Kulkarni, Vani, Veena Kulkarni, Katsushi Imai, and Raghav Gaiha. 2022. "Change in Subjective Well-Being, Affluence and Trust in State Governments in India." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-94.
Preston, Samuel and Yana Vierboom.2022. "How Major Risk Factors Influence Mortality Trends in the National Health Interview Survey." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-93.
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Gonalons-Pons, Pilar 2022. "Paid Family Leave and the Gender Division of Paid and Unpaid Work." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-73.
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Amin, Vikesh, Jere Behrman, Jason Fletcher, Carlos Flores, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, and Hans-Peter Kohler. 2022. "Does Schooling Improve Cognitive Abilities at Older Ages: Causal Evidence from Nonparametric Bounds." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-92.
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Grant, Monica and Hans-Peter Kohler. 2022. "Marriage Change and Fertility Decline in sub-Saharan Africa, 1991-2019." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-91.
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Kulkarni, Vani, Veena Kulkarni, Katsushi Imai, and Raghav Gaiha. 2022. "Change in Subjective Well-Being, Affluence and Trust in Judiciary in India." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-90.
We are excited to share that the National Institute on Aging has funded a brand-new undergraduate research training program, GEAR UP. This joint venture between the Population Aging Research Center (PARC) and the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (Penn LDI) will build on the successful and long-standing Summer Undergraduate Minority Research (SUMR) Program, by providing exciting mentored research experiences to undergraduates for two consecutive summers, supplemented with programming throughout the academic year. The long-term goal of the program is to enhance the diversity of the research workforce in the demography and economics of aging, health, and healthcare. Learn more on the GEAR-UP Program page.
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Batyra, Ewa, and Luca Maria Pesando. 2022. "'Reverse Policies?' Reducing the Legal Minimum Age at Marriage Increases Child Marriage Among the Poorest in Mali." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-89.
Rachel M. Werner (PARC Research Associate) and Mary Ersek (PARC Research Associate) co-authored a National Academy of Sciences Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) report calling for sweeping reorganization of the nursing home industry entitled, "The National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality." The report points out that despite nursing home residents making up less than half of one percent of the U.S. population, as of October 2021, they accounted for approximately 19 percent of all COVID-19 deaths. The report shows “the pandemic also highlighted the pervasive ageism evident in undervaluing the lives of older adults.” Read more in the LDI Research Update.
Linda H. Aiken (PSC/PARC Research Associate) was quoted in NPR Health News about the pressures on nurses and the potential effects of the recent Vaught verdict in which RaDonda Vaught, a nurse, was convicted of two felonies for a fatal medication mistake. "The only way you can really learn about errors in these complicated systems is to have people say, 'Oh, I almost gave the wrong drug because...' Well, nobody is going to say that now."
New Penn Education and Inequality Working Paper: Hannum, Emily, and Fan Wang. 2022. "Fewer, Better Pathways For All? Intersectional Impacts of Rural School Consolidation in China’s Minority Regions." Penn Education and Inequality Working Papers, #10.
New Project led by Michel Guillot (PSC/PARC Research Associate), the Global Age Patterns of Under-Five Mortality (GAPU5M) and funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health (NICHD) aims to improve our understanding of age patterns of under-5 mortality by sharing data they've collected on this topic.
The Under-5 Mortality Database (U5MD) is the largest database to date of high-quality global mortality information by detailed age (by days, weeks, months, and years of age) from birth through age 5, by sex, which provides age-specific death rates and probabilities of dying by age (weeks, months, trimesters, years) for 25 countries with high-quality vital registration data, from 1841 until 2016.
Currently researchers on the project have published four journal articles in Population Health Metrics, PLOS One, Demographic Research, and the latest paper, "Modeling Age Patterns of Under-5 Mortality: Results From a Log-Quadratic Model Applied to High-Quality Vital Registration Data," in Demography.
Jason Karlawish (PARC Research Associates) was featured in the Penn Memory Center News discussing a new NIA funded project that studies the financial symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Money mismanagement such as, missed bill payments, difficulty balancing checkbooks, and large financial decisions made on a whim can be early indicators of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias. They will collaborate with patients, caregivers, government agencies, and the financial industry to test the unique financial symptoms of ADRD for early diagnosis and to protect consumers.
Nancy Hodgson (PARC Research Associate) was recently selected for induction to the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame. Hodgson will be honored by Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) for her contributions to the nursing profession during the organization’s 33rd International Nursing Research Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland, in July.
Congratulations to Adriana Perez (PARC Research Associate) for her promotion to Associate Professor in the Penn School of Nursing, effective July 1, 2022.
Congratulations to Karen Lasater (PARC Research Associate), Assistant Professor of Nursing, for being awarded the "2002 Undergraduate Award for Teaching, Student Nurses at Penn."
Atheendar Venkataramani (PSC/PARC Research Associate) was featured in Penn Today and an LDI Research Update for new work, published in Demography, that examines health and mortality in communities where manufacturing jobs were replaced by robots and automation.
