Featured series 
Tag: population studies
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Health
Life expectancy stagnating, worsening, for large segment of U.S. population
A new, long-term study of mortality trends in U.S. counties from 1960 to 2000 finds that an overall average life expectancy increase of 6.5 years for men and women is not reaching many parts of the country. Instead, the life expectancy of a significant segment of the population is actually declining or at best stagnating.…
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Campus & Community
The longer you live, the longer you can expect to live
f you were born in the United States and celebrate your 65th birthday this year, you can expect to be around for your 81st birthday if you are male, and for your 84th if you are female. Life expectancy in this country has been rising steeply since 1990, and the National Center for Heath Statistics…
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Campus & Community
Spar takes on boom in baby biz
The field of reproductive technologies has become a fast- growing and profitable economic sector. “Parents choose for different traits, clinics woo clients, and specialized providers earn millions of dollars,” points out Harvard Business School Professor Debora Spar in her book, “The Baby Business: How Money, Science and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception.” Some parents…
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Science & Tech
Racial, ethnic gap in youth violence linked to social factors
A study conducted by Robert J. Sampson of Harvard University and Jeffrey D. Morenoff and Stephen Raudenbush of the University of Michigan shows that the longstanding gap in the racial burden of violence follows a social anatomy and is not immutable. The odds of committing violence are almost double for blacks as compared to whites…
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Science & Tech
Studying Boston’s race trends
Guy Stuart, an associate professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, is the author of a new study, “Boston at the Crossroads: Racial Trends in the Metropolitan Region in the 1990s and Beyond.” “The rest of America looks very different from Boston,” Stuart said. “Whites here are very isolated. When kids go…
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Campus & Community
Project finds Hindus in New Jersey, Buddhists in Montana
An influx of new immigrants that began in 1965 when U.S. immigration laws were liberalized has changed our society in ways that contradict traditional assumptions about the correlation of religion and geography. Mapping this religious diversity is the goal of the Pluralism Project, founded in 1991 by Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion and Indian…
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Science & Tech
New busing controversy flares up
James Hammitt, professor at the School of Public Health, and his colleagues have spent the past three years doing risk analyses of buses with conventional diesel engines and emission-controlled diesel engines versus buses that run on natural gas. To compare, the researchers used a conventional measurement known as the quality-adjusted life-year (QALY). It says essentially…
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Science & Tech
Strong public support for spraying against mosquitoes
The opening study of the Project on Biological Security and the Public found that one-third (33 percent) of Americans who live in areas where there are a lot of mosquitoes think they or a family member is very (9 percent) or somewhat (24 percent) likely to get sick from the virus in the next 12…
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Science & Tech
Race, place, and segregation
Researchers for the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, using U.S. census data from 2000, examined whether three major metropolitan areas — Boston, Chicago and San Diego — continue to be segregated. They found that segregation persists, and has even expanded into new areas. Residents of Chicago’s metropolitan area , for instance, are redrawing the…
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Science & Tech
School segregation on the rise despite growing diversity
Nearly 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared Southern segregated schools to be unconstitutional, resegregation is happening again. And it is occurring despite the nation’s growing diversity. According to Gary Orfield, co-director of The Civil Rights Project and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, resegregation is contributing to a growing gap in…
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Science & Tech
Anatomy of the low-income homeownership boom in the 1990s
The rate of home ownership in the United States has grown to an unprecedented 67.7 percent since the 1990s. Low-income ownership has grown in particular. According to a study by researchers Mark Duda and Eric S. Belsky at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, an increase in manufactured housing has helped to fill the…
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Health
Simulating disease trends with massive mathematical models
Researcher Karen Kuntz is currently developing a model to evaluate trends in colorectal cancer incidence and mortality. Nearly 50,000 Americans die each year from the disease, despite the fact that more than half of colorectal cancers could potentially be prevented through lifestyle changes and routine screening. With such models, Kuntz and other researchers can help…