…statistical and analytic thinking requirement. Also, journalists have to rethink their policy of featuring only gory events and terrifying threats. Tensions that fizzle out (e.g, remember how a decade ago…
…is fixed. People with one child live very different lives than people with zero children: Parents move to the suburbs, rarely travel, and stay home Saturday nights. But once you…
(Photo: Dave Herholz) We’ve written in the past about the relationship between a child’s month of birth and a variety of later outcomes. In SuperFreakonomics, for instance, we wrote about…
…guess is … very. On the other hand, as we write in the book, the name you give your child has no discernible effect on that child’s life outcome. So…
…parental over-investment in their children is causing parents to be unhappy. He infers from this that we should invest less in each child, and have more children. In the classic…
Why learning to say “I don’t know” is one of the best things you can do.
How did an affable 18th-century “moral philosopher” become the patron saint of cutthroat capitalism? Does “the invisible hand” mean what everyone thinks it does? We travel to Smith’s hometown in…
Heeding the warnings of public health officer Charity Dean about Covid-19 could have saved lives. Charity explains why she loves infectious diseases and why she moved to the private sector….
…to identify what was missing from the picture. “She forgot her necklace,” the child answered. “Well, yes, but what else?” her mother asked. “She forgot her bracelet,” the child answered….
…child following a daughter was 5.5 percent more likely to be a boy after land reform, doubling the prevailing rate of sex selection. Mothers with higher levels of education were…
Sure, you were “in love.” But economists — using evidence from Bridgerton to Tinder — point to what’s called “assortative mating.” And it has some unpleasant consequences for society….
Breakthroughs in biotech that seem like science fiction are becoming reality. Why aren’t more patients benefiting from them?…
Nick Kristof, writing in the N.Y. Times: This is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms…
Youth baseball — long a widely accessible American pastime — has become overrun by $10,000-per-year for-profit travel leagues. Zachary Crockett peers inside the dugout….
When trust in doctors or the healthcare system is lost, it’s really hard to get back. Bapu Jena explores the ripple effects of a C.I.A. operation to catch Osama bin…
Sure, you were “in love.” But economists — using evidence from Bridgerton to Tinder — point to what’s called “assortative mating.” And it has some unpleasant consequences for society….
…Belsky, Vandergrift, Houts, & Morrison, 2008). The problem appears to be amplified under a system like No Child Left Behind, where funding is tied to test scores. Communities hard-hit by…
…baby-name-consulting business. According to this Reuters report, parents in Britian spend “up to 45 hours” picking out a name for their child, “a combined 30 million hours annually.” Let’s see:…
By cataloging the steady march of human progress, the Harvard psychologist and linguist has become a very public intellectual. But the self-declared “polite Canadian” has managed to enrage people on…
…they did it with the blessing of the state. All four had been in-home child-care providers. Collectively they have 17 children. For years, the government has paid them to stay…
It’s not a new question, but it’s a tricky one to study. Bapu explains why, and talks about how an N.F.L. labor dispute helped him get some answers….
Former U.S. Secretary of Education, 3×3 basketball champion, and leader of an anti-gun violence organization are all on Arne’s resume. He’s also Steve’s neighbor. The two talk about teachers caught…
…more other children had fewer office visits and filled fewer prescriptions for reliever and controller medications than children living with no other children. Children from single-mother families had more health…
Districts across the country are facing shortages of school bus drivers. Can technology help? Zachary Crockett takes a seat in the back….
…status, and number of children, is there still a wage gap? — Andy When you compare “apples to apples” (i.e., a childless, college-educated 29-year-old female in an urban area to…
After misinterpreting the data on the side-impact crash tests it ran on child car seats, Consumer Reports is changing its methodology on such tests, enlisting the help of experts in…
The restaurant business model is warped: kitchen wages are too low to hire cooks, while diners are put in charge of paying the waitstaff. So what happens if you eliminate…
…a third of all children in the U.S. are overweight or obese, the study underscores both the power of advertising to influence young children and the ineffectiveness of using the…
Could a lack of sleep help explain why some people get much sicker than others?
…as always, let us know what you think in the comments section. Julie Marsh is an adjunct researcher at the RAND Corporation, a non-profit research organization, and visiting associate professor…
