Mere Mortals
The short-term mortality consequences of income receipt
William Evans & Timothy Moore
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Researchers and retailers have documented that consumption declines before the receipt of income, and then rises afterwards. In this paper, we identify a related phenomenon, where mortality rises immediately after income receipt. We find that mortality increases following the arrival of monthly Social Security payments, regular wage payments for military personnel, the 2001 tax rebates, and Alaska Permanent Fund dividend payments. The increase in short-run mortality is large, and occurs for a large number of causes of death.
---------------------
Charles Jones
NBER Working Paper, May 2011
Abstract:
Some technologies save lives - new vaccines, new surgical techniques, safer highways. Others threaten lives - pollution, nuclear accidents, global warming, the rapid global transmission of disease, and bioengineered viruses. How is growth theory altered when technologies involve life and death instead of just higher consumption? This paper shows that taking life into account has first-order consequences. Under standard preferences, the value of life may rise faster than consumption, leading society to value safety over consumption growth. As a result, the optimal rate of consumption growth may be substantially lower than what is feasible, in some cases falling all the way to zero.
---------------------
Fear and uncertainty in the face of death: The role of life after death in group identification
Zachary Hohman & Michael Hogg
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Terror management theory argues that mortality-induced terror motivates group identification. Uncertainty-identity theory argues that uncertainty about what happens after death motivates group identification. Two experiments were conducted to test the latter reasoning. In Experiment 1 (n = 187), mortality salience was manipulated, and uncertainty about the afterlife was measured to predict national identification. As hypothesized, mortality salience strengthened identification only among those who were uncertain about the afterlife. In Experiment 2 (n = 177), mortality salience was manipulated as before, but belief in an afterlife was also manipulated - participants were primed to believe that there was an afterlife, there was not an afterlife, or the existence of an afterlife was uncertain. As in Experiment 1, mortality salience strengthened identification only among those who were existentially uncertain. These experiments show that uncertainty plays a significant role in reactions to mortality salience, and support uncertainty-identity theory's analysis of the role of self-uncertainty in ideological conviction and group behavior.
---------------------
Childhood Health and Differences in Late-Life Health Outcomes Between England and the United States
James Banks, Zoe Oldfield & James Smith
NBER Working Paper, May 2011
Abstract:
In this paper we examine the link between retrospectively reported measures of childhood health and the prevalence of various major and minor diseases at older ages. Our analysis is based on comparable retrospective questionnaires placed in the Health and Retirement Study and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing - nationally representative surveys of the age 50 plus population in America and England respectively. We show that the origins of poorer adult health among older Americans compared to the English trace right back into the childhood years - the American middle and old-age population report higher rates of specific childhood health conditions than their English counterparts. The transmission into poor health in mid life and older ages of these higher rates of childhood illnesses also appears to be higher in America compared to England. Both factors contribute to higher rates of adult illness in the United States compared to England although even in combination they do not explain the full extent of the country difference in late-life health outcomes.
---------------------
On the meaningfulness of existence: When life salience boosts adherence to worldviews
Wijnand van Tilburg & Eric Igou
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigated when and how life salience boosts adherence to worldviews. It was hypothesized that, similar to thoughts of mortality, thoughts about a meaningful existence increase adherence to worldviews. Study 1a, 1b, and 1c yielded support for the symmetric effects of life and mortality salience on existential thoughts and worldview adherence. Furthermore, study 2 showed that contemplating life's meaningfulness (versus meaninglessness) increased adherence to worldviews. Study 3 showed increased worldview adherence when contemplating life's meaningfulness (versus meaninglessness), and provided additional evidence that the effect on worldview adherence was mediated by the appraisals of life's meaningfulness. Finally, study 4 suggests that both reflecting on life and mortality leads to more worldview adherence under conditions of meaningful life appraisals. The findings are discussed with respect to research in existential psychology.
---------------------
The Effect of Pensions on Longevity: Evidence from Union Army Veterans
Martin Salm
Economic Journal, May 2011, Pages 595-619
Abstract:
This study uses changes in pension laws for Union Army veterans as a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of pensions on longevity, and to examine potential pathways underlying such a relationship. I examine the effects of the pension laws of 1907 and 1912, which granted old-age pensions to Union Army veterans. Veteran pensions reduced age-adjusted mortality by 11.5% for law of 1907 pensions and by 29.6% for law of 1912 pensions. Pensions reduced mortality for both acute and non-acute causes of death but reductions in mortality were strongest for mortality from infectious diseases.
