local civil society impacts the probability that a proposed project will come to fruition; the greater the concentration of local civil society, the less likely state-planned projects will be completed.

4researchers is a project funded by the National Institute of Mental Health that disseminates practical "how-to" information about conducting research. We seek to provide a rich and easily accessible resource for early, mid-level, and senior researchers who are confronted with the inevitable challenges of conducting research in the real world. Contributors include well-respected experts in a variety of fields who share valuable advice and knowledge on topics such as research design, participant issues, collaboration, study management, dissemination, and career advancement.

This statistical first release is an annual publication that shows the first destinations of higher education students six months after graduation. It gives the numbers in employment, further training and unemployed. It also includes data on the average salary of those graduates who entered employment.

- Most of the substance abuse treatment admissions in 2005 reported to SAMHSA's Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) were either first-time admissions (46%) or had between one and four previous treatment episodes (44%). The remaining 10% had five or more previous treatment episodes.
- Substance abuse treatment admissions reporting 5 or more prior treatment episodes were more likely than first time admissions to report opiates as their primary substance of abuse (37% vs. 11%). First time substance abuse treatment admissions were more likely to report marijuana (22% vs. 5%) or stimulants (12% vs. 4%) than admissions with 5 or more prior substance abuse treatment episodes.
- Admissions with 5 or more prior treatment episodes were more likely than first time admissions to have been homeless (24% vs. 8%).

Volunteering in America: 2007 City Trends and Rankings uses volunteer data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2004-2006. It ranks and includes profiles for 50 of the largest cities including the volunteer rate; the types of organizations through which residents serve; their main volunteering activities, the average hours per year and volunteer rates for age and gender demographic groups, and key trends and highlights. The report also analyzes social and demographic trends affect city volunteer rates and finds that there are four key drivers of volunteering: community attachment; commuting times, high school graduation levels and poverty; and the prevalence of nonprofits and their capacity to retain volunteers from year to year. The information on volunteering at the local level can help local governments, community leaders, service organizations, and volunteers nationwide develop a volunteer growth strategy, set goals to increase the level of individual engagement in volunteer activities, and build the infrastructure of nonprofits and communities to support more volunteer opportunities.

This report presents the findings of a qualitative study on the experiences of Disability and Carers Service (DCS) customers, namely claimants of Attendance Allowance, Carer's Allowance and Disability Living Allowance. The report examines views on the sources of awareness of disability benefits, the different stages and experiences of the application and disputes process, along with an evaluation of customer perceptions of DCS staff and services.

Drawing on interviews in three contrasting areas characterised by social and economic disadvantage, the authors:
- find that governing bodies often lack the capacity to be effective and face confusion about the real purpose of their work;
- suggest that successive waves of school reform have taken place without real consideration of the implications for governance;
- propose options for the reform of governance; and
- argue that a national debate on this issue is needed, linked to questions about the nature of democracy in disadvantaged areas.

from the Kaiser Family Foundation

The rise in per-capita labor over the last 30 years is difficult to explain in a standard macroeconomic model because rising wages of women should have lead to a large rise in husband’s leisure. This paper argues that home production and bargaining are both essential for understanding these trends, and develops an equilibrium model of marriage and bargaining. Calibration to US data suggests that the bargaining position of husbands has deteriorated with the closing of the gender gap in wages, that the decline of home-equipment prices plays a role in the rise in per-capita hours, and that the labor trends are consistent with stationarity along a balanced-growth path.

Worsening faculty shortages in academic health centers are threatening the nation’s health professions educational infrastructure, according to chief executives of academic health centers nationwide. Academic health centers train a major portion of the nation’s health workforce in professions including allied health, dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and veterinary medicine. A crisis looms: without enough faculty members to teach the next generation of health professionals, the nation’s health infrastructure is in jeopardy.

