The family and medical leave act of 1993: Employee rights and responsibilities,employer rights and responsibilities

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was signed into law on February 5, 1993 after approximately eight years of controversial discussion in Congress. The FMLA provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for eligible employees for the birth or placement for adoption or foster care of a child, to care for a child, spouse, or parent with a serious health condition, or for the employee’s own serious health condition. The Act is intended to help individuals balance their home obligations with their work obligations. This article highlights both employee rights and responsibilities afforded by the FMLA and employer rights and responsibilities under the Act.     

Effect of factors with time-dependent covariates on the survival status of the elderly in Taiwan

The elderly population has been increasing rapidly in recent years because of improvements in medical care and the progress in economics in Taiwan. Now, the population of old people age above 65 has approached 10%, and problems of the elderly have become a major concern for public health. In this study, we use five waves of Survey of Health and Living Status of the Elderly in Taiwan held from 1989 to 2003 to explore 15 variables related to demographic characteristic, health status, health behavior and home condition etc. affect the survival status of the elderly by employing Cox proportional hazard model. The results show that there are nine variables, e.g. age, gender, ethnic group, ADL, self-rated health, physical function, smoking, chewing betel nuts and marital status, were strongly related to the survival status of the elderly. In addition, Aalen’s nonparametric additive model is not only used as an alternative to a proportional hazards to describe the effects of covariates on survival time but assist in detecting and describing the nature of time-dependent effects of covariates used for Cox proportional model. We find there are some time-dependent covariates (e.g. self-rate health, ADL function, and physical function), and Aalen’s nonparametric additive model provides a flexible and nonparametric method for investigating the time-dependent variables through plots of the estimated cumulative regression coefficients, with confidence intervals.     

Unemployment risk, house price risk and the transition into home ownership in the United Kingdom

Using household panel data, this paper examines the impact of income uncertainty, in the form of unemployment risk, on home ownership in the United Kingdom. The existing literature based on cross-sectional studies finds a negative relationship between income uncertainty and home ownership. This paper utilises data on transitions into home ownership and exogenous variation in unemployment risk, avoiding the endogeneity of employment to home ownership status. It also conditions the empirical estimates on a measure of house price volatility utilising a local-level house price index to control house price risk, which might also discourage home ownership. Results show a strong role for unemployment risk in lowering the likelihood of house purchase, but no statistically significant role for house price risk.     

Housing tenure choice and the dual income household

Housing tenure choice has been the subject of a very large literature. Many treatments have sought to estimate the effect of household income on the likelihood of home ownership. To date, no study has ever disaggregated the household income of married couples into the separate labor income components to see if one partner’s income has a different effect than the other. Using a derived likelihood function to control for censoring in the wife’s income, this paper estimates the effect of separate incomes on housing tenure choice, accounting for possible endogeneity of the wife’s income. To compare the results of this estimation method, the paper also estimates the standard IV models, 2SLS and IV probit. While the results show that there is no endogeneity of the wife’s income, ignoring the censoring of the endogenous variable (when a large fraction of observations are censored) can possibly lead to biased coefficient estimates. Also, this paper confirms the importance of total household income, which has a larger effect than the total disaggregated components.     

A dymimic model of housing price determination

This paper presents and estimates a model of the resale housing market. The data are a cross-section of monthly time series obtained from the multiple-listing service for a suburb of San Diego. The model is specified and estimated as a dynamic multiple indicator multiple cause system of equations where the capitalization rate is taken to be an unobservable time series to be estimated jointly with the unknown parameters. These are estimated by maximum likelihood using an EM algorithm based upon Kalman filtering and smoothing.The specification of the model features hedonic equations for each house sale and a dynamic equation for the capitalization rate which is constrained to make the expectation of prices equal the present value of the net returns to home ownership whenever the economic variables stabilize at steady state values. Out of steady state, the capitalization rate slowly adapts to new information.The model attributes a large portion of housing price increases of the 1970's to a fall in the capitalization rate which in turn was driven by rental inflation, tax rates and mortgage rates. Post-sample simulations indicate an initial flattening of housing inflation rates and later a fall brought on by the increase in steady state capitalization rates. In-sample simulations show that although both Proposition 13 and the inflation induced rise in the marginal income tax rates provided partial explanations for the fall in capitalization rates, the single most important factor was the acceleration in price of housing services which interacted with the tax treatment of home ownership to produce an amazing 18% average annual rate of price increase over the last seven years of the 1970's.     