Adriana Perez (PARC Research Associate) was featured in a video by the National Hispanic Council on Aging (NHCOA) discussing the important role women have in developing health and nursing research, as well as, the importance of women and latina representation in the research sector.
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Greenwood, Jeremy, Nezih Guner, and Karen Kopecky. 2022. "Substance Abuse During the Pandemic: Implications for Labor-Force Participation." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-88.
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Kulkarni, Vani, Veena Kulkarni, Katsushi Imai, and Raghav Gaiha. 2022. "Change in Subjective Well-Being, Affluence and Trust in Politicians." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-87. https://repository.upenn.edu/psc_publications/87.
Kevin G. Volpp (PSC/PARC Research Associate) was featured on a recent episode of the Freakonomics MD podcast entitled, "How to Save a Stranger’s Heart," discussing his personal experience with cardiac arrest. The episode dives into the large-scale efforts to get more people certified in CPR, as performing CPR dramatically increases the likelihood of survival.
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Mertehikian, Yasmin, and Pilar Gonalons-Pons. 2022. "Work and Family Disadvantage: Mechanisms of Gender Gaps in Paid Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-86.
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Gonalons-Pons, Pilar, and Ioana Marinescu. 2022. "Care Labor Demand Shocks and Inequality: How Childcare Costs Exacerbate Inequality among American Families." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-85.
Pilar Gonalons-Pons (PSC/PARC Research Associate) was featured in Penn Today discussing the psychological and stress effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I don’t think anybody expected the pandemic itself to last so long, and for mitigation measures that are pretty effective to be so difficult to put into place,” says Pilar Gonalons-Pons.
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Batyra, Ewa, Luca Maria Pesando, Andrés Castro, Frank Furstenberg, and Hans-Peter Kohler. 2022. "Union Formation, Within-Couple Dynamics, and Child Well-Being in Global Comparative Perspective." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-84.
Courtney Boen (PSC/PARC Research Associate) was quoted in The Atlantic about grief and the emotional toll caused by COVID-19 in the U.S. The health disparities heightened by COVID-19 created an unequal burden on communities of color in dealing with ongoing illness and death. Image by Racamani.
Pilar Gonalons-Pons (PSC/PARC Research Associate) was quoted in The Philadelphia Inquirer about the impact of ending the Child Tax Credit on children and families living in poverty.
PSC and PARC Research Associates, Hans-Peter Kohler and Iliana Kohler, were featured in an LDI Research Update and Penn Today about the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families (MLSFH) and the role community leadership and trust in institutions played in shaping behavioral, economic and social responses to Covid-19 in a low-income sub-Saharan African context. Their new research paper entitled, Curtailing COVID-19 on a Dollar-a-Day in Malawi: Role of Community Leadership for Shaping Public Health and Economic Responses to the Pandemic in World Development, explores this topic using data from a phone survey they implemented in 2020.
Nancy A. Hodgson (PARC Research Associate) was featured in a LDI Research Update that discusses recent work in The International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry on social isolation and anxiety in older adults with cognitive impairment.
Linda H. Aiken (PSC/PARC) was featured in an LDI Research Update on the Penn Nursing Transcontinental Implementation Science Project and the challenges posed by COVID-19. The project, Magnet4Europe, is essentially a framework and blueprint for the sweeping internal reorganization of a hospital’s clinical operations, staffing policies, internal communication practices, management philosophies, top-of-license teamwork integration, and problem-solving systems. The overall goal of the evidence-based intervention is to create and maintain a clinical working environment that systematically minimizes clinician stress and burnout, and improves patient care.
Image Caption: The University of Pennsylvania’s Linda Aiken, Co-Director of the Magnet4Europe project, addresses the Consortium’s first meeting of U.S. hospital program directors in Washington, D.C., on March 9, 2020. Within weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic had closed in, greatly complicating the massive research project’s operations.
2022-02-17 Newsletter
Alison M. Buttenheim (PSC Research Associate) and Kevin G. Volpp (PSC/PARC Research Associate) were recently named members of a new National Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine committee that will assess future prospects for the broader use of behavioral economics in public policy.
Emilio A. Parrado (PSC/PARC Research Associate) was featured in Penn Today for his work in fostering the relationship between Penn and the Centro de Cultura Arte Trabajo y Educación. The goal of the collaboration is to enhance a thriving post-secondary success program and create mentoring opportunities.
Research, published in AIDS and Behavior, by Alison M. Buttenheim (PSC Research Associate) and Harsha Thirumurthy (PSC/PARC Research Associate) was featured in a new video describing their project on messaging and uptake of HIV testing among men in sub-Saharan Africa.
2022-02-11 Newsletter
Julia Lynch (PARC Research Associate) was quoted in the LA Times about politics and the public perception of states easing mask mandates.
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Greenwood, Jeremy, Nezih Guner, and Karen Kopecky. 2022. "The Downward Spiral." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-83.
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Kohler, Iliana, Nikkil Sudharsanan, Chiwoza Bandawe, and Hans-Peter Kohler. 2022. "Aging and Hypertension Among the Global Poor—Panel Data Evidence from Malawi." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-82.