It is now beyond doubt that widespread discrimination adds to the disability of people with mental illness. The basic problem is this: many people with mental illness are subjected to systematic disadvantages in most areas of their lives. These forms of social exclusion occur at home, at work, in personal life, in social activities, in healthcare, and in the media. This hard-hitting Mental Health Foundation policy paper both analyses these forms of social exclusion and sets a clear agenda for what policy makers need to do to tackle head-on such discrimination and social inequality. The focus here is upon policy change, based upon a thorough review of all the relevant evidence, and perhaps more importantly, from listening to the voices and views of people with mental illnesses who describe their experiences in their own words.

These statistics look at attitudes to mental illness in England. The current 2007 survey follows four years after the previous survey. The surveys act as a tracking mechanism and the most recent results are compared with those from previous years.

Current integrative medicine practices in hospital settings involve some form of partnership between complementary and alternative medicine and biomedicine. This five-year study adopted a longitudinal methodology to track the establishment of a single hospital-based Integrative Medicine Center. Using extensive qualitative interview data, the project staff conducted a stakeholder analysis of all participants involved in the establishment and continuation of the Integrative Medicine Center and collected data from hospital documents, patient files, patient questionnaires and provider questionnaires. Although some factors clearly worked in favor of the center, the hospital had few models to guide it and no experience in creating such a clinic. Thus, it made many decisions in the areas of administration, finance, and legal issues that created barriers to the center’s success, and the center was ultimately closed.

College Access for the Working Poor: Overcoming Burdens to Succeed in Higher Education, a major report by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, examines the precarious position of working poor students in our society. At the prospect of attending postsecondary education, these students realize it requires navigating through a minefield of conflicting work and family demands. The report points out the unique barriers working poor students experience and calls attention to the need for policies and practices to raise expectations, enrollment, and completion rates of the working poor.

From its inception in 1935, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) held out the promise that Americans may enjoy democratic rights in the workplace similar to those we count on as citizens. When the bill was passed, the U.S. Senate explained that its purpose was to guarantee rights to “a worker in the field of industry” similar to those provided to “a citizen in the field of government.” . . . . In new research, University of Oregon professor Gordon Lafer, Ph.D., lays bare the realities of how workers’ rights to democratic process and freedom of association have been effectively eliminated under the NLRB system, exposing the myriad ways in which workers are denied the most basic tenets of democracy. This research illustrates just how far NLRB elections fall short of the standards that we rely on in elections to Congress and other public offices. Finally, this report addresses head-on the claim that the NLRB election process guarantees workers a truly secret ballot — the central claim of anti-union advocates who seek to keep the current NLRB system in place. Lafer’s work shows instead that NLRB elections fail to safeguard workers’ right to keep their opinions private; and that, on the contrary, the NLRB system results in workers being forced to reveal their political preferences long before they step into the voting booth — thus turning the “secret ballot” into a mockery of democratic process.

- Hallucinogens include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), phencyclidine (PCP), Ecstasy (MDMA), peyote, mescaline, and psilocybin (mushrooms).
- Combined data from SAMHSA's 2004 and 2005 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health indicate that an annual average of 943,000 persons aged 12 or older were recent initiates of hallucinogens (i.e., they had used hallucinogens for the first time in the 12 months before the survey).
- Of these recent hallucinogen initiates, 52.3% had used psilocybin mushrooms and 42.9% used Ecstasy in the past year.
Recent female hallucinogen initiates were more likely than recent male hallucinogen initiates to have used Ecstasy (49.5% vs. 37.7%).
- In contrast, recent male hallucinogen initiates were more likely than recent female hallucinogen initiates to have used psilocybin mushrooms (61.1% vs. 41.1%).

Since March 1993, the Department of Health has placed a set of questions on TNS’ Face-to-Face Consumer Omnibus. From 1993 to 1997 the questions were asked on an annual basis, thereafter they have been asked every third year up until 2003. The current 2007 survey follows four years after the previous survey. These surveys serve as a tracking mechanism, and in this report, the most recent results are compared with those from previous years.