收入差距、社会资本与居民贫困

研究目标：分析收入差距与社会资本及其交互作用对居民贫困的影响,并探讨两者的影响机制。研究方法：构建Logit等计量模型,并采用三阶段最小二乘法（3SLS）与工具变量法（IV Probit）进行稳健性检验。研究发现：在社区层面上,收入差距导致了教育与财政资源在区县间的配置不均等,阻碍了医疗保险制度的发展以及产业结构的提升,进而提高了居民的贫困发生率;在个体层面上,收入差距降低了居民对教育资源的可及性,恶化了居民的健康水平,从而导致居民进入贫困状态。社会资本能够降低居民发生贫困的概率,同时也能够缓解收入差距对居民贫困的不利影响;提升就业能力与收入水平、增加教育与医疗投资、改善社会经济地位、强化融资能力等是社会资本缓解贫困的主要渠道与机制。研究创新：采用具有代表性的中国家庭追踪调查数据,研究收入差距与社会资本对居民贫困的作用机制,指出社会资本是缓冲收入差距对居民贫困不利影响的重要保障。研究价值：为相关理论研究提供更多的经验证据和路径解释;在实践中,对减贫、防贫具有指导意义。     

关于家庭计算机安全问题的原因与对策分析

文章主要对于当前家庭计算机网络安全状况进行了分析研究,并针对计算机用户主要使用的Windows操作系统的特点对计算机在连网时经常遇到的侵害进行了分析,并基于此提出了进行安全防护的应对策略。以期能够对于家庭计算机起到更有效的保护。     

The geographic accessibility of child care subsidies and evidence on the impact of subsidy receipt on childhood obesity

This paper examines the impact of the spatial accessibility of public human services agencies on the likelihood of receiving a child care subsidy among disadvantaged mothers with young children. In particular, we collect data on the location of virtually every human services agency in the US and use this information to calculate the approximate distance that families must travel from home in order to reach the nearest office that administers the subsidy application process. Using data from the Kindergarten cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K), our results indicate that an increase in the distance to a public human services agency reduces the likelihood that a family receives a child care subsidy. Specifically, we estimate an elasticity of subsidy receipt with respect to distance of −0.13. The final section of the paper provides an empirical application in which we use variation in families’ travel distance to identify the causal effect of child care subsidies on children’s weight outcomes. Our instrumental variables estimates suggest that subsidized child care leads to sizeable increases in the prevalence of overweight and obesity among low-income children.     

Physical accessibility as a social indicator

A discussion is presented of the ways in which accessibility to employment and urban services constitute an important measure of the quality of urban living, and how accessibility might, therefore, be included as an important component of a “social report” for a city or region. A conceptual framework is introduced for measuring accessibility in terms of the ease with which citizens may reach a variety of opportunities for employment and services. This framework is interpreted as an approach to evaluating transportation and regional plans which differs from approaches based upon travel volumes and travel times which are currently employed in urban transportation planning and evaluation. The use of the proposed measures of accessibility is illustrated with data on accessibility to employment and health care facilities in Los Angeles, and these data are interpreted to illustrate differences in accessibility as a function of spatial location of residence, and socio-economic status.     

Potential savings from the adoption of nurse practitioner technology in the Canadian health care system.

An investigation is reported of the potential for reducing aggregate medical costs by the introduction of nurse practitioners into the Canadian health care system to an extent consistent with demonstrated safety and effectiveness. A cost model is developed for this purpose and estimates of its parameters are provided. The cost model is coupled with a demographic projection model and potential cost reductions are simulated over the period 1980-2050, under alternative assumptions. Results suggest that savings could have been in the range 10-15% in 1980 for medical services as a whole, and 16-24% for ambulatory services. The estimated savings percentages are quite insensitive to projected changes in the age structure of the Canadian population.     

从社会资本视角看待老年人就医

我国已步入人口老龄化社会,老年人口比例日益增多,本文在对社会资本理论分析的基础上,结合老年人就医现状,分析了社会资本对促进老年人就医的作用与意义,但也不能忽视社会资本的滥用对于老年人就医的消极作用,所以应该加大对老年人基本医疗的投入,方便老年人就医。     

Employees are paying for poor health habits

Realizing that corporate America may have limited control over how and when medical services are delivered, employers are beginning to attack the demand side of the health-care equation. That is, improving employee health status should result in a lower demand for medical services. However, to realize significant medical-claims savings, employers must encourage the least healthy employees both to enroll in work-site health-promotion programs and to permanently change their health-risk behaviors. One way to accomplish these objectives is to shift more financial risk onto employees by redesigning the company's medical benefit plan. As the 1990s progress and as medical costs continue to spiral upward, we are bound to observe greater employer involvement in employees' life-styles, both at work and at home. The bounds of discrimination and privacy laws will be tested as companies employ more restrictive policies and benefit plan designs to encourage employees to modify current poor-risk behaviors.     

Three Sides of Smoothing: Categorical Data Smoothing, Nonparametric Regression, and Density Estimation

The past forty years have seen a great deal of research into the construction and properties of nonparametric estimates of smooth functions. This research has focused primarily on two sides of the smoothing problem: nonparametric regression and density estimation. Theoretical results for these two situations are similar, and multivariate density estimation was an early justification for the Nadaraya-Watson kernel regression estimator.
A third, less well-explored, strand of applications of smoothing is to the estimation of probabilities in categorical data. In this paper the position of categorical data smoothing as a bridge between nonparametric regression and density estimation is explored. Nonparametric regression provides a paradigm for the construction of effective categorical smoothing estimates, and use of an appropriate likelihood function yields cell probability estimates with many desirable properties. Such estimates can be used to construct regression estimates when one or more of the categorical variables are viewed as response variables. They also lead naturally to the construction of well-behaved density estimates using local or penalized likelihood estimation, which can then be used in a regression context. Several real data sets are used to illustrate these points.     

