Corrigendum to "Overcrowding and COVID-19 mortality across U.S. counties: Are disparities growing over time?" [SSM-Population Health 15 (2021) 100845].

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100845.].

College-for-some or college-for-all?: Inequality in the relationship between educational expectations and educational attainment across academic achievement.

The predominant college-for-all ethos in the US education system proposes that all students should attend college regardless of academic achievement. An underlying assumption is that higher adolescent educational expectations will result in increased educational attainment, net of academic achievement. This study evaluates this assumption using data from the Education Longitudinal Study and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Results from educational attainment models reveal interactions between expectations and achievement. Respondents with high levels of achievement have a stronger association between expectations and educational attainment than their peers with lower achievement levels. Thus, adolescents with lower achievement levels may receive fewer long-term benefits from ambitious college expectations than previously believed. Such findings suggest that interventions which jointly increase educational expectations and academic achievement may have the most positive impact on reducing education inequity.

Accounting for past patient composition in evaluations of quality reporting.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether accounting for past patient composition in evaluations of the association between public quality reports and patient selectivity changes findings and conclusions. DATA SOURCES: Secondary data analysis of public reports of Assisted Reproductive Technology Clinic success rates between 2011 and 2018. STUDY DESIGN: Two sets of fixed effects models, (1) a standard fixed-effects model (FE) and (2) a dynamic panel model using structural equation modeling estimated with maximum-likelihood (ML-SEM) with one- and two-year lagged patient characteristics, are compared. The outcome variables are patient composition features associated with success rates, including two age categories and eight diagnoses of infertility. Two-year lagged success rates for any live birth and a singleton live birth are central predictor variables. DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION METHODS: Clinics with complete records for the 2011-2018 period were included (N = 303). PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: For live birth success rates, the two models show increases in the two-year lagged success rate is associated with a reduction in (1) the transformed percentage of patients with endometriosis (FE: ß = -0.006, SE = 0.002, p < 0.01; ML-SEM: ß = -0.005, SE = 0.002, p < 0.01) and (2) the percentage of patients with tubal diagnoses (FE: ß = -0.090, SE = 0.017, p < 0.001; ML-SEM: ß = -0.064, SE = 0.027, p < 0.05). For singleton birth success rates, the models show positive associations between the two-year lagged success rate and the percent of patients over 35 years old (FE: ß = 0.219, SE = 0.033, p < 0.001; ML-SEM: ß = 0.095, SE = 0.047, p < 0.05). Overall, the FE models show numerous significant associations with the two-year lagged success rate not observed in the ML-SEM models. Thus, the preferred and theoretically appropriate model (ML-SEM) and the more commonly used model (FE) yield different results. CONCLUSIONS: Researchers and policymakers should use models that account for past patient composition when evaluating the associations between quality reports and patient selectivity.

Overcrowding and COVID-19 mortality across U.S. counties: Are disparities growing over time?

A growing line of research underscores that sociodemographic factors may contribute to disparities in the impact of COVID-19. Further, stages of disease theory suggests that disparities may grow as the pandemic unfolds and more advantaged areas are better able to apply growing knowledge and mitigation strategies. In this paper, we focus on the role of county-level household overcrowding on disparities in COVID-19 mortality in U.S. counties. We examine this relationship across three theoretically important periods of the pandemic from April-October 2020, that mark both separate stages of community knowledge and national mortality levels. We find evidence that the percentage of overcrowded households is a stronger predictor of COVID-19 mortality during later periods of the pandemic. Moreover, despite a relationship between overcrowding and poverty at the county-level, overcrowding plays an independent role in predicting COVID-19 mortality. Our findings underscore that areas disadvantaged by overcrowding may be more vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19 and that this vulnerability may lead to changing disparities over time.

Race, ethnicity and nativity and the prestige of colleges attended.

Although much literature examines racial/ethnic variation in college attendance, comparable research on the prestige of colleges attended is quite limited. Of particular interest are the colleges attended by Asian and Hispanic Americans, two populations with varied education outcomes across ethnicity and nativity. The analysis draws on a diverse sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to estimate OLS and Heckman selection models of prestige of the bachelor's institution attended among current college enrollees (Wave III) and graduates (Wave IV). Across all model specifications Chinese Americans tend to enroll and graduate from more prestigious colleges than Whites and most other racial/ethnic-nativity groups in the analysis. In contrast, economic disadvantage accounts for Mexican Americans' enrollment at less prestigious colleges than Whites. These findings suggest the important role of college prestige in stratification, especially for specific Asian American populations.

Debts of despair: Education, financial losses, and precursors of deaths of despair.

Recent deaths of despair literature hypothesizes that financial losses are a key mechanism through which education is associated with higher risk for drug use, alcohol abuse, and suicidal ideation. However, few studies have empirically assessed the significance of this harmful pathway or compared it to other hypothesized explanations. Drawing on data from over 8000 respondents in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, this paper finds that lower education-levels are associated with heightened risk of drug use, painkiller use, frequent binge drinking, and suicidal ideation; in turn, decompositions reveal that financial losses mediate about 20 percent of the association between education with drug use and suicidal ideation. The results support a core assumption of the deaths of despair hypothesis-that financial losses among those with low education-levels drive the increase in harmful despair-associated behaviors, which often precede disease and mortality. Future research should extend this work by linking individual-level socioeconomic and health patterns with broader economic changes to better understand how individuals' educational attainment interacts with macro-level structural factors to shape their vulnerability to despair-associated disease and death.