The State Snapshots provide State-specific health care quality information including strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. The goal is to help State officials and their public- and private-sector partners better understand health care quality and disparities in their State. The State Selection Map allows users to choose a State, explore, and compare the quality of a State's health care against national or best performing States. State-level information to create the State Snapshots is based on data collected for the National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR).

The research highlighted that the key barriers to healthy eating were:
- financial situation - the results of the research clearly showed that the financial situation of those interviewed impacted on their diet
- education - although all of the participants indicated that they could cook and had access to food preparation and storage facilities, it was evident from the results of the FFQ and from conversations with those working with hostel residents, that even though many perceived themselves to have good cooking skills, this may not actually be the case
- lack of appetite - reasons for this were given as depression, stress, alcohol and medication
- other issues - including image (particularly among young girls), peer pressure, and the view that food is not always seen as a priority

Only about half of people with co-occurring disorders (COD) receive any services within substance abuse and mental health (SA/MH) settings. Settings outside the SA/MH system, or settings where service missions do not include a primary focus on COD, are the focus of this overview paper. Primary health, public safety and criminal justice, and social settings, where persons with COD are likely to be seen, are highlighted. These settings should be prepared to identify and effectively respond to persons with COD. The use of specialized techniques appropriate to these settings can increase the likelihood that the person with COD will access treatment.

Use of early care and education (ECE) is a reality for many families with young children. Research shows the importance of the early years for children’s development, and suggests that high-quality ECE can be particularly important for children from low-income families. In addition, the U.S. invests billions to support ECE. This paper assesses the patterns of ECE utilization by low-income families, the implications for children's development of the extent and quality of ECE participation, the evidence on the quality of ECE that low-income children receive, and the policy context that shapes ECE. It concludes by laying out key policy considerations.

- Crime is not necessarily a large urban phenomenon. Looking at 2005 police-reported data, small urban areas were
to have higher overall crime rates than large urban areas. The lowest overall crime rates were found in rural areas.
- These findings applied to all the provinces and territories except for Quebec and Alberta. In Quebec, the overall
rate was highest in the large urban areas; in Alberta, the overall crime rate was lowest in large urban areas.
- In addition to having the highest overall crime rate, small urban areas reported the highest rates for total violent
total property crime and breaking and entering. However, these areas reported the lowest homicide rates.

This paper examines the results of single-equation regression models of the determinants of alcohol consumption patterns among college students modelling a rich variety of covariates including gender, family and peer drinking, tenure, personality, risk perception, time preferences and age of drinking onset. The results demonstrate very weak income effects and very strong effects of personality, peer drinking (in particular closest friend), time preferences and other substance use. The task of future research is to verify these results and assess causality using more detailed methods.

The advantages of employing evidence-based practices (EBPs) are now widely acknowledged across the medical, substance abuse (SA), and mental health (MH) fields. This overview paper disucsses EBPs and their role in the treatment of co-occurring disorders.

A report on the findings from the survey on homelessness, issued by Communities and Local Goverment during January 2007. The survey was a follow up to a similar survey carried out during September 2005, and therefore is able to provide some useful comparative information showing the changing nature of local authority homelessness services.

Youth see far more alcohol product advertising on television than they do alcohol industry-sponsored “responsibility” messages. Youth exposure to both alcohol product and “responsibility” messages increased from 2001 to 2005, but the huge gap between the amount of product and the amount of "responsibility” advertising seen by youth persisted. . . . A well-funded national media campaign could counterbalance the wealth of messages encouraging alcohol use to which youth are exposed. Ongoing, independent monitoring of youth exposure to messages about alcohol will provide parents, teachers and policymakers with an accurate picture of the message environment in which youth make decisions about alcohol use.