Linda H. Aiken (PSC/PARC Research Associate) co-authored an Op-ed in STAT about Medicare as a policy vehicle to address nurse shortages in hospitals.
Molly Candon (PARC Research Associate) wrote an LDI blog post on the increase of insurance coverage in the U.S. for acupuncture to treat a variety of pain conditions. A recent study, published in JAMA Network Open, found that insurance coverage for acupuncturist visits is increasing nationally, which aligns with Medicare’s decision to cover acupuncture for low back pain.
Pilar Gonalons-Pons (PSC/PARC Research Associate) and Abby Alpert (PARC Research Associate) were awarded funding from the Penn LDI Small Grants Program 2022-23. Gonalons-Pons' project, "The Impact of Medicaid Policies on Long-Term Care Workers’ Economic Outcomes," will examine the role of government policy in shaping the economic conditions of this critical workforce by analyzing whether and how Medicaid long-term care policies shape care workers’ economic outcomes and job characteristics, in particular wages, access to benefits, schedule predictability, and union membership. Alpert's project, "The Effects of Prior Authorization on Medicaid Prescription Drug Access," will use a regression-discontinuity design to study the consequences of prior authorization policies on prescription drug access, as well as heterogeneous impacts across geographic areas and socio-demographic characteristics.
New research by Olivia S.Mitchell (PSC/PARC Research Associate) was cited in a new article on PlanSponsor and ASPPA. Read more in the announcement on the Pension Research Council website here.
Abby Alpert (PARC Research Associate) was featured in Penn Today for new research published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics about the origins of the opioid epidemic. Alpert and co-authors examine the role of the 1996 introduction and marketing of OxyContin as a potential leading cause of the opioid crisis by leveraging cross-state variation in exposure to OxyContin's introduction due to a state policy that substantially limited the drug's early entry and marketing in select states.
US Senate’s new bipartisan report on financial literacy, urging seniors and people with disabilities to plan for retirement, cites research by PSC/PARC Research Associate Olivia S. Mitchell. Read the full report here and the announcement here.
2022-01-21 Bulletin
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Hanewald, Katja, Hazel Bateman, Hanming Fang, and Tin Long Ho. 2022. "Long-Term Care Insurance Financing Using Home Equity Release: Evidence from an Online Experimental Survey." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-81.
Peter Groeneveld (PARC Research Associate) publishes new research entitled "Coverage Denials: Government And Private Insurer Policies For Medical Necessity In Medicare" in the Health Affairs which was featured in a Penn LDI Blog about Health Care Access and Coverage.
Courtney Boen (PSC/PARC Research Associate) was featured in Penn Today for new research published in Demographic Research, which finds that for young people of color, contact with the system begins early and is incredibly widespread. Boen also co-authored an Op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer about school closings and policymakers' decisions in light of recent COVID-19 case spikes.
Congratulations to Pilar Gonalons-Pons (PSC/PARC Research Associate) for being nominated for the 2021 Rosabeth Moss Kanter International Award for Research Excellence in Work and Family for her article, "His and Her Earnings Following Parenthood in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom." Alison Dunatchik, a Joint Demography & Sociology PhD Candidate, was also nominated for her research entitled, "Re-examining How Partner Co-presence and Multitasking Affect Parents’ Enjoyment of Childcare and Housework." The award is presented to the author(s) of the best research paper published in a given year. Gonalons-Pons and Dunatchik's work was recognized as two of 15 papers nominated from over 2,500 articles published in 2020, from around the world.
Allison K. Hoffman (PARC Research Associate) shared her expert legal opinion in Penn Today on the recent Supreme Court decision to block OSHA from requiring a vaccine mandate for employers with more than 100 employees. Hoffman was also quoted in NBC News, commenting on the lack of oversight and potential risks for pop-up testing sites.
A recent article in FUNDFire on US Public Pension Funds and their substantial holdings in Fossil Fuel companies quotes PSC/PARC Research Associate Olivia S. Mitchell.
Abby Alpert's (PARC Research Associate) new study titled "Origins of the Opioid Criris and its Enduring Impacts" is cited in a blog post on the Penn LDI website titled "The Origins of the Opioid Epidemic".
New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Ciancio, Alberto, Jere Behrman, Fabrice Kämpfen, Iliana Kohler, Jürgen Maurer, Victor Mwapasa, and Hans-Peter Kohler. 2022. "Barker’s Hypothesis Among the Global Poor: Positive Long-term Cardiovascular Effects of In-utero Famine Exposure." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-80.
Olivia S. Mitchell (PSC/PARC Research Associate) was quoted in a recent article in MarketWatch on whether RMD's matter. Read the full article and announcement.
Norma B. Coe (PSC/PARC Research Associate) and Rachel Werner (PARC Research Associate) authored an LDI blog post entitled, "Family and Friends are the Invisible Workforce in Long-term Care," about their new research published in Health Affairs. These findings help to explain the stories of staffing shortages and burnout in nursing homes under COVID despite no apparent drop in staff hours, when visitor bans were one of the first policy responses to the outbreak. The bans essentially eliminated this invisible workforce, increasing the care demands on the staff, on top of the extra work of the COVID protocols and infections themselves.