我国城市化进程中的卫生问题

我国城市化进程所引起的环境负面效应、传染病、精神障碍、城市暂住人口难以保健等系列问题,使我国城市卫生事业面临着严峻的挑战.出现这些卫生问题的主要原因在于人们的健康观念陈旧、国家投入不足以及医疗卫生设施可获得性和可进入性差等.要解决这些问题,就需采取加大政府投入、树立大卫生观意识、完善卫生服务体系并实施健康影响评估等措施.     

Finite sample evidence of IV estimators under weak instruments

We present finite sample evidence on different IV estimators available for linear models under weak instruments; explore the application of the bootstrap as a bias reduction technique to attenuate their finite sample bias; and employ three empirical applications to illustrate and provide insights into the relative performance of the estimators in practice. Our evidence indicates that the random‐effects quasi‐maximum likelihood estimator outperforms alternative estimators in terms of median point estimates and coverage rates, followed by the bootstrap bias‐corrected version of LIML and LIML. However, our results also confirm the difficulty of obtaining reliable point estimates in models with weak identification and moderate‐size samples. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

老年人健康水平的影响因素研究--基于CFPS数据

在老龄化背景之下,文章以老年人个人角度为切入点结合健康自评和生活满意度两个指标,探究影响60岁及以上老年人健康的因素。基于2018年中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS)数据,利用二元Logistic回归方法从个人、社会、生活和家庭四个层面选取变量进行分析。文章进一步提出完善老年人医疗卫生服务体系、加大健康服务投资力度和优化家庭照护政策的相关建议。     

Are health care scams infectious? Empirical evidence on contagion in health care fraud

This paper examines the presence of contagion in health care fraud across jurisdictional boundaries. Using state‐level data for the United States, we find evidence of contagion in medical fraud. There are also spillovers from border corruption on medical fraud, but no evidence of spillovers from international borders. In other findings, greater urbanization, greater elderly population, and higher hospital occupancy positively contribute to medical fraud, while nursing employment has a mitigating effect. Further, it is economic inequality rather than economic prosperity that seems relevant. The main findings are robust to consideration of simultaneity, but dependent upon the prevalence of fraud across states.     

Household search and health insurance coverage

Health insurance in the United States is typically acquired through an employer-sponsored program. Often employees offered employer-provided health insurance have the option to extend coverage to their spouse and dependents. We investigate the implications of the “publicness” of health insurance coverage for the labor market careers of spouses. The theoretical innovations in the paper are to extend the standard partial–partial equilibrium labor market search model to a multiple searcher setting with the inclusion of multi-attribute job offers, with some of the attributes treated as public goods within the household. The model is estimated using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) using a Method of Simulated Moments (MSM) estimator. We demonstrate how previous estimates of the marginal willingness to pay (MWP) for health insurance based on cross-sectional linear regression estimators may be seriously biased due to the presence of dynamic selection effects and misspecification of the decision-making unit.     

A simultaneous equations system of money demand and supply using generalized functional forms

The Box-Cox parametric transformation was incorporated into a simultaneous money demand and supply equations systems, where the demand function had a liquidity trap. Full-Information Maximum-Likelihood parameter estimates of the ‘generalized’ system, as compared to FIML estimates from an equations system where the functional forms were a priori restricted, revealed the ‘generalized functional form’ model had superior forecasting ability, smaller impact multipliers on discretionary policy instruments, and different elasticity estimates. A likelihood ratio test between the ‘generalized’ and a priori restricted models indicated the generalized model was significantly different from the closest ‘linear in the parameters’ model.     

区块链中电商冷链溯源系统Petri网建模与分析

华东交通大学交通运输与物流学院;华东交通大学高铁与区域经济发展研究中心;福建商学院工商管理学院;摘要电商的快速发展,为冷链产品开辟了新的流通路径,冷链电商市场成为新的增长点。同时,食品安全问题已成为人们关注的焦点,食品若不安全会影响社会经济的发展,威胁人们的身心健康。本文基于Petri(佩特里)网理论,围绕区块链技术在物流溯源领域应用的实际情况,分析了冷链溯源系统的整体业务流程,建立了冷链溯源系统的Petri网模型,利用关联矩阵和不变量分析模型的有界性、可达性、活性和安全性,并使用HIPS工具,进行了仿真验证。设计了基于区块链技术的电商冷链溯源系统,为实现全民监督,保障电商冷链食品质量安全和精准定位,提供了有效的途径。研究对降低电商冷链企业运营成本和农民增收具有理论价值和实践意义。