Population changes could put gains in education attainment at risk. More than half of the population growth in America over the next 20 years will be in the 16 SREB states. The most dramatic increase will be in the Hispanic population. By 2018, Hispanic students are expected to account for 28 percent of the region’s public high school graduates, up from 13 percent in 2004. White students, who represented 61 percent in 2004, will account for 45 percent. The SREB region faces the possibility of a historically unprecedented stagnation of progress in educating the population. If the education levels of black, Hispanic and low-income youth and young adults are not improved, by 2020 the region will have a higher percentage of working-age adults who have not graduated from high school; a lower percentage with a high school diploma or GED credential, some college or an associate’s degree; and no increase in the percentage with a bachelor’s or higher degree — reversing the region’s longstanding trend of progress. All of this will happen at the same time that the fastest-growing jobs will require postsecondary training or college degrees.

Fit FactsTM are concise, one-page information sheets – more than 100 in all – each covering a different health or fitness topic. Each sheet contains valuable how-to information – from advice on the best type of exercise for weight loss to pointers on choosing a personal trainer. Fit Facts are perfect for posting in your gym or on your club bulletin board; many professionals have found them a popular item for handing out to clients.

Presents data on prison and jail inmates collected from National Prisoner Statistics counts and the Annual Survey of Jails, 2006. This annual report provides the number of inmates and the overall incarceration rate per 100,000 residents for each State and the Federal system. It offers trends since 2000 and percentage changes in prison populations since midyear and yearend 2005. The midyear report presents the number of prison inmates held in private facilities, the number of prisoners under 18 years of age held by State correctional authorities, and the number of noncitizen prisoners. It includes total numbers for prison and jail inmates by gender, race, and Hispanic origin as well as counts of jail inmates by conviction status and confinement status. The report also provides findings on rated capacity of local jails, percent of capacity occupied, and capacity added.

This study uses a cross-section national sample of four-year colleges and universities in the United States to examine the variation of part-time faculty employment. Results of this study suggest that higher educational institutions actively design and adopt contingent work arrangements to save on labor costs and to manage their resource dependence with constituencies. Institutions that pay high salaries to their full-time faculty members, have limited resource slack, and are located in major urban areas tend to employ a high proportion of part-time faculty. Furthermore, institutions that have small student enrollment and large proportion of part-time students are found to rely more heavily on part-time faculty employment. Private institutions, on average, have higher levels of part-time faculty than their public counterparts; however, this result does not hold for doctoral and research institutions. Finally, institutions that rely more on tuition and fees revenue tend to employ more part-time faculty. Such a relationship is significantly moderated by institutional quality, suggesting that different institutions may adopt different strategies to attract students and secure their tuition revenues.

HIV testing is integral to HIV prevention, treatment, and care efforts. Knowledge of one’s HIV status is important for preventing
the spread of disease. Studies show that those who learn they
are HIV positive modify their behavior to reduce the risk of HIV
transmission.1,2 Early knowledge of HIV status is also important for
linking those with HIV to medical care and services that can reduce
morbidity and mortality and improve quality of life.

The Department for Transport (DfT) aims to provide transport which works for everyone. In order to achieve this aim, it is crucial to have a comprehensive picture of the mobility of different social groups and of how transport provision and policy impacts upon their choices. . . . The review explores how transport affects the lives of different social, geographical and community groups. Reflecting the foci in the literature, this report reviews findings for the following groups:
> children and young people,
> adults, with specific attention to:
- people on low income,
- people living in rural areas,
- people from black and minority ethnic groups,
- women, and
- disabled people, and
> older people

Over the past decade, the overwhelming majority of families have experienced rising incomes, greater opportunity and improved wellbeing. However the approaches that have worked for the many have not worked for all. It is necessary to focus on helping the small proportion of families with multiple problems who are still struggling to break the cycle of disadvantage. Recent analysis suggests that around 2% of families – or 140,000 families across Britain – experience complex and multiple problems. When parents experience difficulties in their own lives, the impact can be severe and enduring for both themselves and for their children. The consequences can cast a shadow that spans whole lifetimes and may carry significant costs for public services and the wider community.

