Health, Human Capital and Domestic Violence.

We treat health as a form of human capital and hypothesize that women with more human capital face stronger incentives to make costly investments with future payoffs, such as avoiding abusive partners and reducing drug use. To test this hypothesis, we exploit the unanticipated introduction of an HIV treatment, HAART, which dramatically improved HIV+ women's health. We find that after the introduction of HAART HIV+ women who experienced increases in expected longevity exhibited a decrease in domestic violence of 15% and in drug use of 1520%. We rule out confounding via secular trends using a control group of healthier women.

Measuring The Lifetime Costs Of Serious Mental Illness And The Mitigating Effects Of Educational Attainment.

Serious mental illness (SMI) is a disabling condition that develops early in life and imposes substantial economic burden. There is a growing belief that early intervention for SMI has lifelong benefits for patients. However, assessing the cost-effectiveness of early intervention efforts is hampered by a lack of evidence on the long-term benefits. We addressed this by using a dynamic microsimulation model to estimate the lifetime burden of SMI for those diagnosed by age twenty-five. We estimated that the per patient lifetime burden of SMI is $1.85 million. We also found that a policy intervention focused on improving the educational attainment of people with SMI reduces the average per person burden of SMI by $73,600 (4.0 percent)-a change driven primarily by higher lifetime earnings-or over $8.9 billion in reduced burden per cohort of SMI patients. These findings provide a benchmark for the potential value of improving educational attainment for people with SMI.

Lifetime Consequences of Early-Life and Midlife Access to Health Insurance: A Review.

Over the past decade, the number of studies examining the effects of health insurance has grown rapidly, along with the breadth of outcomes considered. In light of growing research in this area and the intense policy focus on coverage expansions in the United States, there is need for an up-to-date and comprehensive literature review and synthesis of lessons learned. We reviewed 112 experimental or quasi-experimental studies on the effects of health insurance prior to people becoming eligible for Medicare on a broad set of outcomes. Over the past decade, evidence related to the effect of increased access to health insurance has strengthened, illuminating that children and vulnerable adults are most likely to see health and economic benefits. We identified promising areas for future study in this active and burgeoning research area, noting benefit design of health insurance and outcomes such as government program participation and self-reported health status as targets.

Convergent extension by intercalation without mediolaterally fixed cell motion.

We construct and implement a stochastic model of convergent extension, using a minimal set of assumptions on cell behavior. In addition to the basic assumptions of volume conservation, random cell motion, and cell-cell and cell-ECM adhesion, and a non-standard assumption that cytoskeletal polymerization generates an internal pressure tending to keep cells convex, we find that we need only two conditions for convergent extension. (1) Each cell type has a particular aspect ratio towards which it regulates its geometry. We do not require that cells align in a specific orientation, e.g. to be oriented mediolaterally. (2) The elongating tissue is composed of cells that prefer to be elongated, and these cells must be accompanied by cells which prefer to be round. The latter effectively provide a boundary to capture. In simulations, our model tissue extends and converges to a stacked arrangement of elongated cells one cell wide, an arrangement which is seen in ascidian notochords, but which has not been observed in other models. This arrangement is achieved without any direct mediolateral bias other than that which is provided by the physical edge of the adjacent tissue.