---------------------
Conjugal Bereavement Effects on Health and Mortality at Advanced Ages
Gerard van den Berg, Maarten Lindeboom & France Portrait
Journal of Health Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Spousal bereavement at old ages may lead to dramatic changes in health. This paper investigates whether spousal bereavement has a causal effect on health and on mortality of the surviving spouse. We advance on the literature in two main ways. First, we model survivals of both spouses and the dynamic evolution of health jointly, allowing for potential endogeneity of timing of bereavement and health in explaining mortality of the surviving spouse. Second, we use a flexible non-parametric data dimensionality reduction method to thoroughly characterize health (using 22 health indicators) by a limited number of latent health indicators. This allows us to investigate the causal effect of spousal bereavement on mortality and on all aspects of health simultaneously. Our analyses are based on an ongoing longitudinal survey that follows a random sample of older individuals from 1992. We find strong instantaneous effects of bereavement on mortality and on certain aspects of health. Individuals lose on average 12% of residual life expectancy after conjugal bereavement. Conjugal bereavement affects the share of healthy years in residual lifetime, primarily because healthy years are replaced by years with chronic diseases. The strong direct effects of bereavement suggest that monitoring and/or interventions just after spousal bereavement are important for the length and quality of life of older bereaved individuals.
---------------------
Propagation of Respiratory Aerosols by the Vuvuzela
Ka-Man Lai, Christian Bottomley & Ruth McNerney
PLoS ONE, May 2011, e20086
Abstract:
Vuvuzelas, the plastic blowing horns used by sports fans, recently achieved international recognition during the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament in South Africa. We hypothesised that vuvuzelas might facilitate the generation and dissemination of respiratory aerosols. To investigate the quantity and size of aerosols emitted when the instrument is played, eight healthy volunteers were asked to blow a vuvuzela. For each individual the concentration of particles in expelled air was measured using a six channel laser particle counter and the duration of blowing and velocity of air leaving the vuvuzela were recorded. To allow comparison with other activities undertaken at sports events each individual was also asked to shout and the measurements were repeated while using a paper cone to confine the exhaled air. Triplicate measurements were taken for each individual. The mean peak particle counts were 658×103 per litre for the vuvuzela and 3.7×103 per litre for shouting, representing a mean log10 difference of 2.20 (95% CI: 2.03,2.36; p<0.001). The majority (>97%) of particles captured from either the vuvuzela or shouting were between 0.5 and 5 microns in diameter. Mean peak airflows recorded for the vuvuzela and shouting were 6.1 and 1.8 litres per second respectively. We conclude that plastic blowing horns (vuvuzelas) have the capacity to propel extremely large numbers of aerosols into the atmosphere of a size able to penetrate the lower lung. Some respiratory pathogens are spread via contaminated aerosols emitted by infected persons. Further investigation is required to assess the potential of the vuvuzela to contribute to the transmission of aerosol borne diseases. We recommend, as a precautionary measure, that people with respiratory infections should be advised not to blow their vuvuzela in enclosed spaces and where there is a risk of infecting others.
---------------------
Losing control in front of a fearful face: The effect of emotional information on cognitive control
Jifan Zhou et al.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, June 2011, Pages 1187-1199
Abstract:
How is our cognitive control system modulated by emotional information, especially fearful stimuli? An intuitive hypothesis is that fearful stimuli would enhance cognitive control so that people could switch from the ongoing task to emergent events more quickly to secure themselves. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the influence of emotional information on the shift function of cognitive control by using the task-cueing procedure, in which face images were presented as cues. With the gender of faces indicating which task to do, we manipulated the emotional valence of faces (neutral vs. fearful), finding that the switch costs were larger in the trials containing fearful cues than in the trials containing neutral cues (Experiment 1). This effect was not caused by enlarging task-set interference (Experiment 2), nor by slowing down cue encoding (Experiment 3). Contrary to the intuitive hypothesis, our results suggested that the endogenous task-set reconfiguration process was impaired when fearful faces were presented. We speculated that the benefit of decreasing cognitive flexibility in face of fearful stimuli is to speed up response in a dangerous environment, and this accelerating response is achieved by suppressing the goal-directed system to permit the fast, automatic stimulus-driven system to govern behaviours.
---------------------
Scott Geller
Current Directions in Psychological Science, April 2011, Pages 109-114
Abstract:
The traditional fault-finding enforcement approach toward addressing the human dynamics of injury prevention is contrasted with behavior-based safety, which is based on applied behavior analysis. Behavior-based safety is flourishing worldwide and having measurable success, because it activates interdependent engagement of employees in identifying hazardous conditions and risky behaviors and designing interventions to reduce them, and increase the frequency of safe behaviors. People-based safety, which evolved from behavior-based safety, adds cognition (or self-talk), perception, and person states to behavior-based safety and has been developed for application in health care and industrial settings. With more widespread and long-term adoption of this application of psychological science, more injuries and fatalities from vehicle collisions, medical errors, and monumental disasters like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill will be prevented.