In this paper we develop a model to consistently estimate the intertemporal labor supply behavior on the extensive margin (participation decision) and the intensive margin (working hours decision). In this framework we distinguish between voluntary non-participation and involuntary unemployment which is caused by labor market rationing and model the dynamics of labor supply by accounting for true state dependence and unobserved effects. Our approach follows the empirical literature on life cycle employment based on approximate decision rules. However, in contrast to previous studies, this framework allows us to test for true state dependence of voluntary non-participation, involuntary unemployment, full-time work and over-time work. Moreover, we derive consistent estimates of intertemporal labor supply elasticities over time and asses the bias of short- and long-run elasticities derived in a pure choice model of labor supply.

This report builds upon a series of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports on high school dropout and completion rates that began in 1988. It presents estimates of rates for 2005, and provides data about trends in dropout and completion rates over the last three decades (1972-2005), including characteristics of dropouts and completers in these years. Among other findings, the report shows that in students living in low-income families were approximately six times more likely to drop out of high school between 2004 and 2005 than of their peers from high-income families.

This statistical first release provides information on the percentages of 16, 17 and 18 year olds in England (both separate age groups and the whole group combined) in education and training, and those who are not in education, employment or training for 2005 and 2006.

We propose a new system of financing long-term care services in the United States. Our plan expands Medicare to cover comprehensive long-term care services, including home care and custodial nursing home care. Beneficiaries would share in the cost of services through deductibles and copayments, but the program would include stop loss coverage and special protections for low-income adults. By providing long-term care insurance that actually protects the assets of older adults, our proposal would eliminate the disincentive to save inherent in the means-tested Medicaid system. Our plan would also remove the bias in the current system for institutional care, enabling more persons with disabilities to remain at home where most prefer to live. We propose to finance this expansion of Medicare benefits with a surcharge on federal income taxes. Unlike the regressive payroll tax that finances Medicare’s hospitalization coverage, the surcharge we propose would not increase tax burdens for low-income individuals or families. All of the revenue generated by the tax would be dedicated to a special Medicare trust fund that would finance future long-term care services.

This report uses data from the 2003–04 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:2004) to profile part-time undergraduates enrolled in U.S. postsecondary institutions in 2003–04. About 49 percent of undergraduates were enrolled exclusively full time in the 2003–04 academic year, 35 percent were enrolled exclusively part time, and 16 percent had mixed enrollment intensity. Part-time undergraduates, especially exclusively part-time students, were at a distinct disadvantage relative to those who were enrolled full time: they came from minority and low-income family backgrounds; they were not as well-prepared for college as their full-time peers; they were highly concentrated in 2-year colleges and nondegree/certificate programs; and many of them worked full time while enrolled and were not enrolled continuously. Using longitudinal data from the 1996/01 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:96/01), the report also found that part-time enrollment was negatively associated with persistence and degree completion six years after beginning postsecondary education even after controlling for a wide range of factors related to these outcomes. This was the case even for the group of students with characteristics that fit the typical profile of a full-time student (i.e., age 23 or younger, financially dependent on parents, graduated from high school with a regular diploma, and received financial help from parents to pay for postsecondary education). Regardless of whether they resembled full-time students, part-time students (especially exclusively part-time students) lagged behind their full-time peers in terms of their postsecondary outcomes even after controlling for a variety of related factors.

This report builds upon a series of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports on high school dropout and completion rates that began in 1988. It presents estimates of rates for 2005, and provides data about trends in dropout and completion rates over the last three decades (1972-2005), including characteristics of dropouts and completers in these years. Among other findings, the report shows that in students living in low-income families were approximately six times more likely to drop out of high school between 2004 and 2005 than of their peers from high-income families.

