Suchergebnisse

The United States is one of the world's wealthiest nations, yet the health of average Americans lags behind that of citizens in other developed countries. The huge amounts we spend on health care are not buying our population good health. The reason is a widening gap between the health of rich and poor Americans.

Social epidemiology is the study of how the social world influences - and in many cases defines - the fundamental determinants of health. This second edition elevates the field again, first by codifying the last decade of research, then by extending it to examine how public policies impact health

This paper examines whether maternity leave policies have an effect on women's mental health in older age. We link data for women aged 50 years and above from countries in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to data on maternity leave legislation from 1960 onwards. We use a difference-in-differences approach that exploits changes over time within countries in the duration and compensation of maternity leave benefits, linked to the year women were giving birth to their first child at age 16 to 25. We compare late-life depressive symptom scores (measured with a 12-item version of the Euro-D scale) of mothers who were in employment in the period around the birth of their first child to depression scores of mothers who were not in employment in the period surrounding the birth of a first child, and therefore did not benefit directly from maternity leave benefits. Our findings suggest that a more generous maternity leave during the birth of a first child is associated with a reduced score of 0.38 points in the Euro-D depressive symptom scale in old age.

Front Matter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Introduction -- Introduction to the Subject -- What We Know: The Tantalizing Potential -- Early Childhood Interventions: Theories of Change, Empirical Findings, and Research Priorities -- Why Exploiting This Knowledge Will Be Essential to Achieving Health Improvements in the 21st Century -- Refocus -- Research to Understand the Mechanisms Through Which Social and Behavioral Factors Influence Health -- Investments in Longitudinal Surveys, Databases, Advanced Statistical Research, and Computation Technology -- Investments in Research and Intervention at the Community Level -- Reactor Panel for Research Funders -- Wrap-up -- Appendix A: Symposium Agenda.

Data were analysed from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) to examine whether the relationship between parental unemployment status and child reading literacy is modified by the level of unemployment protection provided by the nation. The sample consisted of 61,946 children, nested in 3,918 schools among 17 market economies. The results of multi‐level analyses indicated that, after controlling for a range of individual, family and school covariates, children with unemployed fathers in all countries had significantly lower reading literacy scores than those of employed fathers (β = −8.84, SE = 2.01). The contextual effect of unemployment protection was not significant after accounting for fathers' employment status (β = −18.63, SE = 16.26). However, there was a significant negative interaction between unemployment protection and fathers' unemployment, yielding the unexpected suggestion that, in countries with higher levels of unemployment protection, children with unemployed fathers fare worse, both in relation to children with unemployed fathers in lower protection countries, and in comparison with children with employed fathers (β = −26.96, SE = 8.08). Possible explanations are advanced for this result, including the potential for a 'discouraged child effect' arising from the potential association between unemployment protection and higher local unemployment rates (though unemployment rates at the national level were not significant).