The persistent southern disadvantage in US early life mortality, 1965-2014.

BACKGROUND: Recent studies of US adult mortality demonstrate a growing disadvantage among southern states. Few studies have examined long-term trends and geographic patterns in US early life (ages 1 to 24) mortality, ages at which key risk factors and causes of death are quite different than among adults. OBJECTIVE: This article examines trends and variations in early life mortality rates across US states and census divisions. We assess whether those variations have changed over a 50-year time period and which causes of death contribute to contemporary geographic disparities. METHODS: We calculate all-cause and cause-specific death rates using death certificate data from the Multiple Cause of Death files, combining public-use files from 1965-2004 and restricted data with state geographic identifiers from 2005-2014. State population (denominator) data come from US decennial censuses or intercensal estimates. RESULTS: Results demonstrate a persistent mortality disadvantage for young people (ages 1 to 24) living in southern states over the last 50 years, particularly those located in the East South Central and West South Central divisions. Motor vehicle accidents and homicide by firearm account for most of the contemporary southern disadvantage in US early life mortality. CONTRIBUTION: Our results illustrate that US children and youth living in the southern United States have long suffered from higher levels of mortality than children and youth living in other parts of the country. Our findings also suggest the contemporary southern disadvantage in US early life mortality could potentially be reduced with state-level policies designed to prevent deaths involving motor vehicles and firearms.

Race/ethnicity, maternal educational attainment, and infant mortality in the United States.

This study examines patterns of and explanations for racial/ethnic-education disparities in infant mortality in the United States. Using linked birth and death data (2007-2010), we find that while education-specific infant mortality rates are similar for Mexican Americans and Whites, infants of college-educated African American women experience 3.1 more deaths per 1,000 live births (Rate Ratio = 1.46) than infants of White women with a high school degree or less. The high mortality rates among infants born to African American women of all educational attainment levels are fully accounted for by shorter gestational lengths. Supplementary analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health show that college-educated African American women exhibit similar socioeconomic, contextual, psychosocial, and health disadvantages as White women with a high school degree or less. Together, these results demonstrate African American-White infant mortality and socioeconomic, health, and contextual disparities within education levels, suggesting the role of life course socioeconomic disadvantage and stress processes in the poorer infant health outcomes of African Americans relative to Whites.

Do Plans Really Matter?: Re-Assessing the Role of Adolescent Expectations in Educational Attainment.

Stratification research in the status attainment tradition contends that adolescent educational expectations are a central determinant of educational attainment. Little research, however, has assessed the robustness of the powerful expectations-attainment associations revealed in cross-sectional models. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to estimate OLS, school fixed effects, and sibling fixed effects models, this study examines the association between adolescent expectations and educational attainment. The analysis reveals that adolescent expectations may play a much smaller role in predicting educational attainment than revealed in cross-sectional models. Point estimates of the association between adolescent expectations and educational attainment from sibling fixed effects models are over 50 percent lower than OLS estimates, suggesting that family-level characteristics confound this relationship. Results from these analyses demonstrate that respondents' educational expectations likely exert less influence on educational attainment than status attainment research would suggest.

Maternal Age and Offspring's Educational Attainment.

Utilizing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), the current study examines which maternal age at birth provides offspring with optimal opportunities for higher educational attainment. The results show that maternal age has a curvilinear relationship with offspring's educational attainment, i.e., the offspring of younger and older mothers are distinctly disadvantaged. Maternal ages 31 through 40 are associated with the highest offspring educational attainment, suggesting that women who give birth in their 30s have more favorable characteristics than younger or older mothers. The analysis demonstrates that-with the exception of early teenage childbearing-the association between maternal age and offspring's educational attainment likely reflects selection patterns in fertility timing, rather than direct within-family effects of maternal age on offspring's educational attainment. Thus, the results provide insufficient evidence to conclude that delaying childbearing beyond age 18 directly benefits or harms offspring's educational attainment.

Smoking and Variation in the Hispanic Paradox: A Comparison of Low Birthweight Across 33 US States.

The Hispanic Paradox in birth outcomes is well documented for the US as a whole, but little work has considered geographic variation underlying the national pattern. This inquiry is important given the rapid growth of the Hispanic population and its geographic dispersion. Using birth records data from 2014 through 2016, we document state variation in birthweight differentials between US-born white women and the three Hispanic populations with the largest numbers of births: US-born Mexican women, foreign-born Mexican women, and foreign-born Central and South American women. Our analyses reveal substantial geographic variation in Hispanic immigrant-white low birthweight disparities. For example, Hispanic immigrants in Southeastern states and in some states from other regions have reduced risk of low birthweight relative to whites, consistent with a "Hispanic Paradox." A significant portion of Hispanic immigrants' birthweight advantage in these states is explained by lower rates of smoking relative to whites. However, Hispanic immigrants have higher rates of low birthweight in California and several other Western states. The different state patterns are largely driven by geographic variation in smoking among whites, rather than geographic differences in Hispanic immigrants' birthweights. In contrast, US-born Mexicans generally have similar or slightly higher odds of low birthweight than whites across the US. Overall, we show that the Hispanic Paradox in birthweight varies quite dramatically by state, driven by geographic variation in low birthweight among whites associated with white smoking disparities across states.