2007 UK Health Profiles are organised by region [older 2006 profiles are also available]. . . . The aims of the profiles are:

- To provide a consistent, concise, comparable and balanced overview of the population’s health that informs local needs assessment, policy, planning, performance management, surveillance and practice.
- To be a distillate of the absolutely key, most useful (currently available) indicators (with a reference to new data/indicators and unavailable data/indicators).
- To be primarily of use to joint efforts between local government and the health service to improve health and reduce health inequalities, but ultimately to empower the wider community
- The local authority Health Profiles for England were produced in April 2006. The profiles are available in both web based (pdf) and hard copy reports. The audience includes healthcare and public health professionals and local authority members and officers. The profiles describe the health of the local population and enable comparison local, regionally and nationally as well as over time. It is hoped that they will be used for action planning by local strategic partnerships.

This bulletin summarises information from the abortion notification forms returned to the Chief Medical Officers of England and Wales in respect of abortions carried out in England and Wales in 2006.

Although more homes volunteered to work with the QIOs than CMS expected them to assist intensively, QIOs typically did not target their assistance to the low-performing homes that volunteered. Most QIOs’ primary consideration in selecting homes was their commitment to working with the QIO. CMS did not specify selection criteria for intensive participants but contracted with a QIO that developed guidelines encouraging QIOs to select committed homes and exclude those with many survey deficiencies or QM scores that were too good to improve significantly. Consistent with the guidelines, few QIOs targeted homes with a high level of survey deficiencies, and eight QIOs explicitly excluded these homes. GAO’s analysis of state survey data confirmed that selected homes were less likely than other homes to be low-performing in terms of identified deficiencies. Most state survey and nursing home trade association officials interviewed by GAO believed QIO resources should be targeted to low-performing homes.

Every year, hundreds of children in the United States are victims of international parental kidnapping— a child’s wrongful removal from the United States, or wrongful retention in another country, by a parent or other family member. Parents and other family members left behind may be overwhelmed by feelings of loss, anguish, despair, and anger—as well as confusion and uncertainty about what can be done in response. In December 1999, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention invited a small group of left-behind and searching parents to participate in a planning and development meeting. Each one had experienced first hand the heartbreak of having a child abducted to another country or wrongfully retained abroad. Some of them had recovered their children, while others had not. They willingly shared their knowledge of international parental kidnapping—gained at tremendous personal cost— to help other parents of abducted children understand what can be done.

Taking advantage of a complex minimum wage structure in Honduras, this paper examines how changes in minimum wages over the 1990-2004 period affect unemployment as well as the employment and average wages of workers in different sectors of the economy: medium and large-scale firms v. small firms in the private sector (where minimum wage legislation applies) and civil servants and self-employed workers (where it does not apply). The evidence suggests that minimum wages are effectively enforced only in medium and largescale firms, where a 1% increase in the minimum wage leads to an increase of 0.29% in the average wage and a reduction in employment of -0.46%. We find that increases in the private sector minimum wage are emulated in public sector wages, but there are no disemployment effects there. There is some evidence that a higher minimum wage may increase unemployment. There are no discernable effects of minimum wages on the wages of workers in small-firms or the self-employed. The positive impact of higher minimum wages on average wages is greatest for the primary educated in large private firms; but this group also suffers a very large disemployment effect. We conclude that, even in the sector where minimum wages are enforced and even under our upper bound estimate of the effect on the wages of workers, the welfare – the total earnings – of low-paid workers in the large-firm covered sector falls with higher minimum wages.

Providing health coverage for the entire family can both help to increase coverage of children and assist low-income families in obtaining more affordable health care services. This brief uses data from the 2005 Kaiser Low-Income Coverage and Access Survey to examine health coverage, access and the financial impacts of health care for low-income parents and their families.

There were 18,059 civil partnerships formed in the UK between December 2005 and the end of December 2006. A total of 16,173 took place in England with 1,131 in Scotland, 627 in Wales and 128 in Northern Ireland. Almost 2,000 partnerships were formed in December 2005. On average, 1,600 partnerships were formed each month between January and March 2006, falling to 1,500 between April and September and 800 between October and December. More men than women formed civil partnerships. In 2006, 60 per cent of all civil partners were male compared with 66 per cent in December 2005. In England, 9,913 male and 6,260 female partnerships were formed up to the end of 2006. The corresponding figures were 633 and 498 in Scotland, 318 and 309 in Wales and 71 and 57 in Northern Ireland.