---------------------
Determining the Authenticity of Suicide Notes: Can Training Improve Human Judgment?
Craig Bennell, Natalie Jones & Alyssa Taylor
Criminal Justice and Behavior, July 2011, Pages 669-689
Abstract:
Two studies examined the degree to which training could improve participants' ability to determine the authenticity of suicide notes. In Study 1, informing participants about variables that are known to discriminate between genuine and simulated suicide notes did not improve their decision accuracy beyond chance, nor did this training allow participants to perform as accurately as a statistical prediction rule. In Study 2, the provision of additional training instructions did enhance participants' decision accuracy but not to a level achieved by the statistical prediction rule. However, training that included all instructions simultaneously resulted in a slight performance decrease attributable to the fact that certain instructions proved problematic when applied to the sample of suicide notes upon which decisions were being made. The potential implications of these findings for police decision making and training are discussed.
---------------------
Inequality and infant and childhood mortality in the United States in the twentieth century
Michael Haines
Explorations in Economic History, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper deals with the issue of using infant and childhood mortality as an indicator of inequality. The case is that of the United States in the 20th century. Using microdata from the 1900 and 1910 Integrated Public Use Microsamples (IPUMS), published data from the Birth Registration Area in the 1920s, results from a number of surveys, and the Linked Birth & Infant Death Files from the National Center for Health Statistics for 1991, infant and child mortality can be related to such other variables as occupation of father or mother, education of father or mother, family income, race, ethnicity, and residence. The evidence shows that, although there have been large absolute reductions in the level of infant and child mortality rates and also a reduction in the absolute levels of differences across socioeconomic groups, relative inequality has not diminished over the 20th century.
---------------------
Mass Prophylaxis Dispensing Concerns: Traffic and Public Access to PODs
Prasith Baccam et al.
Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, June 2011, Pages 139-151
Abstract:
The ability to quickly dispense postexposure prophylaxis (PEP) using multiple points of dispensing (PODs) following a bioterrorism event could potentially save a large proportion of those who were exposed, while failure in PEP dispensing could have dire public health consequences. A Monte Carlo simulation was developed to explore the traffic flow and parking around PODs under different arrival rates and how these factors might affect the utilization rate of POD workers. The results demonstrate that the public can reasonably access the PODs under ideal conditions assuming a stationary (uniform) arrival rate. For the 5 nonstationary arrival rates tested, however, the available parking spaces quickly become filled, causing long traffic queues and resulting in total processing times that range from 1 hour to over 6 hours. Basic planning considerations should include the use of physical barriers, signage, and traffic control officers to help direct vehicular and pedestrian access to the PODs. Furthermore, the parking and traffic surrounding PODs creates long queues of people waiting to access the PODs. Thus, POD staff are fully used approximately 90% of the time, which can lead to worker fatigue and burn out.
---------------------
A Review of Adult Mortality Due to 2009 Pandemic (H1N1) Influenza A in California
Janice Louie et al.
PLoS ONE, April 2011, e18221
Background: While children and young adults had the highest attack rates due to 2009 pandemic (H1N1) influenza A (2009 H1N1), studies of hospitalized cases noted high fatality in older adults. We analyzed California public health surveillance data to better characterize the populations at risk for dying due to 2009 H1N1.
Methods and Findings: A case was an adult ≥20 years who died with influenza-like symptoms and laboratory results indicative of 2009 H1N1. Demographic and clinical data were abstracted from medical records using a standardized case report form. From April 3, 2009 - August 10, 2010, 541 fatal cases ≥20 years with 2009 H1N1 were reported. Influenza fatality rates per 100,000 population were highest in persons 50-59 years (3.5; annualized rate = 2.6) and 60-69 years (2.3; annualized rate = 1.7) compared to younger and older age groups (0.4-1.9; annualized rates = 0.3-1.4). Of 486 cases hospitalized prior to death, 441 (91%) required intensive care unit (ICU) admission. ICU admission rates per 100,000 population were highest in adults 50-59 years (8.6). ICU case-fatality ratios among adults ranged from 24-42%, with the highest ratios in persons 70-79 years. A total of 425 (80%) cases had co-morbid conditions associated with severe seasonal influenza. The prevalence of most co-morbid conditions increased with increasing age, but obesity, pregnancy and obstructive sleep apnea decreased with age. Rapid testing was positive in 97 (35%) of 276 tested. Of 482 cases with available data, 384 (80%) received antiviral treatment, including 49 (15%) of 328 within 48 hours of symptom onset.
Conclusions: Adults aged 50-59 years had the highest fatality due to 2009 H1N1; older adults may have been spared due to pre-existing immunity. However, once infected and hospitalized in intensive care, case-fatality ratios were high for all adults, especially in those over 60 years. Vaccination of adults older than 50 years should be encouraged.