■ The aging of the baby boom generation makes pre-seniors this decade’s fastestgrowing age group, expanding nearly 50 percent in size from 2000 to 2010. Poised to create a “senior tsunami” beginning in 2011, this group will be more highly educated, have more professional women, and exhibit more household diversity than previous generations entering traditional retirement age.
■ Pre-senior populations are growing rapidly everywhere, especially in economically dynamic Sun Belt areas previously known for their youth, such as Las Vegas, Austin, Atlanta, and Dallas. “Exurban” parts of these large metro areas, along with smaller metro areas like Santa Fe, NM and Boise, ID, seem to have attracted mobile boomers who wish to live near both work and natural amenities as they approach retirement age.

This online Directory has been developed to help people find information on all drug treatment and rehabilitation services in Scotland. There is a basic search (above) or you can use the Advanced Search for more options. Treatment and rehabilitation services can also add or update your service details.

The Government is determined to improve the experiences of children in care. Despite efforts to support them, there remains a significant gap between the quality of life of young people in care and those raised in supportive families. Bridging this gap requires urgent, sustained action across central and local government, from practitioners in all aspects of children and young people's lives, and from their carers, friends and family. The Care Matters: Time for Change White Paper sets out the steps the Department will take, together with local delivery partners, to improve outcomes for children and young people in care.

We look at the effect of the 2000 repeal of the earnings test above the normal retirement age (NRA) on retirement expectations of male workers in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Using administrative records on Social Security benefit entitlements linked to the HRS survey data, we can distinguish groups of respondents according to how, before the repeal, the earnings test would have affected their marginal wage rate after the NRA. We use panel data models with fixed and random effects to investigate the effect of the repeal on the subjective probability to work full-time after the NRA as well as after age 62. We find that male workers whose marginal wage rate increased because the earnings test was repealed, had the largest increase in this probability. We find no significant effects of the repeal on the probability to work full-time past age 62. Since the tax introduced by the earnings test was small when accounting for actuarial benefit adjustments, our results suggest that male workers misperceive the complicated rules of the earnings test.

The purpose of this circular is to provide guidance on the administration and conditions attached to the Mental Health Supported Capital Expenditure (Revenue)(MHSCE(R)) for 2007-08.

In the United States, the writing on the Vietnam War involves the highly organized and strategic forgetting of the Vietnamese people. In a highly original work that investigates the production of American cultural memory, Marita Sturken shows that in the United States, the narrative of the Vietnam War foregrounds the painful experience of the Vietnam veterans in such a way that the Vietnamese people are forgotten: “They are conspicuously absent in their roles as collaborators, victims, enemies, or simply the people whose hand and over whom (supposedly) this war was fought” (Sturken 1997, 62). Likewise, US scholars have refused to treat Vietnamese refugees as genuine subjects, with their own history, culture, heritage, and political agendas. Conceptualizing the arrival of Vietnamese refugees primarily as a problem to be solved, most refugee studies have fixated on refugee adjustment, with successful adjustment defined primarily as the achievement of economic self-sufficiency (Espiritu, forthcoming). Scholars have also zealously documented the refugee’s damaged psyche, portraying them as passive and pathetic, “incapacitated by grief and therefore in need of care” (DuBois 1993, 4-5). This hyper-focus on the refugees’ needs and neediness has eclipsed other equally important questions about their complex personhood, their self-identity, their dreams for themselves, their hopes for their children, and their “ground of being.” In short, we know more about how others have constructed Vietnamese, but less about how Vietnamese have created their worlds and made meaning for themselves, including their own understanding of the before and after of the Vietnam War.

This report presents prevalence estimates for self-reported adult drug use and sexual behaviors in the United States. Data are from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) collected from 1999 to 2002. NHANES surveys a stratified multistage probability sample of the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States. Tables included in this report present estimates for use of cocaine, including crack or freebase, or other street drugs, and sexual behavior by selected sociodemographic characteristics among adults 20–59 years of age. Keywords:

This report describes the work of a group of eleven research studies, commissioned in 2003 by the DH Policy Research Programme under its Modernisation of Adult Social Care Research (MASC) initiative. The studies cover a range of issues and topics, but all were charged with a common purpose: to examine what modernisation has involved, the factors helping or hindering its progress and how far it has achieved its objectives. This overview report describes the findings of the individual studies and highlights the common messages emerging from the programme as a whole. Between them, the MASC studies address the some of the main themes of modernisation: improving information and access, promoting independence, ensuring protection and delivering more user-centred services. Some examine specific initiatives, such as Fair Access to Care Services, the Carers’ Strategy, Health Act Flexibilities and Direct Payments. Others explore more general mechanisms like partnership working, assessment, system reform and regulation. All provide valuable insight into how modernisation has affected the lives of service users and their carers.

This paper for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation conceptualizes a framework for a new safety net for low-income working families that is rooted in their most essential needs. It is organized around five key goals:
- enabling parents to meet their family’s needs while working in lower-wage jobs,
- helping families weather gaps in parental employment,
- supporting parents’ job advancement,
- helping parents combine work and child-rearing, and
- improving children’s well-being and development.
The paper describes these families’ circumstances, discusses gaps in current safety-net programs, and explores possible alternative approaches to meeting families’ most pressing needs.

This report presents the findings of the evaluation of the Pension Service Partnership Fund that aimed to examine the implementation, delivery and outcomes of the Fund, and contribute to a better understanding of ‘good practice’ in providing services for older people. The research was conducted by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) and commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Tens of thousands of students in England leave school every year aged 16 with no or very limited qualifications. This research aims to understand the large number of factors associated with low achievement.

The Supporting People programme, created in 2003, provides the means through which Government ensures that some of society’s most vulnerable people receive help and support to live independently, and makes an important contribution to our objective of promoting equality of opportunity and enabling vulnerable people to participate fully in the social and economic life of their communities. It is helping more than a million people each year to attain or maintain independence, through the provision of housing related support services. By helping reduce reoffending, reduce homelessness and rough sleeping and anti-social behaviour amongst many other issues, Supporting People helps the most vulnerable and excluded contribute to wider society. Despite this success, acknowledged both by the stakeholder community in our national consultation and by the Audit Commission in its 20051 report on the programme, there is more to do to improve the delivery of housing related support to service users and new challenges to meet in doing this including the new local government landscape outlined in the White Paper, Strong and Prosperous Communities.

Between the end of World War II and 1973, the percentage of Americans living in poverty fell by half. Since then, however, the overall poverty rate has remained largely unchanged. Why didn’t poverty continue to decline? As the figure below shows, in the 25-year period following the end of World War II, earnings marched steadily upward. By 1973, the real weekly earnings of private sector, nonfarm, nonsupervisory production workers stood at $650, more than 60 percent higher than in 1947. As Frank Levy has observed, it was as if all of America was on an up-escalator, each year higher than the previous. As earnings rose, the poverty rate plummeted — falling from 22 percent in 1960 to 11 percent by 1973.

The 2006 Global Trends report is the fourth edition in the series. It is published ahead of the 2006 Statistical Yearbook, to be issued later in the year, which will provide a more detailed analysis of the 2006 data. It reviews the trends and changes in 2006 in the global populations for which UNHCR has been entrusted with a responsibility by the United Nations General Assembly. These include refugees, returnees and stateless and internally displaced persons (IDPs), collectively referred to in the report as “persons of concern”. Limited to populations for which UNHCR has a mandate, the report thus does not purport to depict a comprehensive picture of global forced displacement. For example, some 4.3 million Palestinian refugees who fall under the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) are not included in the report. Likewise, the conflict generated internally displaced persons covered in the report are limited to those benefiting directly